The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X is still about a month away, and while there’s a lot to get excited about, like the new chipset and the funky controller grips, I’ve been more fascinated by the software since the system was announced back in June. The idea of a trimmed down version of Windows that works better on handheld gaming PCs is something I’ve wanted for years now, and the Xbox Ally X is going to be the first device that’ll have something like that. Kind of.

Microsoft has said that this new ‘Full Screen Experience’ for the Xbox app will be rolling out to other Windows devices in early 2026. But what if you could get it now? Well, I’m happy to tell you that you can get the Full-Screen Experience running on pretty much any Windows machine right now, though it comes with a load of caveats.

Sneak Peek Via Windows Insider

As explained by Reddit user Gogsi123, you can potentially enable this feature early by joining the Windows Insider program and downloading the Windows 11 25H2 update on the Dev channel, then going into settings, Gaming, then enabling the Full-Screen Experience. I say potentially, because there’s a good chance this option simply won’t show up for you – it didn’t for me.

There is still a way to enable this mode if Windows 11 25H2 doesn’t allow you to by default, but I don’t recommend it unless you’re comfy with the idea of bricking your Windows installation. It involves downloading a library called ViVeTool from GitHub, running a couple of command line prompts and then diving into regedit. If that’s something you want to do, then I strongly suggest you follow Gogsi123’s guide.

After all of that, if you did everything right, the option to enable the Full Screen Experience in the gaming settings will appear. Simply toggle it to the Xbox app and reboot the system and you’ll be good to go. However, because this is an experimental build of Windows, there’s a good chance that something is going to break. For instance, I ran it on the Asus ROG Ally X, and my controllers just stopped working. These things happen on early builds of Windows.

I’m more interested in gaming performance anyway. After all, since the Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS launched, it’s become more apparent that Windows 11 is so bloated at this point that it can hamper gaming performance. And the ‘FSE’ definitely helps there.

Turbo Boosted

Because the ‘FSE’ doesn’t need to load in the Windows desktop or other optional features, it frees up a lot of system resources for gaming, at least in theory. Since enabling it earlier this morning, I ran it through most of my standard benchmarking suite for handheld reviews, just to see how much of an impact it would have.

Unsurprisingly, this new version of Windows had the biggest impact in 3DMark, where I was able to get 3540 points in Time Spy, compared to 3346 points on an older build of Windows. Fire Strike gave an even bigger performance differential, with the new build getting 8306 points compared to 7187 – a 16% uplift. Then, in Night Raid, the Ally X got 30427 points, compared to 25278, a 20% boost. That’s promising, but when testing actual games, I saw smaller improvements.

In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with High settings, I went up from 35 fps to 39 fps, which is about an 11% performance boost. However, counterintuitively, the system got 22 fps in both Monster Hunter Wilds and in Total War: Warhammer 3, compared to the 23 fps it got before in both games. That’s within the margin of error, but it was technically slower, if even just by a bit. Monster Hunter was also very jittery, but it’s not really a game you should be playing on a handheld gaming PC anyway.

Your Mileage May Vary

It’s a little too early to say whether or not the new Full Screen Experience for Xbox on Windows is good, especially because it’s so rough around the edges. But the performance uplift alone makes it fascinating. There are several handheld gaming PCs launching in the next couple months, all using the same hardware. But while something like the Legion Go 2 is going to be launching on a regular Windows 11 install, the ROG Xbox Ally X will feature this Full Screen Experience front and center, meaning it might have a bit of a performance headstart out of the box – at least for a couple months.

You can technically get this running on your handheld now, and it’s even worth it if you’re willing to deal with the headache of heavily tweaking your device to get it running right. Just be warned that there’s a decent chance you’ll break something, so proceed at your own risk. Even if you don’t want to deal with that headache, though, the fact that it’s even in a preview build at all means we won’t have to wait long to download a fully functional version of it on any device. I know I’m looking forward to getting it running on my living room PC later today.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra