Hands-On: Windows 11 Full Screen Experience ⭐

Anyone running Windows 11 version 25H2 can test the full screen experience that debuted on the Xbox Ally gaming handhelds. And while this isn’t particularly useful on traditional laptop and desktop PCs, I happen to be reviewing the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which is slated to get this experience officially sometime in 2026. But why wait?

Make the full screen experience available to Windows 11

Our friend Mauro Huculak has a nice write-up about enabling this feature, which involves some registry editing and two third-party utilities made by two other friends, Mark Russinovich’s PSTools and Rafael Rivera’s Physpanel. The short version of these instructions goes like so:

• Ensure you’re running Windows 11 version 25H2
• Add (or, in my case, edit) a Registry key
• Restart the PC
• Use the psexec utility from PSTools to run Command Prompt with System account privileges, as required for the next step
• Create a scheduled task that runs physpanel each time the system boots; this utility simulates a gaming handheld (and so it was possibly not required in my case)
• Restart the PC

If you do want to undergo these steps, be sure to use the linked write-up above for all the details.

Enable the full screen experience

With that done, I opened Settings and navigated to Gaming, which now has a Full screen experience entry in addition to Game Bar, Captures, and Game Mode.

Then, in Full screen experience, I chose “Xbox” (the only choice) as the home app and enabled the option “Enter full screen experience on startup.” You can also enable “Show accessibility control hints in Task View,” which displays one-button alternatives to the default button combos, so I did that as well.

And then I restarted the Legion Go 2 again so I could see that it correctly boots into the Xbox app instead of the Windows desktop. Which it did.

Using the full screen experience

The Xbox app has evolved into a nice frontend for gaming activities via a controller-friendly Compact mode and, more recently, compatibility with third-party PC game stores like Steam, Battle.net, Epic Game Store, GOG Galaxy, and Ubisoft Connect.

On the Legion, as on the ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds, you can fully navigate the system using the integrated (and, in the case of the Legion Go 2, detachable) controllers. The left stick and d-pad can be used to tab between any selected on screen items, you can select those items by pressing (A).

It all pretty much works as expected and could almost be described as intuitive. But an on screen menu notes some less obvious choices, too. For example, you can use the (☰) key to access more options (as with a right-click), the (Y) button to search, and the (B) button to go back.

The Game Bar, also in controller-friendly Compact mode here, works as before: You can press the (Xbox) button to enable it (or, on the Legion Go 2, whichever button you configured for that) and then tab through each of its main views. In Compact mode, the Game Bar only displays a single view at a time, instead of multiple floating windows for each view/widget.)

You can also access a new-look version of the Windows 11 Task View by typing WINKEY + TAB if you have a keyboard (this is the normal shortcut), by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, or by pressing the Windows button if present. Task View can be used with the controller, of course, and though the navigation buttons noted above work, you can also use (LB) and (RB) to move forward and backward through available (running) apps and games.

Task View also lets you return to the Windows desktop, basically disabling the full screen experience until you reboot or re-enable it through the Game Bar.

One of the issues I have with the Legion Go 2 is that I will press the power button, which turns off the display and should put it to sleep, but it often just comes back on and never sleeps. So I had been using the Shutdown option on the Start menu manually, which is silly. With the full screen experience, Shutdown and related options like Lock, Sign out, Sleep, and Restart are available via a Power menu in the Settings view.

Settings view also offers controller-friendly ways to access volume, screen brightness, networking, Bluetooth, and Airplane mode, which is nice. And there’s a More settings sub-menu with familiar Game Bar settings like widgets, Controller Bar, and so on, plus a link to Windows Settings.

I haven’t used the full screen experience enough yet to determine whether this materially improves game performance. In Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, for example, I routinely get between 50 and 75 FPS in multiplayer matches, and in playing a few rounds (for science), that seemed consistent.

But I will keep using the Legion Go 2 in this usage mode and see whether I notice any changes. It certainly hasn’t harmed the game playing experience.

On additional note: This really is a full-screen experience. When I type WINKEY + E, for example, File Explorer appears in a full-screen display and the “Restore window” button is non-functional. And when I perform a file copy, the normal dialog appears up in the corner but the rest of the display is blank until it’s done copying.

I’ll record an episode of Hands-On Windows about this full screen experience soon. But so far, it seems pretty great.