5 Things You Probably Didn’t Know Xbox Game Bar Could Do

Long gone are the days when the Xbox and PC arms of Microsoft’s endeavors were kept strictly apart. The advent of “Xbox Mode” has made gaming a baseline component of Windows operating systems, with the Xbox Game Bar as the primary feature that makes PC gaming more convenient and accessible. Whether you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard or an Xbox controller, you can quickly open the Game Bar at any time to access handy features like taking quick screenshots, checking specs, playing music, and more.

The Game Bar can be opened on a keyboard by holding the Windows key and pressing G, while on your Xbox controller, it’s as simple as pressing the Xbox logo button. Using Game Bar and its features, you can access a variety of nifty widgets that can both subtly improve your overall gaming experience and make it easier to share your finest moments with your friends. Even better, if the Game Bar doesn’t have the precise features you want, it’s very easy to customize it with third-party widgets.

It’s always fun to share screenshots and quick clips of your favorite gaming moments, whether you’re sharing them on your social platform of choice or just want to send a funny clip to your friends on Discord. It can be annoying to mess around with screenshot hotkeys while in the midst of gaming, but the Xbox Game Bar does make both screenshotting and capturing clips a little more user-friendly.

By opening the Game Bar and clicking on the camera icon, you can take screenshots of whatever’s currently on screen beneath the Game Bar overlay. You can also press the red dot record button to start capturing footage. If the highlight moment has already happened, you can click the “record last” button next to it to clip everything that happened in a set interval retroactively. All screenshots and recordings will be saved to the Captures folder in your Videos folder, which you can browse in File Explorer. Even if you’re running a game in exclusive full-screen and can’t open Game Bar, you can still use all of these functions, pressing the Windows key, Alt, and R for regular recording, G for retroactive recording, or the basic Windows 11 screenshot key, PrtSc.

Unlike console gaming, PC gaming is something of a balancing act that requires you to regularly monitor your rig’s components and their performance. Not every game works as well as you think it’s going to, so it’s important to be able to run quick benchmarks when you’re trying to optimize. If you ever want to know how your PC is handling whatever game you’re trying to run, just open your Xbox Game Bar.

If you click the little monitor icon on your Game Bar, you can open the Performance widget, which shows a readout of how your PC is handling its load. You can quickly see how hard your CPU, GPU, VRAM, and RAM are working, as well as get an estimate of how many frames per second (FPS) you’re getting on whatever you’re playing. For more information, you can also click the bar graph symbol to open the Resources widget. In a similar vein to Task Manager, this widget shows which apps you currently have open, along with a ballpark estimate of how much of your PC’s resources they’re using. If you’re getting sluggish performance from a game, these widgets can show you where things are falling short and where you can free up some muscle.

As nice as it is to play quiet, meditative games like “Death Stranding” or “PowerWash Simulator” in contemplative silence, that same silence can also get a little overbearing. If you don’t have a second screen to play YouTube videos or Netflix shows, the next best thing is to play your favorite music on Spotify. Don’t just leave Spotify running on your phone next to your desk, though; run it directly on your PC using the Game Bar.

Assuming you already have a Spotify account and an active subscription, you can automatically route your Spotify playlists through Game Bar for easy access to your music while playing. Just open the Game Bar, open your Widgets list, and select Spotify. If it’s not on the list, just open the Widget Store and download it for free. When you open the Widget, just log in to your Spotify account, and your music and playlists will be immediately available to play and browse at your leisure. You will need to link your Spotify account to the Game Bar if you want to do all this, but don’t worry, as you can always unlink the apps from your account page on the Spotify website.

If you’re specifically playing games on your PC with an Xbox controller, it’s probably because you don’t want to mess around with keyboard inputs and shortcuts or move the mouse to click on things. Even if you can still open the Game Bar by pressing the Xbox logo button, the default Game Bar layout admittedly isn’t the most controller-friendly format. Luckily, there’s a solution to that: Compact Mode.

In your Game Bar, open your Settings and activate the Compact Mode toggle to switch to Compact Mode. Compared to the default Game Bar layout, Compact Mode is smaller and more simplified, optimizing it for use with controllers, not to mention with smaller monitors or gaming handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally X. Compact Mode can access the majority of Game Bar features and functions, with its only particular limitations being that you can’t pin Widgets or call up virtual keyboards. If you want to switch back to the regular layout, just open your Settings again and deactivate the Compact Mode toggle.

What’s neat about the Game Bar is that, in addition to the aforementioned features and functions, it can also serve as a decent hub for all sorts of perks and tools. All you need to access these tools is the Widget Store, which you can find at the bottom of your Widget list in your Game Bar.

In addition to the default Xbox app for accessing your socials and achievements and the aforementioned Spotify Widget, you can also find various tailored Widgets for different hardware brands. For example, if you’re running an AMD graphics card in your PC, you can install the AMD Control Panel Widget to get immediate access to its finer controls while you’re playing a game. There are also several apps like Crosshair Magic that allow you to add a custom crosshair to your screen while playing first-person shooters. There are even some Widgets made for specific games, such as the Warframe World Status Widget, which provides instant updates on game events and server status for the game “Warframe.”