This PS5 Pro hidden feature is an ideal way to upgrade your experience

The PlayStation 5 Pro is quite a banger of a console, and certainly the most powerful one on the market right now (far outstripping the nonetheless brilliant Switch 2 in raw power) – but it also has quite a lot of options for you to get to grips with once you set it up.

If you've recently picked up a PS5 Pro, or you've had one since launch day and want to get more from the console, there are plenty of little tweaks you can make, from making sure that your VRR (variable refresh rate) settings are correct to letting it power up backwards-compatible PS4 games.

Still, one thing that I think many people might overlook is the humble welcome hub, a feature that Sony added in a software update a couple of years ago, and which I think can be a really great way to get all the information you need when you turn your console on – if you set it up right.

The welcome hub and how to tune it

When you turn your PS5 Pro on, after the initial setup, you're greeted with what Sony calls the Welcome Hub, which is a card on your list of apps and games that basically lets you see a bunch of widgets at a glance. At first, this will be set up in the default configuration, but I think it's well worth taking some time to tinker with it.

You can do this by using your controller to navigate to the pencil icon at the top right of the section when you're looking at it – this is the Edit button, and lets you change what widgets are there, and add new ones.

As you navigate over the existing widgets, you'll be able to move them around and even use the R1 and L1 buttons to resize them.

By checking out the list of available widgets, you'll get a sense of the options open to you, and it should only take a couple of minutes to build a new version of the hub that surfaces the information you want.

In my case, I'm particularly interested in immediately seeing who from my friends list is online, and whether they're joinable, which I can do easily now, as well as getting a sense of whether my controller is charged thanks to a battery widget.

I also have a small media gallery tile, as I like the way it surfaces screenshots I've taken over the years, a bit like a memory from the Photos app on my iPhone. That helps me recall games I might have forgotten about every so often. There are a host more widgets to choose from, too, of course.

So, get digging into the menu and see what you end up building. It might not change your gaming life, but I can almost guarantee that customising the menu will spark more joy in the long run than just leaving it as the default.