As we dive deeper into the PS5, following the release of a PS5 kernel exploit earlier this month, people find new ways to tinker with the device. PlayStation scene member Jose Gonzalez has shared a way to run “shortcuts” on a hacked PS5, leveraging its notification mechanism.

PS5 Notifications can be used to tinker with the console

Long story short, PS5 notifications, similar to those on the PS4, are advanced shortcuts for the device, that lets one call other apps on the system when being clicked on. In our case, what we can do here is ask the PS5 to load a specific url , which in practice will 1) launch the hidden browser and 2) access whatever url we like. This can be useful to simply launch the browser and go directly to google, or act as a shortcut to directly launch the Kernel exploit, instead of having to use a DNS trick through the “User’s Guide” link.

This technique also lets people have a quick link e.g. to the debug settings (although you do need to have the exploit up and running for this shortcut to work), and more.

The PS5 Notifications list is an SQL Lite database which is easy to tweak, using the appropriate editor (such as DB Browser for SQL Lite).

The file we’re looking for is system_data/priv/mms/notification2.db, which we can access with the newly released FTP server for PS5. Jose Gonzalez has a sample modification of that database, which you can use as a starting point.

You’ll first want to download and open (with DB Browser) your own notification2.db file, to grab the user_id information from there. You can then open Jose gonzalez’s version with DB Browser, replace his user_id with yours, then copy that modified file back to your PS5.

On the PS5, opening your notifications should then show you these various shortcuts.

The “Web Browser” example takes you to Al-Azif’s PS4 host…this is of course just an example (that particular one isn’t especially useful for PS5s at the moment) that you can tweak to your liking in the DB Browser software.

Modded Warfare has a terrific video explaining all the process in detail, which you can watch below: