PS5 Owners Baffled By New Console Feature Appearing Without Warning

PlayStation 5 users were left confused last week when a brand-new feature appeared on their consoles seemingly without warning. Even five years after its release, the PS5 is apparently still undergoing serious changes in periodic updates, many of them related to the PS Portal’s new cloud streaming feature.

Last week, one of those changes took effect, with a small leaf-shaped icon with a lightning bolt in the middle appearing next to some game titles on the home screen. Some players, like Both-Juggernaut9230 on Reddit, took to the internet to ask about the mysterious icon. Commenters revealed that the leaf shape designates games able to run in power save mode.

PS5 Apparently Has A New Icon

What The Lightning Leaf Means

In other words, when playing games marked with the lightning bolt-leaf icon, your PS5 can operate at a lower power consumption. This can help save you a bit on your power bill, and potentially extend the life of your console. But it may come at the cost of some resolution or performance.

However, with Sony’s plans for low power mode games, that might not matter. Rumor has it the feature is designed for games playable on the PS Portal, or potentially even a future Sony handheld (spotted by Throw_Me_Away_78).

The PS5 can run certain games natively at 4K, but the Portal’s screen can only handle a resolution of up to 1080, depending on the strength of your Wi-Fi connection. Therefore, there’s really no point in the PS5 rendering full 4K graphics for streaming to the PS Portal.

So, if you can save a bit of power by reducing the native resolution, and won’t even notice the difference, then you might as well. This might even lead to a smoother streaming experience, as your console won’t have to stream full 4K video, and won’t take up as much bandwidth.

Power Save Mode Games? Who Knew

Why Not?

Power save mode games were actually announced way back in September, and the feature, complete with icon, became available as of a September 17 update. However, you might not have noticed it until just recently; at least some players appear to have been baffled by its presence as recently as last week.

You could hardly be blamed. The icon is tiny, it’s inconspicuously placed, and there aren’t many games that currently support it. If you don’t often use a PS Portal, you likely have no reason to engage with the feature. But if you do, here’s how you can turn it on:

Open the settings menu and select the System option.
Scroll down to Power Saving and select Power Saver for Games.
Toggle Power Saver on, and select the games you wish to use it for.

While it has limited usefulness for most players, if you do stream games often, Power Saver is a pretty handy little feature. If more games come to support it in the future, it could become more popular among PlayStation 5 users.