Will Snap Mode ever return on Xbox? It doesn't seem like it, but there's definitely been a portion of the Xbox community that have longed for its return in recent years, after it originally proved a popular feature on Xbox One.
Xbox Engineering Lead Eden Marie, who regularly responds to Xbox fans on Twitter (we love the transparency, Eden!), threw out a random comment about Snap Mode the other day, suggesting it probably won't come back:
As you may recall, Snap Mode allowed you to play games on Xbox One while also watching TV or using an app of your choice alongside the main game screen, but the feature was removed in 2017 to "improve multitasking, reduce memory use, improve overall speed, and free up resources going forward for bigger things."
Marie would probably be the first to tell you that she doesn't make all the decisions at Xbox, so this is probably more of a personal opinion rather than anything official, but to be honest we don't see Snap Mode ever returning either.
Would you like to see the return of Snap Mode on Xbox? Tell us down in the (old) poll and comments below.
Comments 15
I always enjoyed snap and was quite a big user of it. It's true that with the addition of background music apps and the achievement tracker it's been made somewhat redundant, and it was a resource hog for sure. The OS got much faster when it was binned.
The only feature missing now is being able to watch a video app whilst playing a game, but we all have smart phones or tablets for this anyway.
All that aside it was such a cool thing to do that I voted for the first option. It's interesting that PS5 has snap type option now too.
We were promised a PnP mode as replacement. Snap was kinda crappy but fun for a lazy Sunday afternoon when I wanted to watch the game and chill to some Forza. It was a huge memory hog tho, no lie
Tbh I never used it, even now the PS5 has a similar feature and still I never use it…
I loved playing Cod and other games with my group while also having the hockey game snapped on the side. My K/D may have suffered but I didn't miss a goal.
I'd much rather prefer the extra power and I'd imagine at some point in the next few years there'll be some extremely power hungry games (judging by World, a Monster Hunter for PC/PS5/Series X|S comes to mind for example).
Man, I came to xbox one too late to get to try this, I would really like it ha.
I definitely understand wanting the extra power, but I wish they would at least make this an option for the series x. I mostly play xbox one titles while I wait for more of the exclusives and I can't imagine they are pushing the x too hard. It would be awesome to watch some stuff while leveling in D3 or something ha.
This feels so much like the "WiiU was ahead of it's time!" Threads
Why would you want to play a game & watch TV at the same time you'd not really be concentrating on either if you're trying to do both
Completely pointless unless used like the premise of game cards on ps5 where if stuck I can just get a YouTube video or whatever showing a play through of the part I’m currently stuck on. However game cards aren’t great so I can’t imagine snap would be either.
Why would anybody want to be distracted playing a game by watching tv or whatever as well. Just doesn’t work…cheats you out of the information what your watching is presenting to you, as well as what the game story is presenting to you. Isn’t worth the price of admission (cpu resigned for it).
Plus, they already have an answer to this…’play anywhere’…stream games to your phone ect and free up the tv
I miss a lot of Xbox One features.
I used it all the time. But...when we lost it, I just bought a 2nd TV. So I don't need it any more personally. I love being able to stream something to watch while playing a game at the same time. Plus, with two screens now, multiplayer is even better.
Multimonitor setups around the house (also cause of pandemic), but yeah, used to be a useful feature, but got laptop next to xbox, so no need for snap feature atm.
@JetmanUK Exactly! I miss it and used it a lot too. But as you rightly sad it was a resource hog and the OS got faster when it was binned. Not worth the trade off, it's too much of a variable. We want as much resources going to games not a niche feature like this. Besides we all have phones or tablets etc.
They should bring it back, the Series X and S have plenty of CPU overhead for this. Playing games while I have a TV show or film on via picture-in-picture is my preferred way to play.
Pretty sure most TV's got a PiP feature that pretty much does the same thing.
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