Part of the Exploration & Endgame series:

No Man's Sky Exploration & Endgame Guide Hub: Start here.

How to Use Portals & Glyphs: The step-by-step portal walkthrough.

Quick Answer

There are 16 portal glyphs in No Man's Sky, and you need every one to dial an arbitrary address.
Glyphs are learned from Traveller graves at space stations: talk to the Traveller NPC (or summon Travellers via the Space Anomaly), pay for the grave location, and interact with it.
Glyphs can also arrive through the Artemis/Atlas story path, which hands them out during the "16/16" mission phase.
A portal address is 12 glyphs: 1 planet index + 3 system index + 8 coordinate glyphs (voxel Y, Z, then X).
Signal Booster coordinates are a separate, more compact string players share; they map to the same location but are not glyphs.
Never trust a random pasted address blindly. Addresses only work within the same galaxy they were recorded in.
Community directories like the Galactic Hub Project and coordinate exchanges are where real, verified addresses live.

Overview

A portal address is the postal code of the No Man's Sky universe. Once you have all 16 glyphs learned, any 12-glyph string becomes a destination you can dial from a charged portal and step through instantly. That turns the galaxy from a slow warp-by-warp journey into a shared network of exotic ship systems, farming hubs, and player bases.

This reference sits alongside the step-by-step portal walkthrough. Here the focus is the address itself: how to unlock the full glyph set, what each position in a 12-glyph string actually means, how glyph addresses differ from the coordinates a Signal Booster spits out, and where to find directories of real, working addresses without getting lost in fabricated strings.

How to Unlock All 16 Glyphs

Every glyph you own is a symbol you can select on a portal's dialing interface. With fewer than 16, large swaths of addresses stay ungessable, so completing the set is the first job.

Traveller graves at space stations

The reliable, repeatable method is station-hopping for Travellers. Travellers are the hooded NPCs that occasionally spawn at space station landing bays. Talk to one, and after a short exchange you can pay a small amount of Nanites to learn the location of their grave. Interacting with that grave teaches you exactly one new glyph.

Because glyphs are learned in a fixed order, each new Traveller grave gives you the next glyph you are missing rather than a random duplicate. That makes the farm predictable:

Warp into a system and land at the space station.
Look for a Traveller NPC standing near the exit ramps or the galactic trade terminal.
Speak with them, choose the option to pay for their grave location, then travel to and interact with the grave.
Warp to a new system, and repeat.

If no Traveller is present, you can force spawns faster by summoning Travellers through the Space Anomaly. Warp out and back, or hop stations, until one appears. Sixteen graves completes the collection. Many players knock this out while doing other errands, and it pairs naturally with pushing toward the galaxy center through black holes, since both reward frequent warping.

The Artemis/Atlas story path

If you follow the main storyline, glyphs also come to you. During the "16/16" mission phase of the Artemis Path you earn one glyph per hyperdrive warp, so sixteen warps completes the set without hunting graves. This route doubles as the on-ramp to the game's endings, covered in the Atlas Path story and endings guide. Both methods award the same permanent glyphs, so use whichever fits your current save.

How a Portal Address Is Structured

A portal address is always 12 glyphs. The community-standard breakdown treats those 12 positions as three logical chunks: which planet, which system, and where in the galaxy that system sits.

Glyph position	Meaning
1	Planet Index — which planet or moon in the target system the portal drops you at
2, 3, 4	Star System Index — which system within the target region (the region can hold several)
5, 6, 7	Y coordinate — vertical height of the region within the galaxy
8, 9, 10	Z coordinate — one horizontal axis of the region
11, 12	X coordinate — the remaining horizontal axis of the region

The last eight glyphs together (positions 5 through 12) encode the voxel, the galactic region cube the system lives in. The first four glyphs then narrow that region down to a specific system and a specific planet. This is why two addresses that share their final eight glyphs are neighbors in the same region, differing only in the leading planet and system indices.

One consequence worth understanding: the planet index in position 1 points at a slot that may or may not contain a landable planet. If the game rolls that slot as empty, dialing the address can still deposit you at the portal for that system with no planet under your feet, which trips up newcomers who assume every address lands on solid ground.

Glyph Addresses vs. Signal Booster Coordinates

There are two ways players write down a location, and mixing them up is a common source of confusion.

Portal glyph addresses are the 12-symbol strings you dial directly at a portal. They are what the game's portal interface actually consumes.

Signal Booster coordinates are the shorter alphanumeric strings you get by building a Signal Booster on a planet and selecting the option to log your position. These read something like a hexadecimal-and-colon string and describe the same underlying galactic coordinate, but they are not something you can type into a portal as-is.

The two formats are convertible because they describe the same voxel and system data. Players routinely share the compact Signal Booster string and let a converter translate it into a dialable glyph sequence (and back). Plenty of free community coordinate converters exist for exactly this. The practical rule: share whichever format your audience expects, and convert before you dial.

If you want a location you can revisit without any of this, the lowest-friction option is to build a Base Computer at the destination and use the teleporter network, as described in the teleporters and base networking guide. That skips address-dialing entirely for places you care about.

Where to Find Address Directories

Real, working addresses live in community directories, not in guides that invent them. A fabricated 12-glyph string will either fail to resolve to anything interesting or send someone to an empty slot, so the honest approach is to point you at the sources that maintain verified coordinates:

The Galactic Hub Project: a long-running player civilization with cataloged systems, region names, and shared addresses for hub space.
Coordinate exchanges: community-run databases where players submit and search Signal Booster coordinates or glyph addresses by category (exotic ships, S-class economies, unusual fauna).
Star-map and base-sharing threads: subreddits, Discord servers, and wikis where players post addresses tied to screenshots so you can verify before you travel.

To be explicit about format only, an address is written as a run of 12 glyph symbols, which people transcribe as hexadecimal digits. An illustrative, format-only placeholder looks like:

1 0 3 A · 7 F 2 · 4 D 9 · B (illustrative structure only — this is not a real destination, do not dial it)

Read left to right that is planet index 1, system index 0 3 A, then the Y/Z/X coordinate glyphs. Use it to sanity-check the shape of a real address you copy, never as a place to visit.

What's worth portal-hopping to

S-class economy systems for the best trade margins and high-tier ship and multi-tool rolls.
Expedition rendezvous points, where seasonal Expeditions funnel players to shared locations for community goals.
Galactic Hub space, if you want an active neighborhood of bases and traders.
Friends' bases, once someone shares their address or invites you.
Exotic ship systems, since certain economies and colors are prized. See the exotic ship hunting guide for what to look for once you arrive.

FAQ

How do I get all portal glyphs fast?

Station-hop for Travellers. Land at a space station, find the hooded Traveller NPC, pay to learn their grave location, and interact with the grave for one glyph. Summon more Travellers through the Space Anomaly if none are present. Sixteen graves completes the set. Alternatively, the Artemis Path's "16/16" mission awards one glyph per warp.

What do the glyphs in an address mean?

The first glyph is the planet index (which planet in the system). The next three are the star system index. The final eight encode the region's coordinates in the order Y (height), then Z, then X. Together those last eight glyphs define the galactic voxel, and the first four pick a system and planet inside it.

Can I share my location with a friend?

Yes. Either read your 12-glyph address off a portal after dialing your current region, or build a Signal Booster and log your position for a compact coordinate string. Send whichever your friend can use, and remember both formats are convertible with community tools. For places you both revisit, a shared Base Computer plus the teleporter network is easier than re-dialing.

Why did the portal take me somewhere with no planet?

The planet index in the first glyph points at a slot that may be empty in that system. When it is, you arrive at the portal with no landable planet at that index. This is normal, not a bug. Adjust the leading glyph or pick a different address from a verified directory.

Do addresses work in any galaxy?

No. A portal address is only valid in the galaxy where it was recorded. An address from Euclid dialed in a different galaxy lands somewhere unrelated. Always confirm which galaxy a shared address belongs to before you travel.

Key Takeaways

Finish the full glyph set before you go address hunting. Graves hand out glyphs in a fixed order, so every Traveller you find gives the next one you're missing, and a partial keypad leaves most shared addresses undialable.
Pick the collection route that matches where your save is. Mid-Artemis, the "16/16" phase gives you a glyph per warp for free. Past that point, station-hop for Travellers and summon more through the Space Anomaly whenever a station has none.
Check which galaxy a shared address came from before you dial. The same 12 glyphs entered in a different galaxy land somewhere unrelated.
Sanity-check the shape of any string you're handed: 12 symbols, planet index, system index, then Y, Z, X. A shorter alphanumeric string is Signal Booster output and needs converting before a portal will take it.
If you arrive with no planet under you, adjust the leading glyph or try another address rather than assuming the string is broken. That first position can point at an empty slot.
For anywhere you'll return to, drop a Base Computer and use the teleporter network. Save glyph dialing for the one-off trips: hub space, S-class economies, exotic ship systems, and friends' bases.

No Man's Sky Portal Glyphs: Address Format, All 16 Glyphs & Coordinate Directory