How to Play Pokémon GO: A Complete Beginner Guide

Pokémon GO can feel like a lot at once: a map full of icons, a Pokédex to fill, Gyms to battle, and items you're not sure how to use. Here are the essentials, in the order you'll meet them, so your first sessions make sense.

Setting up

After installing the app and creating an account, you'll customize an avatar and land on the main map screen. This map shows your real-world surroundings, nearby Pokémon, and points of interest called PokéStops and Gyms. Your character's icon moves as you physically move, since the game uses your phone's location and, optionally, motion tracking for features like hatching eggs.

The main screens

Three screens matter most early on:

• The map, your home screen, showing nearby Pokémon, PokéStops, and Gyms.
• The Pokédex, a running record of every species you've caught or seen, with details on each one you own.
• Your item bag, holding Poké Balls, berries, potions, and other consumables you'll collect along the way.

Catching Pokémon

Tapping a wild Pokémon on the map opens the catch screen, where you throw Poké Balls by swiping toward the Pokémon. Aiming inside the colored ring that shrinks around the Pokémon improves your odds and can earn bonus experience, and adding a spin to your throw (a curveball) does the same. If a Pokémon is proving difficult to catch, feeding it a berry beforehand generally helps, and switching to a stronger ball type (once you have some) helps even more. Our guide to core mechanics goes deeper into exactly how these factors interact.

PokéStops and Gyms

PokéStops are usually real landmarks, and spinning their photo disc gives you free items like Poké Balls and potions, along with a small amount of experience. Gyms work differently: you can battle a Gym controlled by an opposing team to challenge it, or add your own Pokémon to a Gym your team already controls. Gyms and raids (multiplayer battles against powerful wild Pokémon) are a big part of the game's midgame, but they're entirely optional at the start — spend your first sessions getting comfortable with catching and exploring before worrying about them.

Eggs and buddies

PokéStops occasionally give you eggs, which hatch into Pokémon after you walk a certain distance with them loaded into an incubator. Separately, you can set one Pokémon as your "buddy," which follows your avatar around the map and earns candy for its species as you walk together. Both systems reward simply going about your day with the app open in the background.

Leveling up and what changes

You gain trainer experience from catching, spinning stops, hatching eggs, and battling, and leveling up unlocks better items and higher-level encounters. As you progress, features like raids, trading, and Special Research quests open up more fully. Because the exact unlock levels and rewards can be adjusted over time, the in-game level-up screen is the most reliable place to see what you've just unlocked.

The three teams

Once you reach a certain trainer level, you'll be asked to choose one of three teams. This is a cosmetic and social choice more than a strategic one — your team colors which Gyms you can add Pokémon to and battle alongside, and gives you a badge of identity among other local players, but it doesn't change your Pokémon's stats or how catching and battling work for you individually. Many trainers pick based on color preference or which team their friends are on, and switching teams later is possible but usually has a cost attached, so it's worth a moment's thought rather than picking at random.

Friends and trading basics

Adding other trainers as friends unlocks gifting (sending items found at PokéStops) and trading Pokémon directly with each other. Both scale with friendship level, which rises the more you interact — trading costs less Stardust between higher-friendship friends, for example. If you know other players locally, building friendship level with them over time is one of the more efficient ways to fill Pokédex gaps and get occasional useful items through gifts, on top of just being a nice way to play alongside people you know.

Common early mistakes to avoid

• Evolving everything immediately. Some Pokémon are worth evolving later once you know their IVs are worth investing in, rather than evolving the first one you catch.
• Ignoring your item bag limit. Like Pokémon storage, your item bag has a cap, and it's worth checking occasionally so a full bag doesn't stop you collecting from PokéStops.
• Skipping the tutorial screens. It's tempting to tap through onboarding quickly, but the game's early tutorial steps introduce useful screens you'll rely on later.

Where to go next

Once the basics click, our quick start guide is a handy condensed checklist, and your first day in Pokémon GO walks through a realistic first session step by step if you'd like a more guided walkthrough. When you're ready to think about team building and battling more seriously, our events hub covers the GO Battle League and community events in more depth.

Everything else on Trainer Hub assumes roughly what this page covers, so once it feels familiar you're ready for any of it.