Latest Xbox One Alpha ring update brings Scheduled Themes and Guide enhancements

The Xbox team released a new preview build for Preview Alpha Insiders yesterday. The new bits bring a new setting for automatically switching between light and dark themes based on time of day. As a reminder, the Light Theme option was introduced in the Xbox One Fall Update, and it does look pretty good with all the Fluent Design touches that also came with this release.

Xbox One Insiders – Preview ALPHA Ring users – 1/14 @ 2.00pm PST Relnotes https://t.co/eqqxiF36sh and Reddit https://t.co/eAj871BGyd

— Brad Rossetti (@WorkWombatman) January 14, 2018

This latest preview build also introduces a new Game Pass Discovery tile in the Xbox Guide, which will surface random titles from the Xbox Game Pass catalog. You can read the full changelog below:

DETAILS:

OS version released: rs3_release_xbox_dev_1802.180109-1916
Available: 2:00PM PST 1/14/18 (10:00PM GMT 14/1)

NEW FEATURES:

• Scheduled Themes

You asked—we listened! We’re excited to announce that we’ve added the ability to put your themes on a schedule. In addition to choosing either the light or dark theme, you can now schedule a time to automatically switch between them. Simply follow these steps:
1. Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Theme & motion.
2. Select Scheduled from the “System theme” dropdown.
3. Select the times at which you want the light theme to start and end.

• Guide Enhancements

A new icon will appear in the Guide. The Guide Game Pass Discovery Tile (the “Surprise me with a random Game Pass Game tile”), now shows in Guide.

FIXES:

• Screenshots: Fixed an issue which sometimes caused screenshots to fail to display in Report a problem or on the console.

• Party Chat: Party chat is now fixed to not crash when in the Guide.

KNOWN ISSUES:

• My Games and Apps: When downloading and installing games the progress bar and the percentage complete are not in sync and show inaccurate data. The games and apps do install correctly.
• Background Screenshots: Background screenshots are showing up as 4:3 format rather than 16:9
• Guide/Home crashing: We are aware of the Guide and Home crashing and determined the root cause. A fix is being worked on. Workaround: In the interim please HARD Reboot (Hold the power button for ten seconds)the console to fix this issue.
• System Update: You may encounter an E105 error when the console starts up after downloading the system update. Workaround: Select the Repair option, and the issue should resolve after rebooting the console.
• Games Installation: Games that are installed fail to launch. Workaround: If the games are installed to an external drive please copy the game to the internal drive or attempt to delete the title and redownload to fix the launch error.
• Display: We are investigating the inaccurate RGB colors that have been reported when displaying in 4K HDR mode when playing a UHD disc.
• Tournaments: The left and right navigation for selecting date and time during Tournament creation is currently reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew.
• Left and right navigation in Tournament twists is reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew.
• Left and right navigation in the bracket view of Tournaments is reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew
• Avatars on Home: Users wishing to represent themselves as an avatar can do so by changing their settings under My profile > Customize profile > Show my avatar.

We’re still waiting for the first “1802” builds to roll out to other Insider rings, and we’ll let you know as soon as we get more information about it. Let us know in the comments if you like these latest changes to the Xbox One OS.