Xbox Series X|S May Update Rolls Out Today, Fixes Quick Resume Complaints

The May 2021 update for Xbox Series X|S is rolling out today, and it brings with it some much-requested fixes to the Quick Resume feature. This update improves stability and performance for Quick Resume, meaning your experience with it should be both more reliable and quicker.

The main fixes are improved reliability and loading times when switching between games, which will help smooth out some of the complaints from players. In addition, the update also helps make it easier to tell whether or not a game supports Quick Resume (since some titles only work with a traditional boot sequence). The game you're currently playing will have a tag that lists if it supports the feature, and your game library will now have a Group that lists all the titles currently saved in Quick Resume.

Quick Resume is one of the main features differentiating Xbox Series X|S from the PS5. With it, you can keep up to six games suspended in the background, letting you switch between them on the fly without rebooting any of them. While it's a great feature in theory, players have occasionally hit reliability issues when using it, so this update is a welcome fix to help bolster a big part of the Xbox Series X|S experience.

In addition to those tweaks, the new update also implements passthrough audio for media apps. What this means is that you'll be able to turn on a setting that lets audio decoding from apps like Disney+ and Apple TV go straight to an external sound system, skipping the console and improving sound quality.

The third big addition in this update focuses on parental controls. Now, parents can approve specific titles for multiplayer gameplay for their childrens' accounts. In essence, parents can prevent their children from using multiplayer features in certain games using tools in the Xbox Family Settings app. In addition, children can send a request to unblock multiplayer for those particular games.

Finally, the update includes a handful of minor tweaks, too. The iOS and Android Xbox app now lets you turn on notifications for when your friends go online. In addition, the Game Pass library will now play game trailers when you focus on a title (similar to how Netflix triggers a trailer when you highlight a title). Last, there's a new animated background for Xbox Series X|S called motes.