One long court case and a silly amount of money later, there's still no sign of being able to play Fortnite on iOS without simply owning a phone that had Fortnite installed before it was ripped off the app store. But now that the long-awaited Xbox cloud gaming Fortnite service has been released out of the blue, there's a way to play safely, efficiently, and totally for free. Here's how it works.
Down below, we're going to quickly go over how to get the Xbox cloud gaming Fortnite service to work on your iPhone and iPad, and even go over ways to make the experience better. It can have a few hiccups here and there, so we're going to answer some common questions as well - questions we asked when we first tried it out.
And if you're already deep into the current Fortnite battle pass, we have a bunch of guides to help you through it. Right now, the Fortnite Omega Knight skin activates 28 levels worth of quests. Similarly, completing the Fortnite Star Wars Day quests can really boost you through it.
How to Use Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite on iPhone and iPad
- Open the Safari web browser on your iOS device and go to Xbox.com/play
- Login with your Microsoft account (or make one using your current email address)
- Search for Fortnite
- Tap the button to the left of the "+" and select Add to Home Screen (this won't appear if you're on a private tab)
- Return to the home screen and launch the new Cloud Gaming icon
- Tap Fortnite again and tap Sign in if you're not yet, otherwise, press Play to launch the game
It's a long-winded process to first set up the Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite iOS solution, but everything is much faster the second time around.
To do it, you first need to launch the Xbox.com/Play page on the Safari web browser and use the options menu to create a home screen shortcut for the site - which will instead create a simple Cloud Gaming button that takes you straight to a library of Xbox Cloud Gaming titles you can launch at the touch of a button.
With Fortnite specifically, however, you don't even need the usual paid-for Xbox Game Pass account to access it - it's free.
You won't be able to fire up any of the other games without one, but log into your account and press play on the Fortnite screen and you'll be thrust straight into the game with no purchase necessary. If your Fortnite account is already tied to your Microsoft account, you'll pick up where you left off. If not, you'll want to do that first before you start to wonder where your progress has gone.
How to Fix the Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite "Tap Here to Play" Error
If, after following all those steps above, you still can't launch the Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite app without seeing the big green "Tap Here to Play" button, the only way to fix it right now appears to be down to patience.
This is entirely unconfirmed, but it seems like the Cloud Gaming shortcut uses a different set of Xbox consoles that are then assigned out to uses as they tap in to play over the Cloud.
If you fire up the Xbox.com/Play site on another browser like Google Chrome and play through there, you'll get straight in. It flags as an unsupported browser and seemingly can't be played in fullscreen, but it's one way to play while you wait for the Cloud Gaming "app" to work through its issues. In our case, we could get in just fine ten minutes after our initial attempt.
Is Fortnite on Xbox Cloud Gaming Any Good?
It's early days yet, but our first few matches went without a hitch. So long as you're running a half-decent fibre internet connection and have good signal strength, you should be able to have a nice time playing Fortnite through the Xbox Cloud Gaming shortcut on your iOS device.
A 5Ghz connection is always recommended on WiFi, but if you're unable to set that up yourself, maybe look into going wired by using something like a lightning-to-ethernet adapter if you're truly out of options.
What Does Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite Work On?
Realistically, you should be able to run the Xbox Cloud Gaming Fortnite on just about any device with a half-decent Chromium-based web browser. That means you can play it through Microsoft Edge on your Xbox if you want to do things the hard way.
What it means, though, is that you can play it on your phone, tablet, PC, Mac, or basically any other device regardless of spec. They don't need to be powerful like a phone or PC because they're not rendering the game; they're just showing you the image from an Xbox stuffed somewhere potentially thousands of miles away.
And that should hopefully be everything you need to know about to get Fortnite on iPhone via the new Xbox Cloud Gaming trick. Hook up a Bluetooth controller on an iPad or using something like the Backbone controller on iPhone (Razer Kishi for Android) and you'll be playing via the cloud like the game never left the app store.