Controls & Shortcuts
Press ? outside a text field, or click the Shortcuts button under the zoom buttons on the map, for this same list in-game, titled Keyboard and mouse. There is no button on a touchscreen. The tips card links to it too.
Mouse and keyboard
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Drag planet | Release on a target to open the send dial on it |
| Send dial | Dragging on the ring only aims it; locks on at 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, and from one planet at the send that takes the target, or on a planet of your own, the send for its next level. Releasing off the ring puts the aim back where it was |
| Drag planet → sun | Attack sun (100 probes = 1 super-probe) |
| Drag planet → empty cell | Raise a base |
| Hold 1-9 + drag | Quick-send 10%-90% |
| Hold 0 + drag | Quick-send 100% |
| Hold C + drag | Send exactly enough to take the target, or on a planet of your own, exactly enough for its next level, without opening the dial |
| Hold SPACE + drag | Set attack automation |
| Send dial: 1-9, 0 | Send 10%-90%, or all of it |
| Send dial: C | Send exactly enough to take the target, or on a planet of your own, exactly enough for its next level |
| Send dial: Enter | Send the amount the dial is set to |
| Send dial: Send button | Launch the aimed amount, in the gap under the ring |
| Send dial: Auto button | Switch the dial to setting attack automation; its send button becomes Set |
| Send dial: Set button | Apply the aimed threshold as the automation, including the threshold the dial opened on |
| Send dial: Arrow keys | Move the aim by 1% (a larger step while setting an automation threshold) |
| Send dial: Page Up / Page Down | Move the aim by 10% |
| Send dial: Home / End | Move the aim to 0% or 100% |
| Click own planet | Planet menu (upgrade / auto / emote / rename / select), or the group send target with a selection live |
| Click own base | Base menu (upgrade / emote / rename / select / abandon) |
| Select in menu | Add planet, sun or black hole to selection |
| Box button, or B | Box-select mode: drag empty space to select. B toggles it on and off; the button cycles off, replace, add |
| Shift + box drag | Add the box to the selection instead of replacing it |
| Ctrl / Cmd + drag | Box-select without switching the mode on |
| Drag sun | Launch sun swarm |
| Drag sun → black hole | Attack black hole (100 super-probes = 1 megaprobe) |
| Click own sun | Sun menu (emote / rename / select), or the group send target with a selection live |
| Click own black hole | Black hole menu (select, emote, rename, or collapse at 1,000 megaprobes with every sun in the galaxy held by you or an ally) |
| Click own meteorite | Emote ring |
| Escape | Close whatever is open (dialog, panel, menu); then clear the selection; then turn off box-select; then turn off map cursor mode |
| WASD, or the arrow keys outside map cursor mode | Pan camera |
| Scroll / + / - / zoom buttons | Zoom in / out |
| Drag empty space | Pan camera |
| Edge of screen | Pan while dragging a swarm |
| Focus button | Open the Focus panel: quick-jump to your largest holding, or browse and jump to any of your planets, suns, black holes, bases, meteorites, and probe movements in flight |
| F (outside a text field) | Open or close the Focus panel |
Touch
Every action is reachable with a finger. The modifier keys are not, so the send dial carries what they do: drag from your planet to the target and release, and the dial opens on the target, with the percentage arc, a takes it mark and an Auto button. Dragging on the ring only aims it; press Send, in the gap under the ring, to launch it.
| Gesture | Action |
|---|---|
| Tap a body | Your own: its menu. Anyone else's: the owner's player card |
| Tap one of your own bodies, with a selection of the same kind live | Adds it to the selection, or removes it if it is already in (what Ctrl-click does on a mouse) |
| Tap anything else, with a selection live | Sends the selection there |
| Tap your own planet or sun, zoomed too far out to launch from it | Zooms in on it so you can launch (a mouse click does the same) |
| Hold a finger on a body, about half a second | Opens its menu if it is yours, or the owner's player card otherwise, even with a selection live. Your own planet's or sun's menu then has a Reinforce button that sends the selection to it |
| Drag from your own planet or sun | Launch a swarm; release on the target to open the send dial, or release a planet drag on an empty cell to raise a base. Needs to be zoomed in far enough; zoomed out, the same drag pans the map instead, with a notice to zoom in |
| Cancel a drag | Release it back on the body it started from; on the dial, drag off the ring, or press Cancel |
| Drag empty space | Pan camera |
| Pinch | Zoom, anchored between your fingers. The finger left on the screen afterwards keeps panning |
| Zoom buttons | Zoom in or out; hold to keep zooming. Bodies are easier to hit the further out you are |
| Dial takes it / levels up mark | Aims the send at exactly enough to take the target, or on a planet of your own, exactly enough for its next level (what holding C does); press Send to launch it |
| Dial Auto button | Switches the dial to setting attack automation; its send button becomes Set (what holding SPACE does). A greyed-out Auto, on the dial or in the selection toolbar's NoAuto, explains why when tapped |
| Box button | Tap to cycle off, replace, add. Add is Shift's job on a keyboard |
| Top bar | Starts with Focus, Chat, Logs and Ranks; Help, Install and Account sit at its far end, reached by scrolling it. Clan, Tech, Command Center and Customize appear after the five quests |
While dragging a launch, the readout is drawn above your finger rather than under it, and the map scrolls if the drag nears the edge of the screen, except over the map buttons or the quest card. On Android, a short vibration marks the start of a drag, a valid drop target arriving under your finger, the dial locking onto a mark, and a send.
Panels
Side panels open below the top bar, so its buttons stay reachable while a panel is open, and opening another panel switches straight to it. Escape closes whatever is on top: a dialog first, then a side panel, then an open radial menu; with nothing open it clears the selection, and pressing it again after that turns off box-select.
Chat and refusals
Click a sender's name in chat to open their player card. One opened from the leaderboard, the clan panel or chat returns to that panel when you close it. Swear words and slurs in global and clan chat are replaced with asterisks. You can send up to 5 messages in a row, then one every 3 seconds; global and clan chat share the same limit. Repeating your previous message within 30 seconds is refused.
When the server refuses something you tried, such as a clan invite to someone already invited, a purchase, or a message, a notice appears at the bottom of the screen. A refused chat message is put back in the input.
Installing as an app
The download icon in the top bar installs SWARM on a device that supports it, opening full screen with no browser address bar. On a phone, a popup offers the same on every load; Close dismisses it for that load and Don't show again turns it off for good. On iOS, where there is no one-tap install, both the icon and the popup instead explain adding it to your home screen from the Share menu.
Colour vision
The Account panel has a Colour vision setting, with a red-green or blue-yellow colour-blind palette and a high-contrast mode. It covers the strategic map, player colours, the warning colour shared by meteorites, abandoned bases and comet timers, the grey used for neutral bodies, and the good and bad colours in panels and logs; in the colour-blind modes, logs are coloured only by bad, good or incoming, not by body type.
Accessibility
The game is playable by keyboard alone and works with a screen reader; Accessibility walks through a first turn. The Focus panel is one way in. Press F outside a text field to open or close it. Tab first reaches a Skip to the Focus panel link, so you do not have to tab across the whole map to get there.
Each of your bodies in the panel's list has three buttons: Actions opens its menu, the same ring a tap opens on the map (upgrade, auto-upgrade, give, rename, select and so on); Targets lists the bodies it can send at, nearest first, each with its owner, level, garrison and distance, and how many probes take it or level it up; and Select adds it to the selection. Each target has its own Send… button, which opens the send dial on it; with a selection active, Send… sends the whole selection there instead. The target list only covers what has loaded on the map near the source, so opening it moves the camera there and the list fills in as the area loads.
The send dial and the radial menus both work from the keyboard. On the dial, arrow keys move the aim by 1% (a larger step while setting an automation threshold), Page Up and Page Down move it by 10%, Home and End jump to the ends, Tab reaches Cancel, Auto and Send, and Enter sends what it is set to; digits and C still send at once. A screen reader reads it as a slider, with the percentage, how many probes it sends and how many arrive, and the travel time. On a radial menu, arrow keys move between its buttons, Enter presses the one with focus, and Escape closes it; a button's cost or requirement is read out along with it.
Dialogs and panels are announced when they open, and keyboard focus returns to where it was once they close. Refusals, a lost connection and the action rate limit are read out, along with new chat messages and new entries in the Logs panel: attacks, captures, losses, incoming swarms and clan events. The Account panel has a switch, Read out game events for screen readers, on by default.
Keyboard and screen reader
Map cursor mode steers the map itself from the keyboard, with each body read aloud as the cursor reaches it. Turn it on or off with M outside a text field, with the Cursor button in the map controls at the bottom right, or by pressing Tab to the map; the browser remembers whether it is on. In the mode, arrow keys step from body to body instead of moving the camera; WASD still pans it. Each step is read aloud, with direction, distance and the body, and also shown in a caption at the bottom of the map. The cursor itself is a white pulsing ring round the body. Clicking a body while the mode is on puts the cursor there.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| M (outside a text field), the Cursor button, or Tab to the map | Turn map cursor mode on or off |
| Arrow keys | Step to the nearest body in that direction and read it out, with direction and distance; with a selection live, also how long a send from it would take, or that the target is out of reach. With nothing loaded that way, says so and moves the view there so the next press can find what loads in |
| Shift + arrow keys | Step only to bodies with the same owner relation as the current one: yours, allied, enemy, or neutral |
| Page Up / Page Down | Step through your own bodies |
| Home | Jump to your strongest body |
| R | Read what lies within 60 grid units, by compass direction and by owner, with the nearest in each direction |
| L | Read where the cursor is: its galaxy and position in it, or in deep space the nearest galaxy edge, and your nearest own body |
| I | Read incoming hostile swarms, at the cursor's body if it is yours or otherwise at any of your bodies, soonest first |
| Space | Add the body under the cursor to the selection, or remove it |
| Enter | With a selection live, sends it to the body here, opening the send dial; without one, opens the body's own menu (yours) or the owner's player card |