Ingress

Ingress
Information
VR/AR	Augmented reality
Developer	Niantic Labs (Google, 2012-2015), Niantic (2015-2025), Niantic Spatial (2025-present)
Publisher	Niantic Spatial
Platform	Android, iOS
Device	Smartphones
Operating System	Android 10 or newer, iOS 15.0 or newer
Type	Game
Genre	Strategy
Input Device	Touchscreen
Game Mode	Multiplayer
Release Date	15 November 2012 (Android closed beta); 14 December 2013 (Android, out of beta); 14 July 2014 (iOS); 5 November 2018 (Ingress Prime)
Price	Free-to-play with in-app purchases
App Store	Google Play, App Store
Website	https://ingress.com/

Ingress is a free-to-play, location-based augmented reality game for Android and iOS smartphones. Players, called Agents, join one of two factions, the Enlightened or the Resistance, and compete for control of "Portals" tied to real-world places such as public artworks, monuments and landmarks. It was made by Niantic Labs, then an internal studio at Google, and released on 15 November 2012 as an invitation-only beta for Android. The game left beta on 14 December 2013 and reached iOS on 14 July 2014.

Niantic rebuilt the game as Ingress Prime in November 2018. When Niantic sold its games business to Scopely in 2025, Ingress was not part of the sale; it stayed with the new spin-off company Niantic Spatial, which dropped the "Prime" suffix in November 2025 and still operates the game. The Portal locations that Ingress players submitted later supplied many of the PokéStop and gym locations in Pokémon Go.

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked every release date, the 2015 spin-out, Ingress Prime, Recursion, Audio AR, Overclock, OPR, C.O.R.E., Scopely sale, Niantic Spatial status, awards, anime and current store data against the cited sources. About review dates.

Gameplay

The game's premise is the discovery of Exotic Matter (XM), an energy source of unknown origin. The Enlightened want to use XM to advance human evolution; the Resistance see it as a mind-control threat and try to defend free will. At launch, parts of the story were also released outside the app through the Niantic Project website, in the manner of an alternate reality game.

The app, called the Scanner, uses the phone's GPS to show a map of nearby Portals. Agents capture a Portal for their faction by placing in-game items called Resonators on it. Linking a faction's Portals creates Control Fields, which capture "Mind Units" (MU) and add to the faction's score. Hacking a Portal yields items. Niantic separates building gear, such as Resonators and Power Cubes, from attack gear, such as XMP Bursters and Ultra Strikes. The game also has Glyph hacks, a drone, and Kinetic Capsules, which progress with the distance the player travels. On Android, step and distance data from Google Fit drive Kinetic Capsule and Bounty progress; on iOS, the optional Adventure Sync feature uses HealthKit to credit distance traveled.

Agents advance through levels up to level 16, earning medals along the way. Ingress Prime added a prestige-style system, Recursion, that lets high-level players reset their level in exchange for benefits that carry over. A level 16 Agent who chooses to Recurse returns to level 1 with 0 AP but keeps their medals, mission badges, inventory and keys, along with access to level-based tools such as Portal submissions and mission authoring. Niantic also runs live events, including XM Anomaly battles in host cities, monthly First Saturday and Second Sunday events, Mission Days and global campaigns. In the July to September 2026 "Apollo" season, for example, XM Anomaly battles were scheduled in Helsinki and Bogotá on 18 July, Seoul and Paris on 22 August, and Singapore and Denver on 19 September.

Since November 2022 the game's story has also included Machina, a new in-universe XM entity in the Portal Network. According to Niantic's in-universe report, Machina can only capture neutral Portals, and its Portals can be neutralized by weapons from either faction.

Monetization

Ingress is free to play and sells items for an in-game currency, CMU, in its store. In 2014, TechSpot reported that companies could pay to have their locations featured in the game world as places of interest. In February 2021 Niantic added C.O.R.E. (Community, Offers, Recognition, and Expansion), an optional subscription priced at US$4.99 per month at launch. It adds 500 inventory slots, for a maximum of 2,500 items, and a monthly grant of 2,500 CMU, plus a monthly item kit and a profile medal.

Augmented reality features

Besides its map-based play, Ingress has had features that use the phone's camera and headphones.

Feature	Introduced	Status	Description
Audio AR and head tracking	2022 (Ingress 2.96.1)	Available	Spatialized Portal sounds and head-controlled avatar direction with supported Sony headphones
Overclock	Scanner 2.117	Retired 11 March 2026	AR hacking of 3D-mapped Portals using Niantic Lightship AR

Audio AR

In February 2022, Niantic and Sony announced a partnership on audio-based AR, with Ingress as the first Niantic game to get it. The feature was to work with Sony's LinkBuds earbuds. Ingress 2.96.1 added spatial audio with separate Portal sounds for the Enlightened, the Resistance and neutral Portals. With Sony's LinkBuds Series, players can turn on head tracking and steer their Agent avatar by turning their heads. Niantic said players could keep the phone in a pocket in Battery Saver Mode and still hear nearby Portals through spatialized sound. Support later expanded to the LinkBuds, LinkBuds S, WH-1000XM5 and WF-1000XM5.

Portal scans and Overclock

Agents could upload camera scans of Portals. Niantic used these scans to build AR maps of Portals, and when it introduced Overclock in Scanner version 2.117 it said the community scans had made hundreds of thousands of Portals eligible for the feature. On a mapped Portal, marked on the map with a gold octahedron, an Agent within 20 m could run "Reality Calibration" and then a sequence of Glyphs in AR, which returned the items of up to four Glyph hacks in one action. Overclock required players to turn on the "Enable Niantic Lightship AR" setting on supported devices.

On 11 March 2026, Niantic Spatial retired Overclock. On the same day it paused Operation Portal Recon (OPR), the player review system for Portal submissions, and stopped accepting new Portal nominations and edits. The studio said it needed to "better align our AR feature Overclock with our updated Niantic Spatial priorities" and would look for new ways to improve the game with the latest generation of its spatial technology. Geek Native reported that the announcement came from Ingress lead producer Brian Rose. It also noted that OPR and Overclock were the parts of the game most closely tied to collecting geospatial data.

Development

Ingress was created by Niantic Labs, a team inside Google founded by John Hanke. The team's earlier product was Field Trip, a location-based discovery app. When the game launched in November 2012, TechCrunch compared it with earlier location-based multiplayer games such as Shadow Cities and Please Stay Calm. It noted that players of those games had mostly played from fixed places such as home or the office, while Ingress seemed more about seeking out locations. The game dropped its invitation requirement and opened to all Android users on 31 October 2013, then left beta on 14 December 2013. Beta players who reached level 5 before that date received a Founder medal.

In August 2015, following Google's restructuring under Alphabet, Niantic Labs was spun out of Google as an independent company. Ingress and Field Trip moved with it. At that point Ingress had been downloaded more than 12 million times, and more than 250,000 people had attended its live events. Players could also submit new places to become Portals. In an interview with Mashable cited by Vice in 2016, Hanke said Niantic had received about 15 million location submissions and approved around 5 million. Many of these Portal locations became PokéStops and gyms in Pokémon Go.

Ingress Prime

Niantic released Ingress Prime on 5 November 2018 as a free update on iOS and Android. It was rebuilt on the Real World Platform that Niantic also used for Pokémon Go. The update brought higher-resolution maps, improved animations, one-finger movement, swipe shortcuts for attack, inventory and comms, a tutorial for new players, a prestige-style level reset (Recursion) and a new storyline built on the existing backstory. Prime did not yet have every feature of the original app at launch, so Niantic kept the old client available under the name "Scanner [REDACTED]". In March 2019, Ingress community manager Andrew Krug announced that Scanner [REDACTED] would close at the end of September 2019.

Niantic Spatial

On 12 March 2025, Scopely announced a US$3.5 billion deal for Niantic's games business. The deal covered Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, and closed on 29 May 2025. Ingress Prime and Peridot stayed with the new company, Niantic Spatial, led by Hanke and focused on geospatial AI. The Ingress team told players that the game would "continue to be owned and operated by a new startup, Niantic Spatial", and that planned events would go ahead.

For the game's 13th anniversary in November 2025, Niantic Spatial described three eras: Niantic Labs@Google (Ingress 1.0), Niantic Inc (Ingress 2.0) and Niantic Spatial (Ingress 3.0). It said the app version would advance to 3.0 in the next major release, that the Niantic Spatial logo would appear when the Scanner starts, and that the app store branding would change from Ingress Prime back to Ingress. The same post said OPR had been revived and listed other 2025 additions, including the reinstated Seer medal and a "Drone's-Eye View". OPR was paused again in March 2026. Also in March 2026, Niantic Spatial moved Ingress to a new database. On 16 May 2026, a spike in player activity overloaded it, and the team then rebuilt parts of the backend in a 13-day push. In July 2026, Game Developer reported that Niantic Spatial was closing its New Zealand office as it shifted toward enterprise markets, and that the company still operated Ingress.

Release

Date	Platform	Event
15 November 2012	Android	Closed beta, by invitation only
31 October 2013	Android	Invitation requirement dropped; opened to all Android users
14 December 2013	Android	Left beta
14 July 2014	iOS	Released on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch
5 November 2018	Android, iOS	Ingress Prime released as an update
November 2025	Android, iOS	Renamed from Ingress Prime to Ingress; version numbering moved to 3.0

As of October 2026 the iOS version is 3.15.1, released on 22 September 2026 and requiring iOS 15.0 or later. The Google Play listing was updated the same day; it shows more than 10 million downloads and says the game is optimized for phones with at least 2 GB of RAM running Android 10 or newer.

Adaptations

Ingress: The Animation, an anime series based on Ingress Prime, became available on Netflix on 30 April 2019. Engadget described it as part of an effort to bring new players to the game.

Reception

Award	Category	Result
18th Japan Media Arts Festival	Entertainment Division Grand Prize	Won
Japan Game Awards 2015	Game Designers Award	Won

The Japan Media Arts Festival credited the game to Google's Niantic Labs, with John Hanke as founder. At the Japan Game Awards, the judges said Ingress received "many supports from judges because the rule and the picture formation are novel". They also said it was chosen although service launch timing is not normally considered, because "Ingress dominated Japan in the period". The award page put the player count at more than 12 million across 200 countries.

See also

• Pokemon Go
• Peridot
• Monster Hunter Now
• Niantic Lightship
• Phone-Powered AR