Apex Legends is one of the most fun battle royales out there when you’re queuing with people you click with, but random squads can be a total coin flip. You might get a teammate who communicates every enemy position and lands perfect Kraber shots, or you might get someone who drops alone into Fragment and leaves 30 seconds into the match. If you’re wondering how do you add friends in Apex Legends so you can build a consistent squad you actually enjoy playing with, this guide covers every scenario you might run into, from cross-platform adds to fixing glitched requests, all tested through hundreds of hours of play across PC and console.
Step-by-Step: How Do You Add Friends in Apex Legends Across All Platforms
The process of adding friends is mostly the same no matter what device you play on, but there are a few small differences to note for cross-platform requests. Before you start, double check that you have cross-play enabled in your settings if you’re adding someone who plays on a different device than you. A lot of new players assume the process is different for each platform, but once you know how do you add friends in Apex Legends on one device, you can do it on any other device in seconds. The core universal steps are:
- Launch Apex Legends and navigate to the main lobby screen, making sure you’re not in a match queue
- Click the friends icon in the top right corner of the screen (it looks like two overlapping person silhouettes, right next to the settings cog)
- Select the “Add Friend” button near the top of the friends menu, right below your own profile name
- Enter your friend’s exact EA Public ID, platform username, or in-game name if they’re on the same platform as you
- Hit send, and wait for them to accept your request, which will pop up as a notification in their friends menu
If you’re adding someone on the same platform, you can usually just search their gamertag (PSN, Xbox Live, Nintendo Switch ID, or Steam username) and find them immediately. For cross-platform adds, using their EA Public ID is the most reliable method, since platform usernames sometimes don’t pop up in search if their privacy settings are adjusted. Make sure you don’t mix up capital letters or special characters when entering usernames, even one wrong character will pull up the wrong account or no results at all. If you play on both PC and console, your friends list will sync across both devices as long as you’re logged into the same EA account, so you don’t have to re-learn how do you add friends in Apex Legends every time you switch devices. The only extra step for mobile players is that you’ll have to link your EA account to your mobile profile first before you can send or receive friend requests from other platforms.
How to Add Teammates You Just Played With
We’ve all been there: you queue up with randoms, get a teammate who carries you to a champion win, and you want to squad up with them again later. You don’t have to scramble to type their complicated username mid-post-match screen to add them, Respawn built in a couple of easy shortcuts for this exact scenario. This shortcut saves you the hassle of typing out complicated usernames, which is a huge time saver if you’re still learning how do you add friends in Apex Legends.
The fastest way to add a recent teammate is right after a match ends, on the final score screen. You’ll see a small plus icon next to every player’s name, both your teammates and opponents. Click that plus next to the person you want to add, and it sends a friend request immediately, no typing required. If you already exited the post-match screen and went back to the lobby, you can still find them by going to your friends menu and selecting the “Recent Players” tab. This tab shows every person you played with or against in the last 5 matches, sorted by how recently you played with them.
You can only send friend requests to recent players for 7 days after your match, so don’t wait too long if you want to link up with a great random teammate. I once played with a Wattson main who set up perfect perimeters to hold off three squads in the final circle of a ranked match, and I forgot to add her right after the game. I checked back three days later and she was still in my recent players list, and we still squad up for ranked matches every weekend now. If you don’t see them in recent players, you can also try searching for their in-game name if you remembered it, but that’s less reliable if they have a common username.
Common Friend Request Issues and How to Fix Them
A lot of players reach out asking why they can’t figure out how do you add friends in Apex Legends even if they followed the basic steps, and the answer almost always ties back to one of these common, easy-to-fix issues. The vast majority of problems don’t require a support ticket, so run through these checks first before you get frustrated.
The most common issue is cross-play being disabled on either your account or your friend’s account. If cross-play is turned off, you won’t be able to find or send requests to anyone on a different platform, and they won’t be able to find you either. To fix this, go to Settings > Gameplay > Cross-Play, and make sure it’s set to “On” for both accounts. The second most common issue is privacy settings on your EA account. If your friend’s EA account is set to “Private” and only allows friend requests from friends of friends, you won’t be able to send them a request unless they adjust that setting in their EA account dashboard, or they send you a request first.
Another common glitch is pending request backlog. EA limits you to 50 pending outgoing friend requests at a time, so if you’ve sent a bunch of requests to people who never accepted, you won’t be able to send new ones until you clear out old pending requests from your friends menu. If a request doesn’t show up after 10 minutes, try logging out and back in to both Apex and your EA account to refresh the connection. This is especially common right after a new season launches, when EA servers are overloaded with players logging on to check new content. If you’re still figuring out how do you add friends in Apex Legends after running through all these fixes, ask your friend to send you a request instead, which often bypasses search glitches entirely. If all else fails, you can also send a friend request through the EA Desktop app or Origin client directly, which often works when the in-game search is glitching.
Tips for Managing Your Apex Legends Friends List
Once you start adding a bunch of friends and good random teammates, your friends list can get cluttered really fast, making it hard to find the people you actually play with regularly. A few simple tweaks can make managing your list way easier, so you don’t have to scroll through 100 inactive accounts to find your squad before a ranked session.
First, you can create custom groups in your friends menu to sort people by how you play with them. I have groups for my ranked squad, casual friends I play with on weekends, and people I met from recent matches that I want to play with again. You can name the groups whatever you want, and you can move people between groups whenever you want. Second, you can set your status to “Do Not Disturb” if you want to grind alone or practice with a new legend without getting spammed with invites. You’ll still get all friend requests and messages, they just won’t pop up as notifications while you’re playing.
If you have people on your list that you don’t play with anymore but don’t want to unfriend, you can mute their invite notifications instead of removing them, so you don’t get random invites from people you haven’t played with in years. You can have a maximum of 200 friends on your Apex friends list, so it’s a good idea to prune inactive accounts every few months to make space for new teammates. I go through my list at the start of every new season and remove anyone I haven’t played with in 6 months, which usually frees up 20 to 30 spots for new people I meet in matches.
At the end of the day, Apex is always better when you’re playing with people you have fun with, and now that you know how do you add friends in Apex Legends, you can stop rolling the dice on random squads every time you log on. Don’t be afraid to send a friend request to a random teammate who played well or was fun to talk to, most people are happy to get a request from someone they had a good game with. I’ve built my entire main squad from random players I met in matches, and we’ve racked up more than 50 champion wins together over the last two years, all starting with a single friend request sent right after a match. If you run into any weird glitches that aren’t covered here, you can check the official EA help site for platform-specific fixes, but the tips we covered will solve 99% of common issues.