With the addition of multiplayer with the No Man’s Sky NEXT Update, voice chat came along with it. Thus, giving the ability to talk to other plays and friends in-game whether you are on PS4, PC or Xbox One.
At the moment, it seems that voice chat doesn’t work off of proximity, instead it just works for anyone connected to the same instance as you. Basically, anyone who is currently in your system and network party.
Meanwhile, there is also no push to talk button available now for voice chat. Simply meaning you just have an open microphone and other players can hear you. You can counteract this if you are using a headset which possibly has a hardware mute button.

If you wish, you can choose to play solo, or simply turn off voice chat all together. Meaning that you’re muted and other players can’t hear you.
We have both guides covered below. We have some quick instructions which you can follow, with more details instructions with images further down.
Meanwhile, we have some more guides for No Man’s Sky available here.
How to use Voice Chat in No Man’s Sky
These instructions work on all consoles and PC. If you have any problems following these instructions, scroll down a little further.
- When inside No Man’s Sky, press start of Escape to open the main menu.
- From the menu, choose the ‘Network & Play’ option.
- Here, you can see multiplayer options for your game. Including who is in your party, whether multiplayer’s enabled as well as voice chat.
- Turn voice chat on or off using the button at the top, whilst you can also choose whether you wish to kick anyone now in your system.
Detailed Instructions & Guide for Voice Chat
So for now, you can only turn voice chat on or off. You can’t configure sound devices, push to talk, proximity chat or anything like that.
This is the very first implementation of multiplayer and voice chat, so missing some of these features was to be expected.
Although it is possible that we will see these changes made in future updates. If you want to control your voice settings on the fly, I recommend you use a headset which has a mute microphone button. At least until further implementations are made and the multiplayer system is updated.

To turn voice chat on or off, open the settings menu whilst in-game. Do this by pressing ESCAPE on your keyboard of the Start button on a controller. Head into the ‘Network & Voice’ menu.
In the Network & Voice area, you can hold down on the Voice Chat option to alternate between on or off. When off, you can’t hear other players, nor can they hear you.
Instead, you can choose to communicate using some of the in-game emotes. We have a guide on how to access and use them.

Below these buttons in this menu, you can see 16 slots which will show any other players that are currently in your network, or system. You can choose to kick them, or invite friends of your own to join you.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to play solo and stop other people being able to join your game, you can turn Network Play off. I’m currently uncertain on whether you can still invite friends to your game with network play switched off.