No Man's Sky controls that actually matter

No Man’s Sky looks like a flight sim until you realise most of the early game is walking, scanning, and recharging a suit. Bad binds make that loop miserable. Good binds make the first planet feel small. This page is the control layer that sits under Getting Started: keyboard and mouse, Xbox and PlayStation controllers, Nintendo Switch (including Switch 2 gyro and touch), and Steam Deck community layouts. Remap anything that fights your hands. The names below follow the default PC layout with controller equivalents in parentheses.

Cosmos 7.0 did not throw out the Exosuit. It added spacewalking, a star-system map, and a tractor beam on Corvettes. You still jump with the same button. Learn the core set once and the new toys inherit it.

Movement, jetpack, and melee-boost

WASD (left stick) moves. Space (A / Cross) jumps; hold it to fire the jetpack. Left Shift (click left stick) sprints. The jetpack is not a creative-mode fly cam until you stack upgrades — treat it as a hop that you recharge with fuel in the Quick Menu.

Melee-boost is the movement trick worth practising on the crash site. Tap melee (Q on PC, B / Circle on controller) and immediately jetpack. The melee lunge plus jetpack ignition launches you farther than a normal jump. New players who only walk between Sodium plants waste minutes; melee-boost turns a 400-unit wreck into a ten-second hop. Do it across flat ground first, then into downhill slopes. Overcharge the jetpack later and the same input becomes a planetary skip.

Crouch (Left Ctrl / click right stick, depending on your preset) helps you enter small caves and line up the mining beam. Third-person camera (V / a face-button combo you can rebind) is worth toggling on PC so you can see the jetpack trail and the melee lunge. VR players on PSVR 2 or PC VR should confirm turn style in Options before the first storm; snap-turn versus smooth-turn is a comfort setting, not a skill test.

Menu Settings and Hyperdrive | Beginners Guide

Analysis Visor, scan pulse, and the mining beam

The Analysis Visor (hold F on PC, hold L1 / LB on many controller layouts) is how you tag flora, fauna, minerals, buildings, and buried salvage. A tap-scan (C / Y / Triangle) pings the local area and paints HUD icons. Use both: pulse to find Sodium and Oxygen, visor to get paid. This pairing is the entire early units loop.

The mining beam is primary fire (left mouse / RT / R2). It overheats; pulse the trigger rather than pinning it at 100 percent unless you like watching a cooldown. Secondary fire (right mouse / LT / L2) is the weapon or utility you have equipped — grenade, scatter blaster, or, after the Remnant update (February 2026), the Gravitino Coil gravity gun. Cycle Multi-Tool modes with G (D-pad on controller). Reload / recharge the current tool with R (X / Square).

Interact is E (A / Cross in many console overlays, or X / Square if your preset swapped them). Hold interact to enter and exit a ship, to pick up a Base Computer, or to sit in a cockpit chair. If a prompt does not appear, you are probably in the visor or the build camera — cancel back to the Exosuit first.

Quick Menu recharges without opening the grid

The Quick Menu (X on PC, D-pad or a bumper combo on controller) is the difference between a calm storm and a grave marker. Open it, highlight Life Support, Hazard Protection, the jetpack, or the mining beam, and feed the matching resource: Oxygen, Sodium or Sodium Nitrate, jetpack fuel, Carbon. You do not need the full Tab inventory for a recharge. Learn this on the crash site while you still have thirty seconds of hazard bar.

The same wheel summons the Space Anomaly once the story allows it, toggles the torch, drops a Save Beacon, and reaches Photo Mode. Put Summon Anomaly and recharge actions where your thumb already rests. Inventory (Tab / View / Touchpad) is for crafting and installing tech, not for panic Sodium.

Build Menu (Z on default PC, a D-pad slot or held button on controller) opens parts. Enable free placement when a piece will not snap, and switch to the build camera so you can orbit a room instead of standing inside a wall. The build camera is mandatory for Corvette interiors and for Cosmos orbital pieces that do not sit on terrain. Delete mode is a separate toggle — confirm you are not in it before you spend ten minutes placing windows.

Ship takeoff, pulse, and the Hyperdrive menus

Enter the ship, wait for the cockpit, then hold thrust to take off. On PC that is Space in the default ship map; on controller it is usually the same jump button. Do not tap. A held takeoff clears the landing pad and the planet’s gravity well. Pulse Engine (Shift / a trigger on controller) is the in-system cruise; you cannot pulse through a space station or a planet. Galaxy Map (M / a menu face button) is where the Hyperdrive lives. Fuel it with Warp Cells or a Warp Hypercore before you pick a star.

Options still hide quality-of-life that plays like a control change. Inventory transfer range, Hyperdrive colour-gate restrictions, and base power costs are difficulty sliders, not keybinds, but they change how often you open menus. If you are learning, leave Hyperdrive specialised so red, green, and blue stars still ask for the matching drive — it teaches resource gates instead of letting you skip them.

Landing is hold interact on a pad, or a slow vertical descent onto flat ground. Corvettes added in Voyagers use the same takeoff, plus interior walking; the tractor beam from Cosmos is a ship utility you fire while spacewalking or from the cockpit, not a new Exosuit button.

Photo mode, Switch, Deck, and not fighting the hardware

Photo Mode (P on many PC presets, or via Quick Menu) freezes the world, hides the HUD, and lets you dolly the camera. Use it. The game is a screenshot engine wearing a survival hat. On Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, expect tighter HUD scale, optional gyro aiming, and a touch-friendly Quick Menu. Switch 2 adds performance headroom and full online co-op; if a handheld frame-rate dip hits during storms, drop to docked-equivalent settings rather than disabling the visor.

Steam Deck reads as a PC controller with extra shoulder buttons. Apply an official or popular community layout, then map melee to a back button so melee-boost does not steal your jump thumb. Trackpad click as visor works well. Disable Steam’s desktop chord if it steals Select.

VR adds teleport-or-smooth locomotion and a physical visor raise on some headsets. Keep snap-turn until your stomach agrees. Cross-Play still works between VR and flat screens; your friend on a Deck can stand on your Corvette ramp while you are in PSVR 2.

Once the binds feel boring, you are done. The rest of the wiki — base building, ships, expeditions, multiplayer — assumes you can recharge Sodium without opening Tab and can melee-boost to a beacon. If a patch shuffles a default, check patch history and then remap; do not wait for a YouTuber to redraw a keyboard. The Guides Hub will still be there when you want objectives instead of buttons.

Spend five minutes in the control overlay after every major update and then never think about it again. The Travellers who complain that planets feel slow are usually walking between Sodium flowers with a full jetpack and an unbound melee key. Fix the hands first. The galaxy is already large enough.