What’s happened? PlayStation 5 was never meant to be a regular CD player. Sony intentionally disabled CD support on both the PS4 and PS5, so inserting a standard CD into the console simply doesn’t work out of the box.
But a creator behind the YouTube channel Will It Work? decided to test that limit with a clever workaround. Using an unusual optical drive, he managed to trick the PS5 into reading CDs as if they were USB storage devices.
To be clear, this isn’t Sony adding a hidden feature. It is a workaround that bypasses the limitation by changing how the CD is presented to the console.
How to play CDs on PS5? The YouTuber used a Lite-On eBAU108 USB CD/DVD drive that includes a feature called ‘Link to TV’, but the YouTuber prefers calling it the ‘flash drive mode’.
When activated, the drive no longer behaves like a normal disc reader. It makes the ISO and UDF-formatted CDs and DVDs appear as a read-only FAT32 flash drive.
This function was originally designed for smart TVs that could not use USB optical drives, but it also happens to work on the PS5. Once the PS5 detects it as USB storage, the console’s media apps can access the files just like they would from a flash drive.
The limitations: Here’s a quick breakdown of which discs and file types actually work with this PS5 CD hack, and which ones still fail to load or play.
Works: Burned data CDs and DVDs in ISO or UDF with MP3, MP4 (H.264), and JPEG files, including mini and business-card CDs, as long as MP3s are inside a “Music” folder and all media is inside folders, not the root.
Doesn’t work: Standard audio CDs, most retail MP3 or audiobook CDs, and many enhanced CDs that use outdated codecs, unsupported extensions, or MP4 profiles that fall outside the PS5’s strict format limits.
Why should I care? This experiment proves the PS5 is more capable than Sony allows it to be. With the right gear and a little creativity, you can turn an unsupported console feature into a working one. It’s neither perfect nor official, but for anyone who loves to tweak, this is a fun experiment.
