Touch Controls

On a phone or tablet, Play shows a move stick on the left, a look drag on the right and the game's own action buttons — Jump, Throw, Grab, Use… — exactly the actions the game needs. Every control can be moved, resized and faded, and any button can wear your own pressed and released images.

For the phone layout itself — the bottom bar, the context strip and bottom sheets — see The Interface: On a phone.

When they show

Settings ▸ Touch controls ▸ Show touch controls:

• Auto (default) — on a touch screen, or as soon as you touch the screen (a touchscreen laptop, say).
• Always — on, even with a mouse.
• Never — hidden everywhere.

Show in edit also draws the action buttons while you edit (they press their keys there too); the stick and the look drag only exist in Play. Touch controls are screen controls, so they never show in VR.

Playing with them

• Several fingers at once: hold the stick and press Jump — or two buttons — at the same time.
• The stick: touch its drawn circle to steer from the circle's centre, or touch anywhere else on the left half and the stick appears under your thumb.
• A still tap on the view uses what the crosshair is on; a drag looks around. Look speed sets how far a drag turns the view.
• Haptic tick gives a short vibration on each press, on phones that support it.

Which buttons a game gets

Games that declare their actions show exactly those:

Game	Controls
Sky Run	stick + Jump
Target Toss	Throw — hold to charge, let go to throw; drag anywhere to aim
Mini Golf	stick + look; putt by dragging back from the ball
Marble Maze	no stick — drag on the board to tilt it
Towers	Grab — hold it to carry a block
The Alchemist's Escape	Use + Hint
Race	on foot: walk controls; in a car: stick steers, Gas, Brake, Reset — see Race on a phone

Any other scene gets buttons from what it already has: a walking Character Controller gives Jump, a flying one Up / Down (only where the scene allows flying), and every key a Key Press node listens for (other than WASD and the arrows) becomes a labelled button — up to six. The games that come as modules (Dungeon Realms, Football, Untangle, Waves) get these automatic buttons until they declare their own.

Arranging them

Open the layout editor from Settings ▸ Touch controls ▸ Edit layout, or during a game from the pause menu's Touch controls row:

• Drag any control to move it. Select it to change its Size and Opacity or Hide it — resize also with the round corner grip, or by pinching it with a second finger. Default place puts it back.
• This game / All games chooses where Save stores the layout; a game's own layout wins over the all-games one.
• Reset returns to the default arrangement; Cancel (or Esc) discards your changes.

Layouts are saved on this device — they never travel to other players or into the scene.

Button looks

Settings ▸ Touch controls ▸ Button looks lists every button with a preview of both states. For each button: a Released and a Pressed image (Upload a PNG or SVG of up to 160 KB, or pick an image from the Explorer), a Tint for the built-in icon, and the icon Size. Default look goes back to the themed icons. Images are kept in the browser's local storage, which is why they must stay small.

Settings

Setting	Default	What it does
Show touch controls	Auto	Auto / Always / Never
Show in edit	off	action buttons while editing too
Haptic tick	on	a short vibration on each press, where supported
Look speed	1× (0.25–3)	how far a drag turns the view
Edit layout · Reset	—	the layout editor; Reset clears every saved layout
Button looks	themed icons	per button: released / pressed image, tint, icon size

Search Settings for touch, joystick, buttons or haptic to find this section.

Trackpads

In the editor viewport a laptop trackpad's two-finger swipe pans and a pinch zooms — Safari's pinch gesture on a Mac included — while a mouse wheel keeps zooming as before. Settings ▸ Controls has the pan and pinch switches; see The mouse wheel.

For module authors: declaring actions

register(api) {
  // call it when your game becomes active; keep the returned off() and call it when it ends
  const off = api.input?.actions?.(
    [
      'jump',                                    // a built-in: jump, fire, interact, grab,
                                                 // crouch, sprint, reload, up, down
      { id: 'boost', label: 'Boost', keys: ['ShiftLeft'] },             // presses a key while held
      { id: 'fire', label: 'Throw', onPress: charge, onRelease: release } // your own handlers
    ],
    { preset: 'shooter' }  // platformer | shooter | toss | golf | fly | explore | drive | custom
                           // optional: stick: false, look: false
  );
}

• keys send real key events (KeyboardEvent codes), so anything that already reads the keyboard — api.onInput, api.input().codes, Key Press nodes — works with no extra code.
• pointer: 'press' | 'tap' makes a button a primary click at the crosshair (held, or a single tap).
• onPress / onRelease run on this peer only; send your own message if others must know.
• A second call replaces your set; everything is removed when the module unloads.
• preset: 'drive' (since 1.26) is the vehicle layout: the stick steers, there is no look drag, and the pedals sit under the right thumb. A stick the module declared stays live under its own claimInput('keys').
• api.input().touch reads the on-screen move stick as {x, y} from -1 to 1 (up is -y).
• Feature-detect (api.input?.actions?.(…)) to stay compatible with older cores.

See the Module SDK.