No Man’s Sky’s sprint button is annoying, here’s how to fix it

No Man’s Sky contains an unfathomably massive universe, and the planets within it are, well, appropriately planet-sized. Suffice it to say that you’re going to be doing a lot of running around those worlds, which means you’re quickly going to discover that the sprint function in the game is mapped to an annoying button. Thankfully, we’ve got a quick and easy fix for you.

Before we begin, perhaps the subject of this story wasn’t evident to you already — we’ve heard from a number of people who didn’t even realize they could sprint in the game. You can indeed sprint for a limited time in No Man’s Sky, and it’s possible to upgrade the ability so you can run for longer periods without getting winded.

But in the PlayStation 4 version of No Man’s Sky, the sprint function is mapped to R3 — clicking in the right analog stick. That’s the opposite of how it works in most other first-person games, where you click the left stick to run.

There’s a simple solution for this issue. While No Man’s Sky itself doesn’t let you remap the controls, you can get around that by going directly into the PS4’s settings. Sony’s version 2.50 firmware update for the console, released in March 2015, added a number of accessibility options to the system — including the ability to reassign buttons on the DualShock 4 controller.

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Go into the Accessibility section of the PS4’s settings menu, then scroll down to Button Assignments. Check the box that says "Enable Custom Button Assignments," then go into "Customize Button Assignments." Go down to the L button, then press X to reassign it to the R button. (Don’t worry: This will only swap L3 and R3, not the sticks themselves.)

Voilà! Now when you play No Man’s Sky, you’ll click the left stick to sprint. The function that was formerly assigned to that button — the environment scanner — will be on R3 instead.

We should note that there’s a major drawback to this. Any controller remapping that you do in the PS4’s accessibility settings is a global change; the console doesn’t allow you to create sets of button assignments on a game-by-game basis. That means that your L3 and R3 buttons will be swapped in every game, unless you manually switch them back whenever you want to play something besides No Man’s Sky. (We’ve asked Hello Games if there are any plans to add button remapping to the game, and we’ll update this article with any information we receive.)

It’s a good thing, then, that No Man’s Sky is the only game we’re going to play for the rest of our lives.

For more on No Man’s Sky, check out our impressions of the first 10 hours.