Touch and phone: play with your thumbs.

The layout

When you touch the screen, the controls are these:

• The stick appears under your left thumb wherever it lands. Move the thumb, and you walk. Push past the ring, and you sprint.
• Looking: a finger dragged anywhere else on the screen turns the view.
• The big buttons on the right jump, mine (hold to keep mining or strike), use (place, open, talk, eat, throw), and crouch.
• The small buttons along the top open the menu and the bag, the shape wheel, and the camera.
• Turn and Undo come up while you are building.
• The belt: tap a belt slot to hold it in your hands.

Dropping a stack, moving items in the bag, and using a station all work by tapping a stack and then tapping where it goes, or dragging it. Drag an item off the panel to drop it.

Moving the buttons

On the phone's Controls tab, the Touch screen part lets you change the layout:

Setting	What it does
Hand	Right-handed (stick on the left, buttons on the right), left-handed (the sides swapped), or one-handed (everything by the stick).
Button size	From 70% to 150%.
Button strength	From 30% to 100%, how solid the buttons look.
Look sensitivity	How fast a finger turns the view. Also in the Graphics tab.
Move the buttons	Drag the buttons where you want them. The menu closes while you do this.

Frame rate and heat

A phone holds a steady frame rate, so every frame is the same length. Auto locks at 60 and steps down to a steady 30 only if the phone cannot keep up. Battery saver holds 30. A hot phone slows its own processor, and the game eases its work while the phone is hot. Keeping the screen dimmer and the phone out of a hot case helps most. On Android the Graphics tab can also limit the screen's brightness. See Settings and graphics.

Full screen and orientation

With Full screen when playing on in Controls, the game fills the screen and the phone turns sideways for play. In full screen, Ctrl+W cannot close the game.

Menus on a phone

The pause menu takes the whole screen when you open one of its panels, with a back arrow at the top. Phones have no keyboard keys for the Codex, the Together screen, the Store and Starforge, so the pause menu has a button for each. The game's own help says the way in, such as "tap Menu, then Codex".

For the keys on a keyboard and the controller, see Controls.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.