How to enable game sharing on PlayStation 5

Game sharing is a useful and underappreciated feature of most modern consoles. While the PlayStation 4 allowed users to set their home console and share games with friends that way, the PlayStation 5 makes the process even easier.

The PS5’s version of this feature is called “Console Sharing and Offline Play,” and it allows you to grant access to your entire game library to anyone else that’s using a particular console — even if that PS5 is offline.

For instance, if you were to turn on Console Sharing on a friend’s PlayStation 5, then you could log out of your PlayStation Network account, and they could play any games you had downloaded on their system. Meanwhile, you’d still be able to log into your PSN account on your home console and play the games you own, but no one else could play those games on that console. Players can have the Console Sharing option active on just one PS5 at a time, but it seems that you can switch this console as often as you want.

If you want to activate Console Sharing, here’s a step-by-step guide on how it works:

How to activate console sharing on PlayStation 5

First, navigate to the PlayStation 5’s dashboard and select Settings (the gear icon in the top right part of the screen; press triangle to get there). Then select the “Users and Accounts” option. Once that menu is open, scroll down to Other.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

The first option on the Other menu is Console Sharing and Offline Play. Select this option, and you’ll be taken to Sony’s Console Sharing and Offline Play information screen. Here you’ll learn whether the option is currently enabled on the PS5 you’re using, along with some additional information about the feature, and you’ll get the option to turn the feature on or off. Enable it, if it’s not already enabled.

Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment via Polygon

Now that the feature is enabled, you can download games from your library and they’ll be available to play for anyone else using this PlayStation 5 console, even when the console is offline. When you’re ready, you can either disable the feature using the same process.