Hello Games is bringing No Man’s Sky to iPhone and iPad, squeezing a decade of space exploration into a download smaller than 4GB. The studio’s announcement promises more than 40 major updates, including Cosmos and Voyagers, on devices as old as the iPhone 11 and third-generation iPad Air.
The small download has an explanation: the phone generates the universe as you explore it. It also took years of engineering work, some of it shared with Hello Games’ next game, Light No Fire.
Light No Fire helped make the leap
At a roundtable attended by Polygon, studio founder Sean Murray said the mobile project began roughly three years ago. Keeping No Man’s Sky running on older platforms had already forced the team to improve performance, but the phone version demanded more work on speed and memory use. Some of those improvements came from Light No Fire, which shares the same engine.
Murray said that work had also improved No Man’s Sky on other platforms. The exchange extends beyond performance: technology developed for Light No Fire helped enable Voyagers’ large, player-built starships, while using it in No Man’s Sky gave the team a chance to test and refine it.
A smaller download, with some limits
The U.S. App Store listing puts the download at 3.8GB. That supports Hello Games’ current under-4GB figure, rather than the roughly 5GB cited in early coverage.
There is also a significant qualification to those early reports that settlements would be missing entirely. Hello Games now specifies that planetary settlements are supported on iPhone 15 Pro and newer. Multiplayer is not supported. Murray says future iOS support will depend on player feedback and how many people play; he has not promised a multiplayer release date.
Touch controls have been rebuilt for everything from inventory management to flying ships. Controllers and TV casting are supported, with mouse and keyboard support on iPad. Hello Games also says it has worked on battery life and heat, though its promise of long, comfortable sessions is a developer claim rather than a performance result.
Free to try, $19.99 to keep playing
The opening is free, with a one-time purchase unlocking the full game and its included updates. The U.S. listing prices that unlock at $19.99 and requires iOS 26 or iPadOS 26 or later.
