Have you ever woken up at 3 am to the sound of your PS3 beeping on and off while it syncs your cloud saves? No? Lucky you. PlayStation has long had a high-pitched beeping noise when pressing the power button, dating way back to 2006, but after 17 years, Sony is finally letting us mute it.
In a new PS5 update, the option to "mute or adjust the volume of the PS5's beep sound when turning it on or off, or putting it in rest mode" was finally implemented. You can find this setting under the system tab. And if you really want to keep it, you can at least make it quieter.
The beep is so notorious that fans have long found complicated workarounds to get their console to turn on and off without it. Seven months ago, user itshonestwork posted to the PS5 subreddit, "Use the PS Remote Play app on your phone and connected over cellular data with Wi-Fi turned off. Once it's booted, you can close the app and power up your controller and TV." The caveat here is you need to leave your PS5 in rest mode all the time, which uses power unnecessarily and has been known to bug out. Luckily, you can forgo the convoluted methods now and just turn it off. Freedom. Sweet, sweet freedom.
Death to the beep, long live Dolby Atmos support. While one of the more noteworthy parts of the update is putting to bed a 17-year-old gripe, that's not to say the rest isn't of interest. Now you can plug in Dolby Atmos-supported audio devices (usually headphones) and use their full capabilities. In the sound settings, go to audio output and select "Audio Format (Priority)". From the drop-down menu, you'll now see a Dolby Atmos option. You can mute the beep and make your audio better, win-win.
Then there are the accessibility options. PS5 now lets you use a second controller for assistance, which means that you can "use two controllers to operate your PS5 console as if you were using [one]". This option can be found under the accessibilities tab in "Controllers". To boot, you can disable haptic feedback effects while navigating the PS5. This is found in the same menu.
To top it all off, this update also allows you to react to your friends' messages with emojis. Spam those laugh reacts while your mates get more and more frustrated in Overwatch. Or don't. You might end up more annoying than the beep.