Xbox owners warned they have until 9 January to change one setting

Oh I do love the beginning of a new year. That renewed sense of motivation and purpose. If you’re anything like me, you may be in the midst of getting yourself organised and set up for the 12 months that lie ahead.

The Christmas tree has come down. I’ve been decluttering, filling in calendars and diaries … all of the good new year stuff. While I’m sure you’re already very busy trying to juggle new resolutions whilst returning to work, university or school, I do have a bit of important admin that you should add to your to-do list. Xbox owners have been issued a warning as major changes are coming to the way Xbox Network captures are stored from 9 January.

Upcoming Xbox-exclusive Avowed is finally due to release this year. Take a look at the game’s trailer below.

From 9 January, screenshots and gameplay clips uploaded to the Xbox Network will be deleted after 90 days. As pointed out by Reddit user Comrade_Jacob, to avoid losing your files, make sure that you backup your existing captures to either an external storage device or a service like OneDrive by 9 January. To proactively save future capture, you can then alter your settings so that everything automatically uploads to either of the two aforementioned storage systems.

To save your existing captures, visit the ‘My Captures’ page on your console, then select ‘Manage’. From here, you can tick the clips or screenshots you want to save. You should then be able to click to upload the ticked files to a service like OneDrive.

Please note that this upcoming change only applies to capture stored on the Xbox Network. If your gameplay clips and screenshots are stored on internal or external drives, they should be safe. That being said, some users have reported missing capture stored on internal drives. There’s no obvious reason as to why this should happen but it proves the point that it’s always worth backing up your files regardless of where they’re stored.