Hello Games is taking its space sandbox to a new platform. No Man’s Sky officially lands on iPhone and iPad on October 28, and it is not a cut-down companion app – it is the full game, packed with more than forty of the major updates the title has collected over the years, including the recent Cosmos update.
What you get on iOS
The headline number is storage: the whole thing fits into roughly 4GB, which is remarkable given how much content has piled up since launch. Hello Games also put serious effort into device compatibility, so the game runs on iPhone 11 and newer, plus third-generation iPad Air and above. The App Store listing confirms you need iOS 26 or later and a device with at least an A12 Bionic chip.
Pricing works like a demo-plus-unlock model. You can play the opening stretch of the game for free, and the full version costs $19.99.
Controls, streaming and battery life
This version was clearly built with portable play in mind rather than just ported over:
- touch-screen controls designed for phones and tablets
- controller support on every supported device
- mouse and keyboard support on iPad
- the option to cast the game to your TV
Hello Games says a “ton of work” went into battery life and heat output, so longer sessions should stay comfortable instead of turning your phone into a hand warmer after twenty minutes.
What’s missing at launch
There are two caveats worth knowing before you buy. Planetary Settlements are limited to iPhone 15 Pro and better, and multiplayer is completely absent at launch. The studio hasn’t promised a date for co-op, but it pointed to the Switch version as precedent – that release also started smaller and later grew, with the Switch 2 edition adding more on top. If the iOS version does well, Hello Games says it will “support it appropriately,” which leaves the door open for features arriving later.
Why it matters
No Man’s Sky launched a decade ago as one of gaming’s most famous disappointments and turned itself around through years of free updates, to the point where tens of thousands of players still log in daily on Steam alone. A full mobile release is another milestone in that comeback story, and it will almost certainly pull in a wave of newcomers right after the Cosmos update. If you want to keep track of everything the game adds next, we collect it all in our No Man’s Sky coverage, and the studio’s own official site is where update notes land first.
Meanwhile, Hello Games is already looking ahead. Its next project, Light No Fire, is a multiplayer fantasy survival sandbox set on a single planet, built on a lot of the same DNA the studio refined in No Man’s Sky. There is no release window yet, but you can wishlist it now.
FAQ
October 28, on both iPhone and iPad.
The beginning of the game is free to try, and the full version costs $19.99.
iPhone 11 and newer, plus third-generation iPad Air and above. You also need iOS 26 or later and an A12 Bionic chip or better.
No. The iOS version ships without multiplayer at launch, and Hello Games hasn’t committed to a date for adding it.
Yes. It includes more than forty of the major updates released so far, including Cosmos, though Planetary Settlements require an iPhone 15 Pro or better.