Patrick Hearn · March 22, 2022 · 5 min read The Sony PlayStation 5 is an impressive piece of machinery, capable of displaying PS5 games at 4K resolution and 120 frames per second—but did you realize it has a hidden web browser? This means that, like the Xbox Series X, the PlayStation 5 can browse the web, though to a somewhat limited extent.
The built-in PS5 web browser works fine for text, but it sometimes struggles with images and video. It also doesn’t work well when streaming music through services like Spotify. The web browser is only accessible through a workaround in the PS5 system settings menu.
How to Access the Hidden PS5 Web Browser
One day, Sony might make the internet browser accessible directly through the PlayStation menu like on earlier devices. For now, the only way to access it is through a workaround.
- Press the PlayStation button on your controller.
- Select Settings.
- Select Users and Accounts.
- Select Link with Other Services > Twitter.
- Select Link Account on the confirmation screen that appears.
- Select the Twitter logo in the upper-left corner to be taken to the desktop sign-in screen and log into your Twitter account.
Once you’ve logged into your Twitter account, you can browse around the web to check out other sites. The primary limitation of the PS5 web browser is that you can’t enter URLs in the search bar, which means the only way to navigate the internet is by clicking links. If you want to browse the web on your PS5, you’ll need to select links in posts.
It’s a haphazard way to navigate the web, but if you have to use this feature, pin a Tweet on your profile with a list of links to which you’d like easy access.
While you can use the R3 button to zoom in, we did not find any way to make the PS5 web browser fullscreen in our testing.
What Can You Do With The PS5 Web Browser?
The PlayStation 5 web browser is a cool, hidden feature, but it’s not practical for actually browsing the web. The inability to type in URLs means its capabilities are limited from the outset, but it also lacks much of the programming that makes traditional web browsers useful.
With that in mind, there’s still quite a bit you can do – some of which might surprise you. According to tests, you can load some (but perhaps not all) Vimeo videos through the web player. Given how uncommon Vimeo videos are in this current age of YouTube, this isn’t a particularly useful feature.
It’s better to stick with PlayStation 5 specific apps. There’s a built-in YouTube app and numerous streaming options. Use one of these rather than finding it through the PS5 web browser.
One (incredible) feature is the ability to run emulators, but only JavaScript-based emulators. You can run these emulators through the web browser, which means you could play old SNES games directly on your PlayStation 5. One thing to keep in mind is that online browser games that require libraries like WebGL will not work through the PlayStation 5 web browser; if you want to play games like this, you’ll need to use a dedicated web browser.
Though there’s no reason you would, you can use Google Docs through the PlayStation 5 web browser. You can enter symbols, at least – but you can’t type. You won’t be writing the next great American novel with your PlayStation 5 controller, but you could use the web browser to keep track of your PlayStation 5 backlog. Just enter a special character beside a pre-made list to keep track of it.
There is an options menu for the PS5 web browser. You can clear web data, prevent cookies from tracking you across different services, turn JavaScript on and off, enable and disable cookies, and more. You can even delete your cookies. It seems odd that Sony would include this menu within the PlayStation 5 if the company didn’t intend users to access the web browser.
Does PS5 Have a Featureless Browser?
The PlayStation 4 had a web browser. It’s possible the PlayStation 5 web browser hasn’t been implemented to its full extent yet, and Sony plans to make it more full-featured in the future. On the other hand, Sony might prefer the PlayStation 5 to be a more dedicated gaming console to compete with the Xbox Series X.
The DualSense controller is not the easiest way to navigate the internet. While the PlayStation 5 supports a wide range of mice and keyboard inputs, but only for specific games. The PlayStation 5 web browser doesn’t support a mouse and keyboard. Well, that isn’t strictly true – it does support a USB mouse, but only if the PS5 web browser is accessed in a specific way through the game War Thunder, at least according to PSU.com.
Is There Future For PS5 Web Browsing?
Will there be a better web browser in the future? Not likely. According to a translated interview with some Sony executives, the company doesn’t believe a web browser is a necessary addition to a gaming console and that it offers too many opportunities for hacking. For now, all users can do is hope – and there is a lot of that out there, as many people on Reddit have spoken about their desire for an improved on-console web browser.
