Xbox mode for Windows handhelds leaks a month ahead of ROG Xbox Ally launch, here’s how to download it
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Just a couple of days ago, Microsoft announced its rollout of the aggregated gaming library to the Xbox PC app. This is one of the best features for the ROG Xbox Ally, but only part of what the ‘Xbox’ upgrade entails. Now you can get a preview of the Xbox Ally experience thanks to a leaked version of the Xbox full screen experience.
During its demos at Gamescom last month, ASUS ROG and Xbox were keen to show off the full screen experience and designated it as one of the “three big features” that make the Xbox Ally the ideal handheld. Essentially what it does is take the SteamOS approach by separating desktop mode (Windows in this case) and gaming mode (Xbox full screen experience); the image below demonstrates how this looks. The new full screen experience helps optimize the system by deferring “a bunch of processes” to free you from bloat while you’re gaming, rather than always operating in the Windows desktop.
You can download the leaked Xbox full screen experience on any Windows handhelds – this includes Legion Go and MSI Claw devices, not just the original ROG Ally or Ally X. This leak comes more or less a month ahead of the official release date, which has been confirmed for October 16. Pre-orders are yet to be made available; current rumors suggest they’ll arrive on September 25.
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How to install Xbox full screen experience early
A user on Reddit has already shown off their ROG Ally Z1 Extreme running the new software. The main prerequisite is that you need to have Windows 11 25H2 installed on your system. This is in the Release Preview channel, which requires access to the Windows Insider Program. Once you’ve sorted that out, here’s where to find the new ‘Xbox mode’:
- Go to Settings > Gaming
- Go to ‘Full screen experience’
- Change ‘home app’ to Xbox and toggle on ‘Enter full screen experience on start-up’
- Restart your device
No full screen experience option? There’s a manual workaround
The full screen experience option in the settings may not be available to you. If that’s the case, here’s what you can do:
- Download ViVeTool (the IntelAMD version) from GitHub
- Extract it to your device, somewhere easy to access
- Run Command Prompt (CMD) as an administrator – search for this in the start menu
Once you have CMD open, you’ll need to input the following commands:
cd C:\Folder\ViVeTool (change directory to the filepath where you installed ViVeTool)
ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:52580392
ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:50902630
Then, open the Registry Editor (regedit) – again, search for this – and follow these steps:
- Go to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OEM
- Double click on ‘DeviceForm’ and set the value to 2e hexadecimal or 46 decimal (if it isn’t already)
- If DeviceForm doesn’t exist, right click an empty space and select ‘New > DWord (32-bit) Value’ and name it DeviceForm, double click it and set hexadecimal to 2e
- Restart your device
You should now have the full screen experience settings in the options and can follow the original steps.
So far, users report some slight improvements to performance, with minimal FPS gains and a small drop in RAM usage. Do keep in mind that this may not be the final version of the Xbox full screen experience, so it’s hard to say how much different it will make once its available on the ROG Xbox Ally.
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