It's no secret that handheld gaming PCs have turned into a vast market, and it's one that I particularly enjoy. I've got multiple handhelds, and I use them all differently according to their strengths. But the big bugbear for most of them is the subpar Windows 11 experience, which Microsoft has been trying to rectify. The upcoming Asus ROG Xbox Ally and Asus ROG Xbox Ally X have an improved Xbox app, which turns into an all-screen dashboard.

Of course, that's not exactly news; we've known about this for a while now. What is new is that you can add the new mode now, before the release of the new handhelds. All you need is to be on the Windows Insider ring and change a few settings with a handy tool. I've been playing with it on the ROG Ally X, and I can tell you that Microsoft has a winner here. It's not quite the integrated experience of the Steam Deck, but it's not far off, and it'll only get better as time passes.

It was surprisingly easy to do

And I love it far more than Armory Crate

The one common thread between Windows-based handheld gaming consoles when we review them isn't that the power is there, or the hardware isn't up to scratch, but it's the abysmal Windows 11 experience on the smaller screens, when you don't have a physical mouse and keyboard. Every manufacturer has made its own overlay to improve the experience, but they all have shortcomings.

I've been using the Xbox app in the optimized, full-screen mode for a few days, and it absolutely blows the rest of the pack away. It's not quite the SteamOS tight integration, but it's close, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, especially since it can pick up your games from other game launchers.

Installation of the new Xbox experience for Windows 11

Once you're on Windows 11 25H2, opening Settings > Gaming might show a new, fourth option saying Full screen experience​​​​​. Selecting that, choosing Xbox as the home app, andthen toggling the Enter full screen experience on start-up will get you the Xbox dashboard when you reboot.

Note that it will launch over any other dashboard, like Armory Crate. If you exit to go to Desktop mode, it'll ask you to reboot for full functionality, because the Xbox overlay has some optimizations for better performance.

How to get the new mode enabled if it isn't there

Sometimes, the new mode won't appear even if you're on the correct Windows 11 version — it wasn't on my ROG Ally X, so I had to do a little digging. It turns out, that a tool called ViVeTool will let you enable the needed features, so downloading that was my first port of call.

Opening a CMD window with Admin rights and navigating to the uncompressed ViVeTool folder, we then have to run two commands:

ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:52580392

ViVeTool.exe /enable /id:50902630

Then we open the Registry Editor, and navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OEM. There should be a DWord entry called DeviceForm, and we want to set that to 2E if using Hexadecimal or 46 if decimal. If the entry isn't there, right-click on the empty space, create a DWord (32-bit) value and give it the name DeviceForm, then set it to 2E.

Restart Windows 11 and go recheck the Gaming section of Settings. I tried this both on my ROG Ally X and my desktop PC, and it only showed up on the handheld, so there must be some other flags somewhere that tie it to the handheld consoles, but it should work on any Windows 11 handheld. Apparently, if you want to run it on a Desktop, you need to use Physpanel to 'lie' to Windows about your screen's resolution.

Now I'm not limited to the annoyances of Windows 11

It's so much easier to navigate around my games

We all knew Microsoft could make a dashboard if it wanted. After all, they've built Xbox ones for years. The only surprising thing is that it took them so long to create one for Windows 11 once PC gaming handhelds took off. Maybe they wanted to wait until the Xbox ROG Ally range was here, but at least everyone can use the full-screen experience now that it's here.

Once enabled, the handheld will load straight into the Xbox app, in a special mode that uses extra optimizations that give it more of the system resources. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen opens the Alt-Tab app switcher if you have multiple games open, and swiping in from the left opens the Xbox overlay, which has a Copilot tab and a bunch of handy tools if you tap through them all.

It uses the new integrated launcher, which pulls games from Xbox, Microsoft, Steam, GOG, Epic Games, Battle.net, and EA's app, but doesn't appear to draw from Uplay if you have games installed directly from there. Most of my Uplay games are from Steam or Epic, so that's less of an annoyance, but I hope it gets added as a source launcher.

This is the Xbox gaming experience I wished the Ally X and others had on launch

Other than that, it's very similar to the SteamOS experience, but obviously, Xbox. Opening non-Xbox games opens them straight away, without flashing the corresponding launcher, so it's all very smooth to use, and swiping back to the main screen is fluid. I've enabled the Copilot feature and played with the Game Assist, which lets you open a walkthrough in a mini browser and pin it over your game. It's handy for those gamers who prefer to have some assistance or have an interactive map to know where to go.

The rest of the Xbox overlay is very similar to the Game Bar in Windows 11, except it's laid out in tabs, which is far easier to use than the floating widget hell that was the previous incarnation of the Game Bar. I hope this comes to the desktop as well. It's much nicer to use.

Performance is a little better since the optimizations reduce Windows 11's draw on the system, but keep in mind I'm testing on the old Z1 Extreme, and not the Z2 processors of the upcoming Asus Xbox ROG Ally range. That should get an even bigger boost tbh, but the real winner here is not having to use Windows to open games anymore.