I spend a lot of time walking my Playstation 5: delete games here, upload them there, find old saves and try to talk to friends. It made me appreciate every new firmware update, no matter how small or niche the improvements it brings. And earlier this month, Sony made a bunch of satisfying changes.

Players got a Preview of March’s Big 7.0 Firmware Update in February, revealing Discord integration, new save data transfer options, and more. It’s recently been uploaded, and it’s far from the usual opaque”improves system performance” updates. It’s not as important as the PS5 finally get recordsand there are still many other new features that I would love to see, but this is another big step in the continuous improvement of the platform.

Use Discord to voice chat with Xbox friends

Crossplay has been great at bringing people together on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, but trying to connect with them was always a drag. Discord integration fixes this and allows you to easily start conversations with anyone and pass audio through your console.

Plus, it doesn’t even have to be game-specific. Anyone play Rocket League? Anyone else watching Mandalorian? No problem! Discord is actually great for chilling out together while everyone does their own thing.

Capture the game using your voice

It sounds silly, but now you can use the DualSense controller’s microphone to tell the PS5 to record gameplay. Perfect for capturing gameplay in the heat of battle or tense competition when you don’t want to lose control while manually switching. Now if only there was text-to-speech to type out social media posts sharing my highlights.

Update your DualSense wirelessly

There’s nothing worse than trying to play a game and finding that your controller needs a firmware update. Previously, this required plugging it into the PS5. Now you can download and install it wirelessly. It was the smallest of inconveniences, and luckily it is now gone.

Get variable refresh rates on 1440p monitors

Variable refresh rate support arrived on PS5 last year. This helps smoother frame rate and makes graphics look sharper. With the latest patch, it will also work with 1440p monitors, a niche but handy halfway between 1080p and 4K. I don’t play my PS5 on one of these screens, but I’d be pleasantly surprised if I did.

Receive notifications to save data to the cloud

Image: Sony

Like many PS5 owners, I have a huge library of PS4 games, and save data for each of them in the cloud. Unlike the Xbox Series X/S, however, the PS5 does not automatically retrieve this save data. But now it does something almost as good: send a notification prompt when you install a game that supports your existing PS4 data (like a PS5 game where you can transfer saves). Clicking the prompt will initiate the transfer automatically, rather than having to dig through a bunch of menus.

Join games directly from party chat

Another button prompt shortcut, it is now possible to meet in-game friends directly from the party chat menu. It’s a good time saver considering how often you can band together to play the same thing, and your friends or clanmates have probably already started before you.

See what your friends are playing more easily

This feature is still somewhat incomplete, but it’s still a step in the right direction. As with Steam, it’s now easier to see which friends own a game you own or are actively playing in it. A small section containing this information can be found under each game tile on the PS5 home screen. My only issue is that you have to click to see which friends own it, and it only tells you that someone is playing this game if they’re online in the middle of an active session. No baby.

Request to watch a friend’s game directly from their profile

I rarely use the screen sharing feature, usually because if I’m online with friends, we’re probably already playing something together. Still, it’s another nice shortcut for being able to quickly watch what someone is playing right from their profile, skipping another bit of the tedious and often esoteric scrolling through the PS5’s menu.

Filter games when adding them to a folder

Image: Sony

Okay, game folders have been my favorite new PS5 feature since launch, and they just got easier to create. When they first went live, you had to scroll through your entire library, adding items as you went. Now you can filter it by different categories, which makes the whole organizing process much, much faster. Will I ever play 99% of the games I keep in the PS5 folders? No chance. But I like doing it all the same. It helps me relax and feel less guilty about my backwardness.

It’s possible we’ll get another batch of PS5 tweaks later in the year. “We’re always thinking about what features our fans might want to see and how to make their PS5 gaming experiences more fun, social and connected,” said Hiromi Wakai, Sony’s vice president of product management. said in a recent interview. “We keep a very long list of features and think carefully about how we prioritize our time and resources to deliver the ones that will have the most impact on our players’ experience.”

Hopefully the PS5 background themes aren’t too far off.