The Xbox One dashboard has been through a lot of updates over the years, and with the Fall Update, the dashboard gets a new refresh with a completely redesign experience that focus on making the experience faster, adds visual changes using Fluent Design elements, and brings a new set of features.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect about the Xbox One Fall Update is the ability to further personalize your experience, which in combination with previously available features, allows you to customize the Xbox One home screen like never before.
In this guide, you’ll learn the steps to switch to the light theme, create content blocks, and set a custom background image to personalize your Xbox One experience.
How to enable light theme
Alongside the new features, the Xbox One Fall update introduces a new light theme that changes the color scheme using white and light gray colors instead of the black and dark gray colors.
The light theme helps the experience to feel more modern and friendlier than before.
To switch to the light theme, use these steps.
-
Press the Xbox logo button to open the Guide.
-
Select the gear button on the far-right.
-
Select Settings and press A.
Xbox One Guide -
Select Personalization.
-
Select Theme & motion and press A.
-
Select System theme and press A.
-
Change the selection from Dark to Light and press A.
Xbox One light theme
Once you’ve completed the steps, go back to the home screen, and your Xbox One should now be using the light theme.
How to create content blocks
The dashboard not only shows the recent games and apps you’ve been using, but now it’s also possible to customize the experience adding games, apps, and friends to home for quicker access.
This new content is known as “blocks,” which you can create, reorder, or delete. In addition, these blocks also show updates with relevant information, such as Activity Feed content, friends playing the game, suggested Achievements, and a shortcut to the hub of the game you added.
To create a new block of content, use these steps:
If you want to add a new game to home, select a game from the My games & apps section, press the hamburger menu button, select the Add to home option and press A.
If you want to add a friend, open the Guide, in your friends list, open friend you want, select the Add to home option and press A.
It’s also possible to add suggested content, scrolling to the bottom of the blocks, and from the “Add more” block, select and press A for the block you want to add.
Unfortunately, you can’t add apps to home, but you can add an app pin to the pins block.
To edit or reorder, simply select the block and press Y. Using the d-pad, you can change order of the block, press A to apply the changes, X to delete, or B to cancel.
How to set a custom background
Another way to make your Xbox One experience more personal is setting a new background using a solid color or achievement art. However, if you want to make the experience more personal, it’s also possible to use a custom image as a background, which Xbox One doesn’t make it very obvious.
The easiest way to set a custom background is using these steps:
-
Using your computer, save the image you want on a USB flash drive.
-
Connect the USB flash drive to your Xbox One.
-
Open the Microsoft’s Media Player app.
-
Browse to image location.
-
Select the image and press A to open it.
-
Press the hamburger menu button, and select the Set as background option.
Set custom image as background on Xbox One
After completing the steps, go back to the home screen, and you should now see the new custom background on your Xbox One dashboard. Just remember that you can only use JPG file format images.
Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 15 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 21 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me. Email him at [email protected].