Most people buy a PS5 for gaming, which makes sense, but there’s so much more you can do with your PS5 other than playing Spiderman or Last of Us, etc. If you ever want to catch up on your favorite shows on PS5, Sony’s PlayStation 5 comes with apps support such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Plex and Spotify, etc. Here are the best PS5 tips and tricks to get the most out of video streaming. Also, we’ll be focusing less on gameplay tips and more on general PS5 tips that we’ve found useful while video streaming on PS5.

Let’s begin.

DualSense controller 

The first tip is to use the DualSense controller wisely.

As you know, pressing the PS button pulls up the Control Center as an overlay on the bottom of your screen.

But, if you double-tap the PS button, you’ll open the most recent card. It’s kind of like recent apps thing you have on your smartphones.

And here's our favorite thing - holding down the PS5 buttons will take you to directly home. Something, that was so simple on PS4.

Either way, this doesn't end here, while pressing the PS button will send you to the control center, holding the PS Button down for at least 10 seconds will turn off the controller completely, allowing you to save battery if you plan to just watch Netflix and don't have any use for the controller.

So, a quick recap:

·      Tap the PS button to open the bottom quick navbar.

·      Double-tap the PS button to open the most recent card.

·      Hold the PS button down to return home.

·      Hold the PS button down for 10 seconds to turn off the controller.

Use a USB keyboard

Yes, you heard it right, just like PS4, you can also connect a cheap third-party USB keyboard to your PS5 and use it for typing.

You can buy one of these for less than 10 bucks on Amazon and I highly recommend them. Next, connect the USB dongle of this mini keyboard at the back of your PS5 and now you can use it for typing and navigating. This comes in handy when you have to type a lot on your PS5 on Netflix or YouTube etc., because let's be honest - the typing is not what the controller is made for. Also, this will come super handy when we use web browser on PS5 in our upcoming tip. Moving on.

Mute button on the DualSense

As you might know, there is a mute button on your PlayStation 5 DualSense controller.

if you single-press the mute button, it will mute the mic on the controller or headset.

But, here's something interesting - if you long-press the mute button, it mutes the whole game/system audio. This comes in super handy when you get a call while watching Netflix or YouTube and you can't find a TV remote to control the volume.

Also, a pro tip - mute the mic on the controller before you open the game to get strong haptics and triggers. if the mic is on, you don't get good haptic feedback on your controller, which is weird.

Use the Internet browser on PS5

Okay, there is no official web browser on PS5. And it might seem especially odd since the PS4 featured a fully supported Web browser complete with URL bar and quick access to "frequently used pages." PS5 doesn't have a browser. But there is a hidden trick to use it.

To do so, there is a long process, but here it is. Go to the Settings, go to the User’s Guide on the top, and then select the first option – User’s Guide, again. This will open a web browser app and it only takes you one page which is PS5 manual and you can't access the url bar, so, there's not much you can do. But here's a workaround - open any link in the this manual and you will see a PS5 embedded video, tap on the video to play it, next tap on YouTube logo that will take you to the YouTube website and from there, you have to reach Google. The easiest way is to find a video that has a link to google[.]com in the description. There should be plenty of those videos so just find one of them.

You can even plug in a USB keyboard to make the searching much simpler and/or hop through links with the arrow and Enter keys. USB mouse doesn’t seem to work with the PS5 browser, though—you still need to use the DualSense joysticks to scroll or move the on-screen pointer.

Video sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch worked without much issue on the PS5, complete with sound, though trying to go "full screen" with a video failed on each one. Music streaming sites like Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and the bunch of others, on the other hand, could generally load the interface but couldn't actually play any music through the PS5 in our tests.

Use Smart DNS Proxy to bypass geo restriction

The final tip is to change your DNS server on your PS5.

Changing DNS settings on your PS5 not only improves gameplay, but another reason to change DNS on your PS5 is to bypass geo-restrictions on streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, HBO Max etc. by using Smart DNS Proxy’s DNS.

We have a dedicated video on it, so we’ll keep it short, but in general, go to your Network settings and find your Wi-Fi or wired connection, go to its Advance Settings, and change the DNS to one of Smart DNS Proxy DNS server found here.

Once you do that, you will be able to get over geo-restrictions on streaming apps. Although, it might not work on some apps such as Netflix, as they seem to have hardcoded Google DNS in the app itself. But it works in general, and you can use Smart DNS Proxy on your router level as well. 

That’s pretty much it. Those are the tips and tricks for streaming on PlayStation 5. Speaking of which, we’ll be making a bunch of videos on streaming experience on PlayStation 5, and maybe we’ll come up with new topics and hacks that will be helpful for most people. If you are up for that, let us know in the comments sections below.

Thanks for reading and watching, subscribe to our YouTube channel and see you in the next one.