How to stream Xbox Game Pass games on iPhone and iPad

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate members have the ability to stream games from the service onto supported devices. iPhones from the XS onward and all modern iPads are officially supported, but the Xbox Game Pass app on iOS doesn’t include this part of the service because of restrictions from Apple. Despite that bump in the road, fans can still use their iPhones and iPads to play Game Pass titles on the go.

Sign in to the Game Pass Cloud Streaming site

To get to the Cloud Streaming section of the service, head over to xbox.com/play and hit the green Sign In button up top. After putting in your credentials, you’ll be presented with the full collection of titles available from Game Pass, including titles you’ve recently played on Cloud Streaming or other Xbox platforms. You can even skip having to enter the address into Safari after your first visit by adding the Cloud Streaming front page to your home screen. More than 100 games on the service support touch controls and don’t require any additional hardware to play, but this feature isn’t available on the entire catalog. All games on the service have support for Xbox controllers on iPhone and iPad, and the web app has partial support for PlayStation controllers too.

Players will want to make sure their internet connection is stable and has sufficient upload and download speeds for the best experience while streaming games. Microsoft recommends a 5GHz WiFi connection with at least 20 MB of download speed, and while fans can likely use networks with at least 10 MB of download speed, this may cause input and output lag that gets in the way of the game. Streaming games on a phone can also take up a considerable amount of data, with roughly 3 GB per hour on average, so you’ll want to make sure you’re on the right network before getting started.

The Cloud Streaming page works on other platforms too. PC and Android users can go to the same site for a comparable experience to the existing Game Pass app. The program’s still in beta and may have some quirks, but we were able to play Destiny 2 with little issue using the service on a sixth-generation iPad and a Google Pixel smartphone.