How to play an HTML game on your iPhone or Android phone

Your kid asked ChatGPT for a dodge-the-blocks game. A friend sent game.html from Claude. On the phone, the file opens as a page of code, or the game shows its title and the Start button does nothing. When it does start, there are no arrow keys, the sound stays off, and yesterday's high score is gone.

A phone runs an HTML game in its browser: Safari on an iPhone, Chrome on Android. The trouble is getting the file into it. This page is for the person holding the phone. If you made the game and want friends to play it, How to publish a game you made with ChatGPT compares the free hosts.

The MDN, WebKit, Apple, and Google pages cited here were read on November 3, 2026, and our viewer and Android tests ran the same day.

To play it once, right now: open Convika's free HTML viewer in Safari or Chrome, tap Choose an .html file, and pick the game. Nothing is uploaded. If someone sent you a file you weren't expecting, ask them first, and turn off Run scripts before you choose it. In the viewer, a high score lasts while the game keeps running. Reload page, a restart that reloads the game, or leaving the page starts it at 0 again, and nothing is saved on the phone, as our test shows.

To keep high scores and play again tomorrow: play it from a link. The upload box at the top of this page starts that without an account. Its preview link runs no scripts, so the game won't start there: it's for checking the layout. Click Keep this page — free, no card and sign up, and the game moves into your account, where it runs and you can publish it.

Why tapping game.html doesn't start the game

• On an iPhone, the Files app opens the file in a Quick Look preview. Apple's guide says "a preview of the file opens in Quick Look" when no installed app made the file. In our test on iOS 26.3 in Apple's iPhone Simulator, that preview ran no JavaScript, so a game shows its title and buttons and nothing moves (How to open an HTML file on iPhone).
• On Android, the phone asks which app should open the file. In our Android 16 emulator test, HTML Viewer ran no JavaScript and Chrome ran the whole page, so pick Chrome (How to open an HTML file on Android). On a Galaxy, the Samsung guide covers My Files.
• A screen of code means the app is reading the file as text. Why does my HTML file open as code? goes through the causes.

Play an HTML game on your phone in 4 steps

1. Save game.html to your phone

On an iPhone, save it to the Files app: in Mail, touch and hold the attachment and choose Save to Files, as Apple's Mail guide describes. On Android, download it: in Gmail, open the email and tap Download. In a chat app, use that app's own save button.

2. Open the HTML viewer in your browser

Go to Convika's free HTML viewer in Safari on an iPhone or in Chrome on Android. It needs no account, and your browser reads the file on the phone. Don't open a game you weren't expecting: ask the sender first, and turn off Run scripts before you choose it.

3. Choose the file and tap Start

Tap Choose an .html file and pick the game. On Android, if the picker opens on Recent, open the menu at the top left and choose Downloads, as in our emulator test. Then tap the game's own Start button: on a phone, the game's sound waits for a tap.

4. For a game you'll come back to, open it from a link

In the viewer, a score lasts while the game keeps running, and it's gone after Reload page, a restart that reloads the game, or leaving the page. Nothing is saved on the phone. Publish the game once, as below, and open its link, or add that link to your home screen as an icon.

What the viewer keeps, and what it doesn't

We tested it on November 3, 2026, with a small game that counts taps and saves the best count with localStorage, the browser storage a game uses to keep a high score on the player's device. We opened it in a local build of Convika's HTML viewer, in Chromium and WebKit (the engines Chrome and Safari are built on), at phone size with touch. Both engines gave the same result:

• The game ran. Its script started, and 3 taps reached it.
• The best score lasted while the game kept running. After 3 taps the best was 3. After Reload page it was 0, and when we left the page and chose the file again, it was 0 again. The viewer gives the game storage that lives only while that page is loaded, so nothing was saved on the device.
• A game that reads its saved score as it starts ran too. In a second version, the first line read the best score from localStorage with no fallback. It started at 0, counted taps, and lost its best on Reload page, like the first.
• A restart that reloads the game started from 0. In a third version, Play again reloaded the page. After 3 taps the best was 3; after Play again it was 0.

The viewer runs the file in a frame sealed off from convika.com, so what the game saves stays in that frame's memory, and any reload of the game empties it; in our test, none of it reached the viewer page's own storage. If the best score goes back to 0 each time you play again, ask the AI that made it: "Make Play again restart the game without reloading the page." A fourth version kept its best score in a cookie instead. In Chromium, its script stopped on its first line, which reads the cookie, because the frame can't read cookies; in WebKit, it ran, and its best was back to 0 after Reload page. If a game won't start in the viewer, ask the AI that made it: "Save the best score with localStorage, not a cookie." To keep a score for tomorrow, play it from a link, where the browser saves it on the device. We didn't run this test on a physical phone.

Play it from a link, and keep high scores

A published game is an ordinary web page with its own address, so the phone's browser treats it like any other site. The game publishing guide tested a one-file game on a published Free Convika page on October 20, 2026, on a local development setup, in Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit at phone size (390 × 844) with touch. 3 arrow-key presses and 1 tap reached the game, a best score saved with localStorage was still there after reloading the page, and sound played after the Start button. That test used browser engines, not a real phone.

To put a game there:

1. Drop the file into the upload box at the top of this page, or paste the code, and click Get my preview link. Then click Keep this page — free, no card and sign up.
2. On the page's screen, click Open preview to play it privately before anyone else sees it.
3. Click Publish page. Under Who can open this page?, choose Public and click Next. The first time, click Publish free. Under it, Publish without the Convika bar opens an order for Pro monthly ($12 a month, after a free 1-day trial with a card).
4. Open the address, such as yourpage.convika.page, on your phone, and send it to your friends.

On Free, a 64 px Convika bar runs along the bottom of the window. If the game's buttons sit at the very bottom, ask the AI to keep them clear of the bottom 64 px. A fixed version goes to the same link: Update your AI game without changing the link. Each player's best score stays in their own browser; for one board that every player sees, see Add a leaderboard to your AI HTML game.

Controls on a touch screen

A phone has no arrow keys or space bar. If the game listens only for the keyboard, taps do nothing, and the player can't fix that on the phone: the game needs touch buttons. Ask the AI that made it: "Add on-screen Left, Right, and Jump buttons for phones, and keep the keyboard controls." Fix an AI-made HTML game's mobile controls has the prompts and the code for buttons, taps that land off target, and a page that scrolls when you drag.

Sound, full screen, and saved scores on a phone

• Sound starts after a tap. WebKit's team wrote in 2016 that "Safari on iOS has required a user gesture to play media in a <video> or <audio> element", meaning code run from "a handler for a touchend, click, doubleclick, or keydown event". MDN's Web Audio guide gives the same rule for game sound: "Create or resume context from inside a user gesture." Tap the game's Start button. If the game is silent, ask the AI to start its sound from that button, and check the phone's volume.
• Full screen. MDN's compatibility data for the Fullscreen API says, for Safari on iOS: "Only available on iPad, not on iPhone." MDN's requestFullscreen page also says a page needs "transient user activation", a tap, before it can go full screen. On an iPhone, the nearest thing is an icon for the game's link: in our iOS 26.3 test, the icon opened the page full screen, without Safari's address bar (how to add an HTML file to your home screen). We didn't test a full-screen button on a published Convika page.
• Saved scores. MDN says localStorage keeps data for "the Document's origin", the site, and that it is "saved across browser sessions". In a private tab, it "is cleared when the last 'private' tab is closed." For a file opened from the phone itself, MDN says the behavior is "undefined and may vary among different browsers." WebKit's 2020 post says Safari deletes a site's script-writable storage, LocalStorage included, "after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site", and that a web app on the home screen has "their own counter of days of use".

What we saw on Android: on November 3, 2026, in the same Android 16 emulator with Chrome 133, we opened 2 copies of the tap game from Downloads in the Files app, in Chrome.

• A copy downloaded in Chrome kept its best score of 3 when we reopened it, at the same address.
• A copy put on the emulator with Android's developer tool, not downloaded, lost its score the first time we reopened it, when Chrome showed it at a new content:// address. Its next best score, 2, survived a reload and a reopening. After we restarted the emulator, that copy showed 0, and the downloaded copy, opened for the first time, showed the 2.

So a score saved by a game opened from a file can vanish, or turn up in another file.

Where you play it, compared

Can you play it offline?

Plan on a connection. A published game loads from its web address, and in our iPhone test the home-screen icon loaded the page from its address each time; we didn't test it with no connection. A game that loads a library, a font, or a sound from another site needs the internet for that part wherever you open it.

Frequently asked questions

How do I play HTML games on my phone?

Open the game in the phone's browser, not in the app that tapping the file opens. For one round, open Convika's free HTML viewer in Safari or Chrome and tap Choose an .html file. If someone sent you a game you weren't expecting, ask them first, and turn off Run scripts before you choose it. For a game you'll come back to, open it from a published link, where high scores stay.

How do I play HTML games on iPhone?

Save the file to Files, then open an HTML viewer in Safari and choose the file there. Tapping the file in Files opens a Quick Look preview, which ran no JavaScript in our iOS 26.3 test. A game at a published link opens in Safari like any website, and you can add it to the home screen for a full-screen icon.

Can you play HTML5 games on iPhone?

Yes, in Safari. An HTML5 game is a web page, and Safari runs its scripts when you open it from a link or through an HTML viewer. Sound starts only after a tap, and MDN's compatibility data says a game's full-screen button works on iPad, not iPhone. A home-screen icon for the game's link opened full screen in our iOS 26.3 test.

How do I play HTML games on Android?

Tap the file in your file app and choose Chrome, then Just once. In our Android 16 emulator test, Chrome ran the game and Android's HTML Viewer didn't. A score saved there may not survive reopening the file, so for a game you'll come back to, open it from a published link.

Why won't my HTML game work on my phone?

The app that opened it may not run scripts, the game may listen only for the keyboard, or it may stop where it can't save. Open it in Safari or Chrome first. If taps do nothing, the game needs touch buttons, which the AI that made it can add. In Convika's viewer, a game that reads its score from a cookie as it starts stopped in our Chromium test; ask the AI to save the score with localStorage instead.

Why did my HTML game's high score disappear?

A browser saves a game's score for one site, and another site starts from 0. In our tests, the viewer kept a score only while the game kept running, not after a reload, and Chrome on Android lost a file's score on some reopenings. Per WebKit, Safari also deletes a site's saved data after 7 days of Safari use without your interacting with the site. A published link keeps one address, and its score survived a reload in our test.

Why is there no sound in my HTML game on iPhone?

Safari on iOS plays sound only from a tap or a key press, per WebKit, so a game that makes sound as it loads stays silent. Tap the game's Start button. If it's still silent, ask the AI to start the sound inside that button's tap handler, and check the phone's volume.

Can I play an HTML game offline on my phone?

Don't count on it. A published game loads from its address, and we didn't test one with no connection. A game that loads a library, a font, or a sound from another site needs the internet for that part.

Sources

• Window: localStorage property (MDN) (last modified October 12, 2026; checked November 3, 2026)
• Web Audio API best practices (MDN) (last modified August 27, 2026; checked November 3, 2026)
• Element: requestFullscreen() method (MDN) (last modified October 30, 2026; checked November 3, 2026)
• New video policies for iOS (WebKit) (July 25, 2016; checked November 3, 2026)
• Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More (WebKit) (March 24, 2020; checked November 3, 2026)
• Find and view files and folders in Files on iPhone (Apple) (checked November 3, 2026)
• Download email attachments in Mail on iPhone (Apple) (checked November 3, 2026)
• Open & download attachments in Gmail, Android (Gmail Help) (checked November 3, 2026)