Welcome to 1905, Xbox Insiders! There’s lots to be excited for in the coming months (including E3!). In the meantime, we have a new update for you to try out as the first set of 1905 features begins rolling out to the Alpha Skip Ahead and Alpha rings tomorrow including a new feature for Xbox Game Pass, friends list updates and improvements to messaging.

The team at Xbox is always striving to improve the Xbox ecosystem based on fan feedback—we appreciate every thought and idea shared! If you want to make your voice heard, join the discussion over at the new Xbox Idea Hub. We hope you enjoy trying out these new features over the coming weeks and look forward to your valuable feedback.

New features for Xbox Game Pass

Xbox Game Pass offers a curated library of over 100 great games, available to download and play at full fidelity for one low-monthly price. We are always looking to bring new features and new value to our Xbox Game Pass members, and we have a new feature for Xbox Insiders to try out. We listen to community feedback to help influence what we build next, so let us know what you think!

Play l ater – With so many great games to choose from in the Game Pass library, it can be hard to keep track of every game you may want to play. Play later lets you make a list of games for you to come back to on your time. Manage your collection from your Xbox console or the Game Pass mobile app and download your games when you’re ready.

Friends list shows where your friends are playing

We know that your friends play games across many different devices, including Xbox One, Windows 10, and mobile. When looking at your friends list, it is obvious which platform your friend is playing on when a game is platform exclusive, but it gets a bit trickier for games that you can play on multiple platforms such as Minecraft, Sea of Thieves, or Forza Horizon 4. To make it easier for you to know what, and where, your friends are playing we are making an update to your friends list! With this feature, we are adding a PC icon next to friends that are gaming on PC, an Xbox One icon next to friends playing on console, and a mobile icon next to friends playing on their mobile device. These icons will only appear for the platforms you are not currently viewing the friends list on, i.e. if you pull up your friends list on an Xbox One, you won’t see an icon for friends also playing on Xbox One, but you will see icons for other platforms your friends are currently playing on.

Message Requests

Your messages are getting smarter. Xbox is adding a new Message Requests feature in messaging which will prioritize messages from your friends and anyone you want to communicate with while separating out messages from people you don’t know into a message requests tab.

We wanted to make you aware that unfortunately, as part of this update all previous group messages will be lost in the transition and will require manual action to archive. If you want to back up any previous group messages, you can copy/paste them from Xbox.com for a limited time. Your messages with individual users will not be impacted. Please go here if you wish to review your messages.

Better Sorting in My Games & apps

Our team has made it even easier to find the content you’re looking for in My Games & apps. From now on, articles such as “a,” “an” and “the” will no longer be used to sort titles when using the “Sort A-Z” and “Group by letter” views. For example, “The Witcher” will now be found under “W” instead of “T.” Thanks so much to our Xbox community for helping prioritize this change by voting in our recent “My Games & apps” Idea Drive, and don’t forget to check the Xbox Idea Hub for other topics to which you can contribute.

Experiments

A subset of Xbox Insiders may see some experimental features in addition to what’s listed above. These are designed to gauge interest and solicit feedback from a more focused group.

As always, thanks to all the Xbox Insiders for your feedback. Your insight and input are crucial to making a better Xbox experience for gamers around the world.