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...