How to send and receive Gifts in Pokémon Go - High School of Posts and Telecommunications and Information Technology

Pokémon Go Gifts are special items that you can send to your friends in Pokémon Go, as part of the friendship and trade mechanics launched in 2018.

Giving and receiving gifts offers a host of benefits, from the obvious and material to the subtle and collectible. The most obvious benefit, beyond a quick recharge of Pokéballs and Potions, is the daily increase to your Friendship Level.

Beyond that, opening gifts is the only way to get the elusive 7km Eggs with their exclusive egg clusters; most recently, it is the only way to access the new Hisuian Forms added in July 2022.

Learning how gifts work, such as how to send and receive them, is essential to getting the most out of your Pokémon Go experience.

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How to get gifts and send gifts in Pokémon Go

Below you will learn how to send, receive and open gifts in Pokémon Go:

How to get gifts in Pokémon Go

Gifts are unique items in Pokémon Go, as you can only open them when you receive them from a friend.

Gifts are packages of random items that you can send to your friends.

Like most things in Pokémon Go, the gift system relies heavily on randomness.

This starts with how you get gifts. As you walk around the world, spinning PokéStops, you’ll sometimes find yourself collecting Gifts along with your usual dose of Poké Balls and Potions. The fewer the number of gifts you have, the more likely you are to collect them, up to a maximum of 30 gifts.

That said, the number of gifts you can carry and how often they drop are often modified as part of the game’s festivals and events. If you’re the type of Trainer who likes to send gifts to your friends, these are the type of events you should pay attention to.

From time to time, your Pokémon friend may also bring you a gift to send to your friend, assuming you’ve reached a high enough friendship level with said Pokémon. But, like any other item, such as Poké Balls and evolution items, there is only one chance to receive a gift while playing; It is not guaranteed that you will receive one with each spin.

So now that you have a bunch of Gifts, what do you do with them? Unfortunately, you can’t open them yourself: in the spirit of giving, you have to channel your inner Delibird and send them to someone on your friends list.

Our page on how to add a friend in Pokémon Go can explain how to get started with this feature.

How to send gifts in Pokémon Go

Once you’ve added a friend in Pokémon Go, you’ll see their trainer profile in your friends list by tapping their icon at the bottom left of the screen and then tapping “Friends” at the top right. Find the friend you want to send a gift to and tap them to bring up their profile.

At the bottom left of the screen (below the XP bar), there is the option to send a gift. Unlike commerce, you don’t have to be nearby to send gifts, meaning you can send and receive gifts from trainers anywhere in the world.

Click “Send Gift” and you’ll see a screen asking what gift you want to send, with a list of gifts and postcards showing where you found them.

Select ‘Send Gift’ and then choose your postcard. You might even want to add a sticker!

Until summer 2022, all gifts were the same and your choice didn’t matter. However, with the addition of the Postcard Book feature, trainers can save postcards to an album. Does it make any difference in the grand scheme of things? No. Does your friend like to see pictures of your local parks, churches, or other landmarks? Send them the gift you think they’ll like and they can choose to save the postcard to view later.

Similar to how the Postcard doesn’t make any major difference, you also have the option of adding a Label to your Postcard. This does absolutely nothing mechanically, but feel free to add them if you think it will make your friend smile! Click Send and you will see your gift disappear.

You can only send one gift to each Trainer per day, and each Trainer can only receive one gift from you at a time. If the option to send a gift is grayed out, it means you sent one today or they still have one you sent previously.

How to open a gift in Pokémon Go

If you have notifications turned on, the game will notify you when a friend sends you a gift. Otherwise, you can always check your friends list and look for the little Gift icon under their name. Click on it and you’ll see a gift moving over your trainer profile. Click on that and watch the treats fall like a piñata.

When opening a gift, the postcard sent to you will first be displayed and then you will receive your items.

If you haven’t interacted with your friend today, this will increase your friendship by one unit, helping you get closer to becoming best friends in the game.

The Season of Adventure Abundance is here! The Psychic Spectular event is back! You can also work on the Timed Investigation: Master Ball mission and compete in Go Battle League. Be sure to compete in Shadow Raids, complete routes, use Daily Adventure Incense for a chance to encounter Galarian Articuno, Galarian Zapdos, and Galarian Moltres. This incense can also give you encounters with other rare Pokémon in Pokémon Go.

What do you get with Pokémon Go gifts?

Gifts contain a variety of useful items in Pokémon Go

So what’s inside these Gift Boxes that you can send and receive?

Gifts include “a variety of useful items” – what comes out of them is random, but the content generally has “a higher value than what Trainers typically get from spinning PokéStops,” Niantic says, so all you can obtain from a PokéStop, as well as some rare additions. This includes:

Pokeballs
Big balls
ultra balls
potion potion
super potion
Hyper Potion
Max revives
pineapple berry
Evolution items such as King’s Rock and Sun Stone.
Rare sweets
star dust
7 km eggs

The 7km Egg is the only exclusive gift item that you can’t get anywhere else. Originally, these were going to become one of the Kanto region’s Alolan Pokémon, but the pool of potential Pokémon in each 7km egg changes with the events of the game. Sometimes these Pokémon are more desirable than others, but they often have relevance in Go Battle League, so keep an eye on the rotating pool in case you need something for Great League or Ultra League.

Remember, as with all Eggs, you will not receive Gift Eggs if you have no Egg slots left. If you want a 7km egg, open a present after the egg has hatched, but before you spin a PokéStop or beat a Go Rocket Team Leader.

7km Eggs have an exclusive group of rare Pokémon to hatch!

What are sponsored gifts in Pokémon Go?

Sponsored gifts go against the trend outlined above, as they cannot be sent to friends and you open them when you receive them.

These pink gift boxes come in PokéStop form, like everything else, or in the form of the occasional mini hot air balloon. You can’t force them to appear, but you will occasionally see them, depending on your location and whether Niantic has a sponsorship event going on at the time.

Tapping on them will reveal a postcard with the sponsor’s logo, and then you’ll be given a couple of random items, just like you would receive from a normal gift. However, you will then have the option to “Learn More” about the sponsor, in case you are interested in their advertising.

There are a couple more things to keep in mind about these sponsored giveaways:

You can only open a certain number per day.
Trainers with a child account will not be able to receive sponsored gifts
All Trainers can opt out of receiving sponsored giveaways through the normal settings menu.

What else do you need to know about gift boxes in Pokémon Go?

Gifts have some other peculiarities that you should know:

Gifts are the easiest way to increase your friendship level. There are great rewards for doing so, so remember to send gifts once a day until you’re one interaction away from leveling up. From there, the etiquette is to coordinate opening gifts at the same time so that both players get the huge XP bonus that comes with leveling up their friendship level.
You can only have a total of 30 gifts in your inventory at a time.
Only 30 gifts can be opened per day.
As of the July 2018 Lucky Pokémon Update, each gift sent grants you 200 XP.
You’ll receive a notification when your friend has opened a gift and how many items it contained. You can view the specific contents of your news feed.
It is not necessary to open a received gift to send one in return (if you are waiting for a free slot for eggs, for example). Simply cancel with Gift with the cross at the bottom of the screen (you can open it later; it won’t be removed) to then have the option to send one.
Each Gift will come with a postcard showing the PokéStop where the Gift was collected. Now you can keep and collect postcards by pinning them to your postcard book. “We want this to reflect the feeling of when a friend gives you a gift from a store you like or sends you a postcard from a faraway land,” Niantic said when launching the Postcard feature. “It’s intentionally sentimental and unites two Trainers on their travels. Plus, how exciting would it be if a Trainer sent a Gift from a special vacation spot or exclusive event?”
If your item bag is full, you will not be able to open a Gift.

Have fun sending gifts in Pokémon Go and don’t forget to check out our friendship guide!