The Xbox One February update brought a load of social features

Every month, Xbox One took a sizable feature drop, and the February delivery leaned hard into the social side — new ways to see friends, compare yourself against them, and follow what they were playing.

The headline changes on console

You could now peek into a friend’s party before joining: click a friend’s name in the group, open the “Chat” option, and see the full list of gamertags inside before committing.

Leaderboards arrived, tucked behind your own achievements — pull up your score, see where every friend lands, and check how many points each of you earned in the last 30 days, down to individual achievement detail.

The activity feed got smarter, surfacing new items it thought you’d care about with one-click access to the full list. New filtering options let you hide content you’d never want to reinstall — betas, contests, stray games and apps — while another toggle surfaced friends’ Twitch channels the moment they went live.

The friends list gained “people you may know” suggestions, complete with gamertag, real name (if shared), avatar, profile picture, and the reason for the suggestion. And the chatpad grew hotkeys: the X1 and X2 buttons could now jump straight to your favorite apps, no menu-diving required.

New on Xbox One and the Xbox app

The Avatar Store opened its doors, making outfits and items far easier to equip — free and paid alike, all previewable on your virtual stand-in before buying. It lived to the right of the Avatars app on console, with Windows 10 and mobile access through the Xbox app.

The news system folded updates, releases, and tournament info into the activity feed. And a dedicated app arrived for the Xbox Elite Wireless Controller — per-button remapping, stick calibration, trigger sensitivity, and vibration intensity, all from the console.

For the Xbox app

One addition this month, but a useful one: Compact mode, which gathered friends list, messages, and activity alerts into a fast side panel — check on everyone mid-game without leaving your session.

Two updates in one — the monthly OS drop plus the Elite configurator made February a strong month to own the console. The Elite pad itself became the template for every “pro controller” since; its modern descendants sit at the top of our controllers shelf.