There’s a lot to love about the PlayStation 5, such as its awesome controllers and access to the best PS5 games, but it’s missing one key feature from the old PS4 — themes. Even after digging through and uncovering all the hidden PS5 features for ways to make the console your own, you won’t find themes anywhere. Did Sony replace themes with something else like it did with folders, or are we out of luck trying to customize our consoles? The answer is a bit complicated.
Does the PS5 have themes?
As mentioned above, the PS5 does not have any themes. Instead, whenever you highlight a game or app on your home screen, the background will change to art related to that game, as well as show more information on it. While far from ideal, it is the closest we are likely to get to the themes we had on our PS4.
Can you change the background on a PS5?
Again, due to the PS5 dynamically changing the background depending on what you’re currently looking at, there’s no way to alter your background at this time. Since the background is constantly changing, even if you had a custom image, it would always be changing as you cycled through games. There are a few other ways you can customize your
The only slight workaround is the Welcome Hub that was added in 2024. This part of the home screen does allow you to change its background, but only while you’re hovering over it or entered into it. It isn’t exactly what most people want, but better than nothing.
While it’s unfortunate that you can’t use themes on PS5 or change its background outside of the Welcome Hub, the use of dynamic backgrounds as you flip through your gaming catalog is a nice alternative. There’s no denying most players would love to have more customization options for their console — after all, themes were incredibly popular on PS4 — but watching the dashboard change as you view different games is a nice change of pace.
