A new PlayStation 4 Firmware Update has been released today in all regions, introducing improvements to the system

　　The new update, update 6.02, adds, according to the patch notes, system performance improvements. It's also likely that the update introduces a fix for consoles getting bricked by malicious messages.

　　Last month, Sony released the PlayStation 4 Firmware Update 6.00, which didn't introduce any major new feature. The latest update that did so was update 5.00, which introduced custom wallpapers, play time management and much more.

　　Custom wallpapers from USB

　　One major feature that was included with the 5.50 update beta trial was the ability to customise the PS4 home screen with your own images from a USB stick.

　　To get started, save your pictures into a folder named “IMAGES” on your USB stick. Ensure this folder is at the top of the USB directory, i.e. not saved within another folder. Note the max image resolution is 1920×1080 for PS4 and 3840×2160 for PS4 Pro.

　　Then with the USB stick connected to your PS4, select Settings > Themes > Select Theme > Custom > Select Image > USB Storage Device. Once your image is selected you can zoom and crop it, all while seeing in real time how it looks on the home screen.

　　You can also customise the thumbnail of group message threads with images taken from USB. Select Messages > Select Message > Group Settings >Image> Change Image> USB Storage Device

　　Play Time Management

　　Another major update is Play Time Management. This feature gives Family Managers (and adult family members set as Guardians), the ability to control when and for how long each individual child can play for. Playtime can even be set to vary depending on the day of the week, for example you could allow your child to play for two hours between 4-7pm during the week and then for 4 hours between 8am-8pm on the weekend.

　　This joins a long list of parental management features already available, including the ability to individually set what each child in your family on PlayStation Network (PSN) plays, watches and accesses online. All these features can be accessed on your PS4 via Settings > Family Management.