Xbox revamped its sharing feature so that it’s much easier to, you know, share content

As long as your phone is handy

Xbox has a bottleneck when it comes to sharing gameplay clips. It’s easy enough to capture content, but it’s a pain posting those captures to social media. Case in point, here’s my order of operations for sharing a clip to Twitter: Hit the guide button and press Y to capture video, wait for the clip to upload to Xbox live, use the Xbox app on my PC to download the clip from Xbox Live, open the local captures folder to finally post it.

A next-gen focus for Microsoft is streamlining that process. The new Xbox Series S/X controllers have an additional button right in the middle that’s dedicated to capturing gameplay. Pressing it once will take a screenshot; holding it will capture a video clip. 

Here’s where it gets much better. Those clips upload to Xbox Live and then you can either share them from your Xbox or your phone. They’ll push to the Xbox app, where you’re able to edit the clips and then send them out to social media. Phones are where everyone posts to social anyway. Sharing through mobile is going to be the best version because the platform is already optimized for it. 

This is going to be a big quality of life feature for next-gen but it actually arrives today. This update pushes to Xbox One today. In the video below, Major Nelson talks to an Xbox program manager about all the finer details and logic that went into revamping content sharing on Xbox.