Microsoft rolling out improved Dashboard, Beam Streaming for Xbox One today

Xbox dashboard
Xbox dashboard (Image credit: Windows Central)

Microsoft is rolling out a major update for the Xbox One today that includes a faster, improved Dashboard, Beam Streaming and a whole lot more. This update has been in testing under the name "Version 1703" with Xbox Insiders for several weeks now, and today it's finally rolling out to the public.

The update, as mentioned above, includes some much needed improvements to the Dashboard and Xbox Guide. No longer will a single tap of the guide button take you to the Dashboard, but rather it'll take you directly to the Xbox Guide, which no longer lags when opening during a game.

There's also Beam Streaming, Microsoft's new game streaming service is now built directly into Xbox One. You can access Beam Streaming via the improved Xbox Guide, and is entirely configurable with options such as using your Kinect cam, Microphone, and a whole lot more.

Microsoft said in an official announcement:

We're excited to announce that we are shipping new features to the broader Xbox One community today. This is a big release, and includes Beam streaming, an updated Xbox experience with the new Guide, home improvements, and much more. One major goal for this release is to make streaming your Xbox gameplay even easier. And by updating the navigation of the Xbox console through the new Guide, we're aiming to put the features and experiences you love the most right at your fingertips

Microsoft says the update will be rolling out to all Xbox One users at some point today. If your Xbox One is configured with Instant On, the update should install automatically when available.

Zac Bowden
Senior Editor

Zac Bowden is a Senior Editor at Windows Central. Bringing you exclusive coverage into the world of Windows on PCs, tablets, phones, and more. Also an avid collector of rare Microsoft prototype devices! Keep in touch on Twitter: @zacbowden.

45 Comments
  • Nice-looking update. Look forward to trying out some of these at home.
  • Everyone should try my tube beta. It is the best you tube app on xbox. When watching a vid try out the view (back) button. Much more user friendly. Been using it since wp8, the new universal app is great and its still in beta.
  • My External HDD (WD My Passpirt Ultra late-2014) with game isn't recognised anymore... Thanks to this update (even a factory reset of the Xbox doesn't solve the problem).
  • Bought time but i got my update yesterday 😊
  • Bye-bye snap mode. Bye-bye live active app in the dashboard. Bye-bye single-button press to get home. Just another forced update that removes key features people made purchasing decisions on. Microsoft's Xbox team is the poster child of anti-consumerism, even surpassing the Windows phone team.
  • Dude at this point you may want to switch to Playstation with all the complaining you're doing; last time I checked though they have updated their user interface and removed/added features within the past two years so you might be out of luck too.
  • I have no interest in PlayStation, and I will never be buying an Xbox ever again. In the meantime, until Microsoft fully refunds me, I will continue to criticize them any time they engage in anti-consumerism.
  • I bought my Xbox to play games, not on the basis it took me one button press to get away from the game...
  • Then your comment is irrelevant to mine.
  • I appreciate that is just my personal opinion, but what I meant was that as long as MS are honouring the original purpose of the console (to play games) and making these changes in response to user feedback, I cannot see how this is anti-consumerism. Might not please everyone, but with mainstream products, things rarely do.
  • I dont think you know what anti-consumerism even means. The Live active app thing constantly caused issues, the single button press thing was annoying as i very rarely wanted to do that but it always happened when trying to double tap, snap i never even used except when it accidentally brought up some annoying app accidentally. These are all great changes to the XBox, sounds like you need to sell yours
  • Okay, teach me what anti-consumerism means, then.
  • Point of interest, wrongly tossing around "big" words like anticonsumerism makes you lose your point with the audience.
  • He's not wrong.  I purchased my XBox because I could control applications like Netflix with my voice and navigate around hands free.  The anniversary update broke this and I am still pissed.  I freaking lost it when I found out about it. I cook a lot for dinner or lunch like Blue Apron.  Prepping veggies puts a knife in my hand.  Using my voice to navigate around to select videos or navigate around was big.  Now I have to put the knife down.  Wash my hands.  Oh look!  The controller is off.  Wake the controller up and hope to god it pairs.  Navigate to what I want.  Select it then start prepping again.  I used to be able to do all of this without looking at the screen.  Back when I had confidence in the system. So yes, some of us do feel that pain and learned to hate forced updates. Here's some words of wisdom:  "Never buy software or hardware for what it can do in the future.  Buy it for what it can do today."  But you can't live by this anymore.  You can't trust what will be available tomorrow.  Gamers understand this:  functionality, classes or heroes get nerfed.  For us, our damn hardware that we own got nerfed.  This **** needs to stop.  But nobody has a solution...except deal with it.  And everyone is okay with it until it hits home.  You'll feel it someday.  Only then you'll understand.
  • Typical MS. I was pissed too when I found out I couldn't havigate hands free any more. Then basically killed off Kinect, only to still be pseudo useful with Cortana, then removing the Kinect port on the S, to keeping Kinect functionality around for Beam streaming.   This company has ADHD and it's quite apparent that they have very little (if any) cohesion internally which manifests itself in their products.
  • I will agree to a point. the fact that uwp doesn't support voice commands is agrivating. i find cortana 10 times longer then xbox commands in canada. she sits there thinking so long that i wonder if they even know what she is thinking about. its not like i yelled at her that much. lol
  • So switch to PlayStation where you can pay $100s more for features that Sony will reach across the internet and disable, such as the ability to run applications, the ability to load alternate OSes, the ability to play backward compat games, and so on, and so on, and so on. Not simple things such as the ordering and placement of UI elements, but features that you paid $100s more for to buy the hardware.
  • Sony got rightfully sued for that. So should Microsoft.
  • i think your not thinking right or how often do you play. it was double tap to go home. now its a single tap to go to a faster home. 
  • No, it was double tap to access the pop-out guide and single-tap to go home. Now it's single-tap to access the pop-our guide, double-tap does nothing, and it's single-tap + A + A to go home.
  • Yeah I'm not happy about the Xbox button now taking me to the guide instead of home
  • What the hell, the Xbox button won't go home? Who decided to change that and why on earth?
  • Because it was annoying and would always screw with the double tap option to pull up the side menu, for me that is my favorite change, im ecstatic that they got rid of single tap to go home.
  • How do you get home then in this system?
  • Xbox button -> thumstick right -> A button or Xbox button -> A button -> A button
  • I'm just concerned this may break navigation with apps and the remote. That's cool they made things better for gaming though, as long is other system features don't suffer.
  • Hopefully not.  I do have a media remote I use with one of my Xbox Ones, and it seems to work fine getting to home with the additional steps noted.  However in the new guide, in addition to being able to select "Home", you can also go directly to "Games and Apps", "Store", a list of 5 recent apps/games, and pins.  So in a lot of cases you'd probably never need to go home.  It's almost like the new guide is a (bad Dad joke alert) "home away from home".
  • I doubt the millions of sales the xBox one has had in the past couple years now were a result of these features. You're being a bit overdramatic.
  • It's not okay to screw over the minority just because they not the majority.
  • Really faster and better. But i saw my first bug today. I was downloading a game before update. Now console continues to download but I cannot see how many gigabytes the total game is, only size of the downloaded amount.
  • great but now my NAT is strict and I cant party chat in Sea of Thieves tonight!
  • Got my NAT to open on cone network and UI/UX is super fast compared to before this update, I like the new set up although there`s a slight learning curve and the OS is not without bugs 🎮🐱‍👤👍
  • Is beam better than twitch? Also i didn't realize monument browser was available on Xbox one I recommend trying that out it's alot better than edge. I notice there's a file explorer now can we download from the browsers on this update and hook our phones thru the usb and transfer files using the explorer now?
  • I've been watching some stream on beam for some time now, I think the video quality is slightly better than on twitch, but that's really light, most people won't notice. What's great is FTL (low latency streaming) and the interactions it can allow : most people use it for soundboards, but deeper integrations are possible, allowing games like "twitch plays pokemon" but a lot better)... and even without that it's really nice to have the streamer answer you chat message half a second after you posted it instead of 30+ sec on twitch.
  • @Sedp23 hi where is the file explorer located?
  • I have to say If i was in ring 4 i would be pissed right off. did they even see the update?  
  • Yeah i had this update and hated it, master reset my xbox and went back to ring 4 becuase i couldnt take not being able to go to home and seeing a live app or use my side app function while playing a game, i mainly use the xbox for multimedia the new update sucks monkey balls. Im away from home for 2 weeks if my xbox is updated by force then im talking to my attourney for the stress xbox has givin me to the point of depression for selling something without having its act together. The reason why the dash board gets changed so much is do to them constantly changing out the head of operations for the dashboard of xbox. That is stress full that everytime i come home i have to re learn how to use it. Atleast give us the option of which interface to run, that would be fare to everyone. One with original dash and one with nrw changes that way we have a choice.
  • Already streaming my content, so easy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Please update your app.
  • Really, on Ring 4... got the update yesterday and they push it out to non-insiders today. Great testing, waited for two months before any acitvity, then find out it got me ONE WHOLE DAY to review/use before going public.
  • The only thing ring 4 is used for is the install process. If your xbox got screwed up and msft received a bunch of reports of other xboxs blowing up, they would have haulted the update. Getting feedback from ring 4 members on anything else is likely ignored as any bug would require delaying the update.
  • Now all will experience the joy of having ads in the new guide!
  • That's my biggest grip with Xbox is the ads and major nelson on my tv every day. Like there's a place for this stuff (I like game trailers and ads for game sales) but on the home page?
  • Beams a little quirky...wouldnt stop broadcasting. I mean it did, but the counter stayed on screen and kept upping the time like it was still broadcasting. Couldn't start a new one because it thought it was still broadcasting the last one. Had to restart the box.
  • Definitely miss the live active app too...especially for live tv.