Support

On your iPhone, iPad or Mac. Every colony saves itself every 20 seconds and whenever you leave the app, and it is kept twice: in the app's own storage, and as files in the app's private folder, which iOS includes in your iCloud Backup or computer backup. If one copy is ever lost, the colony comes back from the other the next time the app opens.

For extra peace of mind, export a colony now and then (Settings → Export save) and keep the file in Files or iCloud Drive.

Set up the new device from a backup of the old one (iCloud, a computer, or Quick Start), and your colonies come across with the app.

Or move them yourself: on the old device open the colony and choose Settings → Export save, send the file (AirDrop, Files or Mail), then on the new device choose Settings → Import save and pick it. It arrives as a new colony, exactly where it was.

No. It waits, paused, exactly where you left it, however long you are away. When you come back, a welcome card shows where things stand, and nothing happens until you tap Resume. If you were only gone a minute or two, it just carries on.

Home has Resume, New colony, Saves and Settings. You can also open My colonies from the game. Start a new colony, open any colony you have kept, or rename, copy, export or delete one. Every colony carries on from where you left it.

Deleting a colony takes it out of your list, but a recovery copy stays on your device, under Other recovery copies in My colonies, so you can bring it back if you change your mind. To remove everything the app keeps, delete the app.

A colony dies out when its last ant is gone: in the ant farm, on trips and in the outdoor nests. The game then says so and offers Start a new colony, My colonies or Stay and look. The old colony stays in My colonies, marked with the day it died out, so you can open it again.

Yes, on both screens. Folded, the outer screen has the phone’s layout. Open, the inner screen has the tablet’s layout, upright or sideways. Fold or unfold whenever you like: the game resizes and the colony carries on where it was, with the same view and the panels you had open.

Held half open like a book, the buttons, panels and cards keep off the fold, and the picture of the colony runs across both pages.

Ant Laboratory is designed for it. Stand the phone half open on a table, like a small laptop. The colony fills the top half: the ant farm, the island or a nest. The bottom half is one console, with the bar along the bottom and the colony panel, Data, Habitat or Weather above it, one at a time.

The colony panel opens there by itself when you set the phone down, and goes back as it was when you open the phone out or fold it. With no panel open, a live dashboard shows the colony’s population chart, its needs and the latest Field notes: tap the chart to open Data, or a need or a note to go to it. Tap Colony, or the status line, to bring the panel back.

Only to lay out the screen. It reads how far the phone is open and where its fold is, and nothing else. It keeps none of it and sends nothing anywhere.

Sounds start after your first tap in the game. Check that your iPhone isn't in silent mode (the switch or the Action button on the side), and that Sound is on in the game’s Settings. Raise Atmosphere to hear wind, birds and weather, and check that Nature sounds is on. The game is quiet on purpose: outside sounds are muffled in the lodge and in nests, and high over the whole island they are a soft, distant murmur. Ants are very quiet too: you hear them rustle only when you zoom in very close. The only music is the radio in the lodge, and it stays off until you tap it.

Most of them. Outdoors, the wind, rain, insects, water, fire, thunder and some of the birds are recordings the developer made, listened to one by one and set quiet. The ants’ sounds, single songbirds and a few other calls are made by the game as it plays. The recordings are files inside the app, so they play offline. If one cannot load, the game’s own sound plays in its place.

Pinch out from the ant farm until you see the bench, and tap the radio to the left of the glass. It comes on and its card opens, with On, Off, the volume, Next track and Play outside too. It plays the developer’s own soundtrack from the app itself, so it needs no internet. Settings has Radio in the lodge and Radio volume too.

Yes, through the lodge’s loudspeaker. It hangs on the outside wall, above the radio, and is off until you turn it on: tap it on the map, tick Play outside too on the radio’s card, or turn on Radio outside too in Settings. Then you hear the radio on the map too, loudest beside the lodge and softer as you move away or zoom out. It is silent over the whole island and inside a nest. It plays only what the radio plays, so turn the radio on in the lodge as well.

Running a living colony is real work, and speed multiplies it: at 25× a colony day passes every half second. Play at 1× to 5× when you are just watching, and pause when you put the device down. The game stops its clock and saves whenever you switch to another app. A big colony kept in its ant farm takes the most work; at the fastest speeds it may run slower than asked, on older iPhone and iPad models most of all.

You choose it once, when you set up a new colony: after the species, pick garden loam, sand, clay, woodland humus, stony soil or wetland soil. Your species’ own soil is picked first. The soil changes only the look, its colours and texture; the ants live and dig the same in every soil. A colony keeps the soil it was given.

It grows on slowly for years, a little bigger every summer, while it has food to spare, digging new tunnels and rooms across the whole farm. It levels off when its rooms fill the soil, when its food will not stretch to more, or at about 4,500 ants and brood. With the feeder on Normal, wood ants get there in about five years; black garden ants reach about 3,400 workers after eight.

To change how fast, set Feeding amount in Settings: it also sets how much food the feeder keeps in store for a contained colony. Light gives slower growth and leaner winters; Generous, faster growth, with more food left lying to go mouldy. Winter still thins the colony out.

Yes. Choose Open access port in Colony, or under More on iPhone. The port stays closed until you confirm, even if you dismiss the first invitation. The ant farm stays as full as it has grown, and the colony’s new workers move outside. Once open, the founding queen remains in the formicarium and workers travel between indoors and outdoors. You can close it again at any time: on the map, the colony’s card has Close it (on iPhone, More has Close access port). Outdoor nests cut off from a queen then raise no more young and slowly fade. You can open it again whenever you like. Weather and raids never reach the ant farm, but while the port is open a wolf spider can wander in, and carpenter ants can carry the zombie-ant fungus home. Close the port to keep them out.

Tap Habitat in the bar while you look at the ant farm. It opens three parts: Light (Bright, Soft or Off, a brightness slider up to 200% and a colour), Water (automatic, or a mister you set by hand) and Warmth (follow the lodge, or a heat mat you set). Tap Habitat again to close it. With the lamp off, a little room light remains. Above 100% the lamp dries the soil faster: with Water automatically on, the mister makes up for it. On the smallest phones, Habitat is under More. It sets only the ant farm, so it is hidden on the island and in outdoor nests. Interface themes are separate, in Settings.

Most likely the habitat needs a change. Larvae die after days in soil that is too dry, eggs go mouldy in soil that is too wet (Experimental), and with the heat mat on, brood dies in a tank that stays too hot (or too cold, for warm-country ants). The colony panel warns you first and has a button to the habitat, and the log says what was lost. To let the tank look after itself, turn Water automatically and Follow the lodge’s temperature back on. Adult ants are never harmed by the habitat.

The colony does its own work: the automatic feeder supports it, the ants share out the jobs, dig, forage and spread by themselves, and the whole island is visible. You watch, and step in only if you want to: inspect ants and nests, offer food, set the habitat, call the weather on the island, control time and investigate the Field notes and charts in Data.

The colony panel lists what matters right now (protein running low, soil drying out, a crowded farm, a nest under attack) and taps through to where it is happening. You can offer food by hand, check the habitat, slow down to inspect a nest and compare food, population and climate records in Data. The colony handles its own work and defence. If the queen dies, her heir or another queen takes over when there is one, and while at least 20 workers are left they can raise a new one. If no queen is left and none can follow, the game tells you.

With the access port open, a wolf spider wanders in about once a month, and the ants gather to deal with it. You can watch: the colony handles it. Close the port, and no spider gets in.

Tap Feed and choose crickets or fruit flies. Meat-eating ants hunt them: one bites and calls her nestmates, and together they drag the prey home and cut it up at the door. Leafcutters and turtle ants are vegetarians and leave live prey alone.

It is resting, as real ants do. Through winter, garden, wood, carpenter and harvester ants stay deep in the nest: the queen stops laying and the workers hardly go out. The season on screen reads Winter · hibernating, and the colony panel says so too. They wake up in spring. With the heat mat on, the ant farm rests only when the mat is set below 10°C, whatever the season. To play without winters, turn off Settings → Seasons and winter hibernation.

A way to sit back and watch without controls or labels. Choose Hold this view, Tour the formicarium, or Tour the whole colony after opening the access port. Observation summaries are optional; leave them off for a view without words. Start it from More on iPhone, or the film camera in the bar on iPad. Any touch hands the controls back.

On the island map, tap Weather on the bar (or press W with a keyboard), pick Strike lightning or Downpour, then tap the map where you want it. A bolt kills ants out in the open nearby, yours too, and starts a fire only on ground dry enough to burn. A downpour floods the low ground, so nests in hollows can lose workers and brood. One downpour at a time: Weather says how long until the next. Every bolt and downpour is noted in Field notes.

Weather is only for the island. There is none in the ant farm, inside a nest or in Cinematic mode: the ant farm stays dry.

It is night. The island, the lodge's windows and the sky over a nest grow dim at night and golden at dawn and dusk. With Sky on Slow (the setting it starts on), a day and night takes about 12 minutes at any speed. The ant farm keeps its own lamp, and the lodge's room stays lit. For a steady day, set Sky to Off in Settings, under Display. If your device asks for reduced motion, it is always day.

No. The outdoor nests live off their own land. Food you scatter on the map with Feed is extra help: sugar for a hungry nest, flies or crickets so a growing nest raises more brood. It feeds the nest whose land it falls on, so drop it inside your coloured border.

Colonies fight along their borders, and rivals sometimes raid an outdoor nest. You can watch these encounters and follow their effects in Data. Your colony handles its own defence, and raids never reach the ant farm.

Yes. Every island is grown from a seed. On the map, the island's card shows its size and seed: tap Copy and send the seed to your friend. They start a new colony of the same species, paste it into Island seed and pick the same size, and the same island grows for them. What their colony does there is its own story.

No. Ant Laboratory has no accounts, no ads, no analytics and no tracking, and it makes no network connections: the soundtrack and the nature recordings are files inside the app. Your colonies never leave your device unless you export them. See the privacy policy.

Purchases are handled by Apple. You can ask for a refund at reportaproblem.apple.com, signed in with the Apple Account you bought the app with.

On Android, Google Play handles the purchase. See Google Play’s help on refunds, or write to us.

Yes, on Macs with Apple silicon, from the App Store, with the same purchase as on iPhone and iPad. A keyboard works too: see Controls.

Yes, the full game is on Google Play for Android phones and tablets. US$4.99, paid once.

Yes: coming soon to Steam, for Windows and Mac. Its store page is not open yet. Follow the game on Instagram, TikTok or r/antlaboratory to hear when it opens.