{"id":815285,"date":"2025-06-03T11:30:40","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/?p=815285"},"modified":"2025-06-03T11:30:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T18:30:02","slug":"game-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/game-center","title":{"rendered":"How to set up Game Center to pwn your friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple’s Game Center service lets you compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play. You can see where you rank among your friends \u2014 and globally. Achievements will give you a list of missions to accomplish to prove your mastery of the game. You can even play live multiplayer games on all your separate devices using SharePlay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Up until iOS 10, Game Center existed as a separate app on iPhone and iPad<\/a>, which made this all easier to manage. And rumor has it that Apple will replace Game Center with the next major version of iOS<\/a>, to be announced next week at WWDC25.<\/p>\n

How do you manage your Game Center account now, on iOS 18? What options do you have? How do you add friends?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How to set up and edit your Game Center username and profile<\/h2>\n
\"Game
Game Center is buried deep in Settings.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones\/Cult of Mac<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To set up Game Center on your iPhone, go to Settings<\/strong>, then scroll down (pretty far) to tap on Game Center<\/strong>. You\u2019ll need to sign in with your Apple ID<\/a> if you haven\u2019t already.<\/p>\n

Tap on your name at the top to see your profile.<\/p>\n

Tap\u00a0Nickname<\/strong> to set a username. It has to be unique, but you can change it anytime.<\/p>\n

Profile Privacy<\/strong> sets how public your profile is. This includes recently played games and your achievements. Although your entire friend list is never public, some of them might be shown. For example, an achievement that says, \u201cYou beat [a friend\u2019s] score\u201d in a game you both play might show up in your activity with a link to your friend\u2019s profile.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t want your friends to be public information, it\u2019s best to play it safe and set Profile Privacy to Friends Only<\/strong>. If you don\u2019t want anyone to know what games you play, set it to Only You<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Allow Finding by Friends<\/strong> will let your contacts find your profile and send you an invitation to connect if they have your matching phone number or email address for your Apple ID.<\/p>\n

Requests from Contacts Only<\/strong> will hide friend requests from people who aren\u2019t in\u00a0your<\/em> contacts. With both of these enabled, you can only receive an invitation if both of you have the correct contact info for each other. This is really handy if you\u2019re writing an article about Game Center that\u2019ll be read by thousands of people for years to come and you don\u2019t want to be spammed by requests from strangers.<\/p>\n

Nearby Players<\/strong> allows you to play local multiplayer games with your friends.\u00a0Connect with Friends<\/strong> allows games to use your friends list.<\/p>\n

Add friends<\/h3>\n
\"Add
Add friends to see what they\u2019re playing.
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones\/Cult of Mac<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To add a friend, go to\u00a0Settings > Game Center<\/strong> (you\u2019ll have to scroll down pretty far) and tap\u00a0Invite Friends<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Type in a name from your contacts, or a phone number or email address. You have to enter in the same number or email the person uses for their Apple ID. For most people, that\u2019s their only phone number, and an email address ending in @icloud.com or @gmail.com.<\/p>\n

We originally published this article about Game Center on May 31, 2023. We updated it on June 3, 2025.<\/i><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Set up Game Center on your iPhone and Mac and set your username so you can compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play. You can see where you stand among your friends \u2014 and globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30102,"featured_media":816696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31740],"tags":[1314,25,52],"class_list":["post-815285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-how-to","tag-game-center","tag-iphone","tag-top-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nGame Center: How to set your account on iPhone | Cult of Mac<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Set up Game Center on your iPhone and set your username so you can compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cultofmac.com\/how-to\/game-center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to set up Game Center to pwn your friends\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Set up Game Center on your iPhone and Mac and set your username so you can compete with friends and unlock achievements in the games you play. 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