Wandering the infinite procedurally generated galaxy of No Man’s Sky alone can feel deeply magical, but exploring uncharted planets, building sprawling shared bases, and taking down hostile pirate fleets with people you know makes the experience 10 times more fun. If you’ve been stuck figuring out how to add friends on No Man’s Sky across different platforms or fix wonky connection issues, this guide walks you through every step so you can jump into co-op play fast. I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing the game with both PC and console friends, so I’ve worked through every common hiccup you might run into when trying to connect with your group.
How to Add Friends on No Man’s Sky for All Platforms
The good news is that No Man’s Sky fully supports cross-platform play, so you don’t have to be on the same system as your friends to team up. The only requirement is that everyone has a free Hello Games account linked to their game profile, which you can set up in 2 minutes from the in-game settings menu if you haven’t already done so. The process for adding friends is almost identical no matter if you’re playing on Steam, PS5, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch.
First, navigate to the multiplayer menu, which you can access either from the main title screen or the in-game pause menu. You’ll see a tab labeled “Friends” in the top right corner of the multiplayer screen. Click or select that tab, then choose the “Add Friend” option. You’ll be prompted to enter your friend’s Hello Games ID, which is the unique username they chose when setting up their Hello Games account, not their platform-specific gamertag.
Once you send the request, your friend will get a notification in their own multiplayer menu the next time they check their friend requests. As soon as they accept the request, they’ll show up on your permanent friend list, and you’ll be able to see when they’re online, join their active sessions, or send them invites to your game at any time. You can add up to 100 friends to your No Man’s Sky friend list, which is more than enough for most player groups.
Key Tips to Avoid Common Friend Request Errors
Even if you follow all the steps correctly, you might run into issues where friend requests don’t show up, or you can’t connect to a friend’s session after they accept your request. Most of these issues have super simple fixes, so you don’t have to waste hours troubleshooting to play with your group. You and your friend both need to have cross-play enabled in your in-game settings first — a lot of people turn this off by accident when adjusting their privacy settings, which blocks all cross-platform friend requests and invites.
Make sure both of you are running the same game version too. If one person hasn’t installed the latest No Man’s Sky patch, you won’t be able to connect to each other’s sessions, and friend requests might not go through at all. If you play a lot of online games across different genres, you’re probably used to juggling separate friend lists and social hubs for each title. Many players like to fill small gaps while waiting for game updates or friend logins with low-effort casual games, and a lot of people in the No Man’s Sky community use INDRummy for quick, fun rounds when they’re waiting for their group to get online.
If you still can’t see a friend request after double checking your cross-play settings and game version, try restarting your game first, that fixes 90% of minor connection glitches. If that doesn’t work, double check that you entered your friend’s Hello Games ID correctly, since typos are super common when typing long usernames with special characters. You can also try sending the request from your Hello Games account dashboard on a web browser if the in-game add friend feature is acting up.
Fun Things to Do With Friends After Adding Them
Once you’ve successfully added your friends to your list, you unlock a ton of co-op exclusive content you can’t access when playing solo. You can join their existing session directly from the multiplayer menu, or send them an invite to your current game with one click. If you want to build a shared base together, make sure you set your base permissions to "friends only" or "public" so they can edit and add to your builds without you having to approve every single change they make.
There’s no shortage of activities to do with your group, but these are some of the most popular co-op experiences in the game:
If you're playing on a console, make sure your platform-level privacy settings allow cross-play communication too — sometimes console parental controls or default privacy settings block cross-platform invites and voice chat even if your in-game settings are set to allow cross-play. You can adjust these settings directly from your console’s system settings menu in 2 minutes if you run into this issue.
How to Manage Your Friend List and Privacy Settings
You can edit your friend list, remove old friends, block toxic players, or adjust who can send you friend requests directly from the same Friends tab in the multiplayer menu. If you get a lot of random friend requests from strangers when you play in public sessions, you can set your friend request settings to "off" or "friends of friends" to cut down on spam. You can also unblock players later if you change your mind about them, no permanent bans are put in place unless you report them for violating Hello Games’ community guidelines.
You can also set your session to "invite only" if you only want to play with people you explicitly add to your friend list, which is perfect if you're working on a big, detailed base build and don't want random players popping in unannounced and messing with your hard work. If you’re playing with a group of more than 4 people, it’s a good idea to use a third-party voice chat app to stay coordinated, since the in-game voice chat can get choppy or laggy with large groups of players spread across different planets or systems.
If you want to share your base with friends who aren’t online at the same time as you, you can upload it to the community base portal, and set the permissions so only people on your friend list can visit it when you’re offline. This is a great way to show off big builds or leave resources for your friends to pick up when they’re playing without you.
Once you get the hang of how to add friends on No Man’s Sky, the whole galaxy feels a lot less lonely, and you’ll unlock tons of fun co-op content you can’t access when playing solo. Don’t get frustrated if you run into connection issues at first — most of them are easy to fix with a quick setting adjustment or game restart. Grab your friends, stock up on oxygen and launch fuel, and get ready to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy together.
