You’ve probably noticed that your PlayStation 5 has quite a few USB ports on the back and front of the console. You already know that you can charge your controllers using these ports, but they’re useful for much more than that.

While a PS5 can’t do quite as much as a PC with its USB ports, there’s a good chance you didn’t know about at least one of these features.

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Copy Videos and Screenshots

If you want to get photos and videos from your games that you’ve saved on social media or anywhere besides your PS5’s SSD, most people are likely to simply use the PlayStation app on their phones and pull that media from the cloud. However, you might not be aware that you can simply plug a USB flash drive into your PS5 and copy videos and photos directly onto it.

Not only is this faster and doesn’t recompress your videos, it also means that you don’t have to upload your content to the cloud at all if you don’t want to. It’s literally as easy as going to the media gallery, choosing the clips and images you want to copy, and then selecting “Copy to USB Drive”.

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Back Up Console and Save Data

If you have a PlayStation Plus subscription, your save data and other personal stuff on your PS5 gets backed up to the cloud. However, only the data of the person subscribing to PS Plus gets backed up this way. That’s not great, and I really wish Sony would offer a family plan for PS Plus, so we don’t have to take out a subscription for every person who uses the console, but at least you can manually back up your data.

All you have to do is connect an exFAT or FAT32-formatted flash drive to your PS5, and then go to Settings > System > System Software > Back Up and Restore > Back Up Your PS5.

You can choose what to back up and what to leave on the console, but if you do this regularly and something happens to your data, you can restore it on your console or any other PS5 console.

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Connect Peripherals Like PS VR 2 and Racing Wheels

There are numerous interesting peripherals for the PlayStation 5 just like previous consoles in the series. Although sadly there are no light guns, because with the exception of the Sinden that technology doesn’t work with flat panel TVs. However, peripherals like racing wheels and the PlayStation VR and PlayStation VR 2 all work with the PS5.

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Connect a Camera

I think many people forget that the PS5 has a pretty robust streaming function built into it, but to make the most of it you’ll have to connect a camera. Now, unlike the current Xbox consoles, you can’t just use any old USB camera you find online. Instead, you need to use the Official HD Camera for PS5, or the older PlayStation camera used with the original PS VR, but that’s not USB, so you need a special adapter from Sony.

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USB Headsets

The PlayStation 5 has surprisingly robust USB audio support. You can connect most USB headphones, and microphones directly to the console, and they should just work. Most of the PS5 wireless headsets you buy from third-party manufacturers just look like a normal USB headset from the console’s point of view, with a proprietary wireless signal bridging the gap.

Unfortunately, you can’t connect a USB headset to your controller, which only supports audio over a 3.5mm jack, but if you sit close enough to your console for a wired headset to reach, or you have a set of USB speakers, and you’re using a PC monitor for your PS5, just plug them in and see if they work.

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External Storage

The PlayStation 5 has a fast SSD soldered directly to its motherboard that’s not designed to be removed. However, the console does have an expansion bay where you can increase its primary internal storage using a normal M.2 NVMe SSD. As long as the drive conforms to Sony’s minimum requirements.

However, this isn’t the only way you can expand the storage of your PS5. You can plug a USB hard drive or SSD into the rear USB ports, and then use it to store and play PlayStation 4 games. You can also use it for cold storage of PS5 games, but you need to transfer them to the fast internal SSD or expansion SSD (if installed) to actually play them. Still, it’s faster than downloading for most people.

While Xbox consoles let you connect multiple USB drives to use as external storage, the PlayStation 5 only allows for one drive at a time. It also doesn’t support USB hubs at all for external storage. This is a problem, because some large external hard drives have an integrated USB hub, and since the drive is wired internally through that hub, it won’t work with a PS5. That’s a tip that can save you some money!

Connecting an external NVMe SSD for storage doesn’t make much sense, because the speed is wasted via USB, but it is worth connecting a SATA SSD. I use a 512GB SATA SSD with my PS5 to store PS4 games, and it makes a significant difference in loading times compared to a hard drive. It’s also not noticeably slower than running a PS4 game on the internal SSD, so there’s no reason to let PS4 games clog up storage meant for PS5 games.

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Pairing Controllers

Charging controllers with a USB-C cable from a PS5 is obvious, though I personally prefer using the official Sony charging cradle instead. Incidentally, the power supply for the official DualSense charging cradle seems to be the as the power supply for the original PSP. In fact, it charges my PSPs just fine!

That aside, if you never use a cable from the PS5 to charge your controller, you might not know that this is the fastest way to pair a PS5 DualSense with a console. Since I use my DualSense controllers with various devices, and sometimes move them between our two PS5s, I’ve picked up the habit of simply plugging the controller in to a front port and having it work instantly.

It also used to be that controllers could only get firmware updates over USB, but that hasn’t been true for some time now, and they can update wirelessly just fine.

I don’t think there’s anything I’ve missed, but it should be obvious that those USB ports on your PS5 hold much more value that you may have realized. Who knows, maybe Sony will make them even more useful one day with a software update—here’s hoping.