Your Xbox's USB Port Is for More Than Just Charging—Here's Everything You Can Do With It

Is there a USB cable permanently hanging out of your Xbox console? While you probably use this to charge your controllers, there are plenty of other uses for the many ports found on the front and back of your console. Some of them might even surprise you.

Expand Your Storage

Your Xbox console has a limited amount of fast internal storage in the form of an NVMe drive. All games released during the Xbox Series X|S generation require use of this faster storage, since newer games demand increased speed for improved load times, streaming high-resolution textures, and writing data to the disk. If you want to expand this type of storage, you'll need to buy a pricey expansion card which fits in a dedicated slot.

But you can also expand your pool of available storage by connecting a USB drive. By doing so, you'll be able to store and play Xbox One or Xbox 360 games directly from the drive, without occupying precious space on your internal storage. You can choose between traditional slower hard drives or faster solid state drives , with the latter offering faster load times and transfer rates.

On top of this, you can also use these drives as "cold storage" for your Xbox Series X|S games . Though you can't play these games directly from a slower drive, you can transfer game data to a USB volume to store it temporarily. In many cases, transferring the data back to your internal drive could be faster than downloading games all over again (though this depends on your internet speed and whether you're using a wireless or wired connection).

To get started, make sure the drive you want to use doesn't have any important data on it and plug it into your Xbox Series X|S console while it's on. You'll see a pop-up, simply follow the on-screen instructions.

Copy Screenshots and Videos

Whether you're clearing space or simply want to make sure your screenshots and videos are safe, you can use the USB port on your Xbox to grab your captured media to an external drive for safekeeping. This is especially important given that Microsoft deletes your captures from the Xbox network after 90 days.

To do this, you'll need a USB drive (ideally flash storage) that's formatted to NTFS. You can't use the same drive that you're storing games on, since that is formatted differently. Connect your NTFS drive, launch the "Captures" app, hit "Manage" to select your captures, and then use the "Copy to external storage" button to start the transfer.

You can't do this for save data on an Xbox. Instead, you'll need to copy save data from one console to another directly using the migration feature, or just use Xbox Live to store and transfer save data between your devices.

Use Controllers in Wired Mode

By connecting your controller directly to your console, it will automatically switch over to wired mode. Rather than using Bluetooth, inputs will be transmitted to your console over a faster wired connection. While it's debatable whether you'll be able to tell the difference, for certain types of games like twitchy first-person shooters and beat 'em ups, opting for the lower latency option could help.

On top of this, many peripherals require a wired connection. This includes simulation controllers like steering wheels (and pedals), flight yokes, and fight sticks. If you're going this route, it's probably worth investing in a long and sturdy cable that's fit for the job. You'll also probably want to use one of the USB ports on the back of your console, so that the front port is free for other uses.

Connect a Keyboard and Mouse

An increasing number of console games now support mouse and keyboard input , a fact that's especially true on Microsoft's console, where PC ports aren't uncommon. The obvious benefit here is for first-person shooters like Halo Infinite and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 , both of which support mouse and keyboard input natively.

Other games you might want to play with a keyboard and mouse include real-time strategy games like Microsoft's Age of Empires ports, city builders and management games like Cities: Skylines , survival crafters with PC-first interfaces like 7 Days to Die , and older games like Terraria or the Commandos remasters.

If your mouse and keyboard of choice work in Windows, they should "just work" on an Xbox . You can achieve this either using a direct wired connection or by attaching a 2.4GHz wireless dongle to a spare USB port.

Quickly Pair Your Controller

Your Xbox controller has a button along its top edge for pairing with your console and other Bluetooth devices. While this is handy (especially if you want to use your controller with a smartphone, tablet, or something like the Steam Deck), there's a far easier way to pair any controller with your Xbox quickly: by plugging it in.

I use this all the time, since there are two Xbox Series X consoles set up alongside each other in the living room. Sometimes, it's better to play a game in split screen or using same-screen multiplayer. Connect the controller to the console you want to pair it with first, then press and hold the Xbox button in the middle to turn it on. It will pair with the Xbox, after which you can disconnect it.

The best thing is that when you pair it back to its "home" console, it will remember your previous preferences (and so it will still be linked to a specific profile and automatically sign that person in).

Hook Up a USB Camera

Did you know you can stream directly from your Xbox Series X|S via a live streaming platform like Twitch ? In addition to capturing gameplay right on your console (no capture card necessary), you can also pass a feed from an external webcam to your stream if you have one connected.

Microsoft says that any 1080p webcam that uses the YUY2 or NV12 format, such as the Microsoft LifeCam Studio or Logitech C922x should work. If you already have a webcam knocking around the house and you're curious about whether it's supported, you might as well hook it up and see what happens.

Once you've set up streaming on your console using the relevant app, you can hit the Xbox button to bring up the guide and then move over to your profile tab and select "Live streaming." From here, you'll see a "Camera options" menu under which you'll be able to toggle on the "Camera" setting. In this menu, you can also decide where the webcam's feed appears on the screen.

Sadly, this won't work with Discord (which is also natively supported on the Xbox ).

Connect a USB Hub for More Ports

Ironically, the other thing you can use your Xbox's USB ports for is to expand the number of USB ports you have available to you. Consider that if you have a wired keyboard and mouse, plus you use a single USB port just for charging, you won't be able to connect a "cold storage" external drive, an NTFS flash drive for backing up captures, or any extra controllers that require a wired connection. At this point, you'll want a USB hub like the Anker four-port Ultra Slim USB 3.0 hub .

Just remember that unlike many modern hubs, the Xbox Series X|S consoles required a hub with a USB-A connection (not the newer USB-C standard). You'll also want to prioritize USB 3.0 over the slower USB 2.0 standard if you're hoping to use these ports to transfer data.

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Perhaps the most glaring omission from this list is USB headsets, which are supported on PC and PlayStation but not on Xbox. If you want to use a wired headset on your Xbox, you'll need to plug it into your Xbox controller via the 3.5mm stereo port.

Got a Sony console instead? Your PS5's USB port also has plenty of interesting uses .