PS5: How to turn console off, which ways do discs go in and how do you transfer PS4 data?

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The new PlayStation 5 has finally arrived around the world, with Sony and fans celebrating the global launch of the new console.

The release date of the PS5 in the UK has been largely marked by fans frustrated that they cannot get hold of the console, as stock shortages and website outages left it very difficult to buy.

But those who did get a new PlayStation 5 on release date are running into some teething problems with the console, including how to turn it off and actually play games.

They might seem like trivial questions to anyone who has not used the new console, and especially those who have struggled to buy one. But the PlayStation 5 does have some odd features that mean the very act of inserting games or shutting it off can be more complicated than it seems.

How to turn off the PS5

On the PS4, this was fairly simple, and could be done in a couple of button presses. Hold down the PlayStation logo, wait for the menu to appear, navigate to “power” and then choose either to turn off or go to rest mode.

On the PlayStation 5, it is somehow more confusing. Holding down the PS button doesn’t do anything at all, and you have to navigate through more menu buttons to switch the console off.

To do it, you still need to press the PS button, though don’t need to hold it – as soon as it’s pushed, a menu should appear. Then you need to navigate to the right end of the menu that appears at the bottom, which you can do most quickly by pushing to the left and going all the way around. There, you’ll find the power options, and you can click and choose rest mode or shutdown.

Even when you know how to do this, it’s more of a complicated process than it seems. The PS5’s menu redesign is focused on getting you around more quickly and easily, and so it seems particularly strange that such a simple operation has become more difficult.

In some ways, the quickest way is just to press the power button on the front of the console. But that requires standing up, and even has its own complications, in that it is somewhat difficult to tell the difference between the “eject” and “power off” buttons.

How to insert discs

Again, this probably seems obvious: you pick them up and slide them into the drive. But it is another one that is causing problems, with players reporting issues after putting them in the wrong way.

Users are reporting on forums that their discs don’t appear to show up, and they can’t play games, before finding that was because they were upside down inside the PlayStation. (This could theoretically even cause damage to the drive, though that doesn’t appear to be the case yet.)

The issues are presumably occurring because – unlike other PlayStations – the console is designed to be stood up, making it harder to tell which way is “up” for discs. As such, they can easily go in either way.

The best way to understand it is to imagine, however, that your console has been laid down in its more traditional horizontal arrangement, which puts the disc drive on the left hand side of the console. Then you can put the disc in as normal, with the shiny side on the bottom, and it should work fine.

How to transfer PS4 data to PS5

This is without a doubt the most complicated, and least obvious, of the problems that people are running into with their new consoles. Thankfully it’s also fixed fairly simply, even if it requires a fair bit of work.

One thing to note is that if you want to start afresh, you might not need to actually transfer data over. Any digital games can just be re-downloaded from the store, discs can be played as normal, and data such as your friends will still be available in just the same way.

But if you don’t, you’ll have to transfer your data over your home network. That can be done either by connecting both consoles to the network, either over WiFi or wired connections, or connecting them together with an ethernet cable.

You can then turn both consoles on and, on your PS5, go to settings, then system, then system software, then data transfer, and follow the instructions, which will require you to press some buttons on your PS4 too. Everything should then follow fairly simply, and your data should be synced.

This is all a little more complicated than it is on the Xbox Series X and S, which sync data to the cloud automatically. All you have to do on there is download or insert your games and start playing, and your progress will have been synced.