Due to its high spectrum efficiency, 64‐amplitude phase‐shift keying (64‐APSK) is one of the primary technologies used in deep space communications and digital video broadcasting through satellite‐second generation. However, 64‐APSK suffers from considerable computational complexity because of the de‐mapping method that it employs. In this study, a low‐complexity de‐mapping method for (4 + 12 + 20 + 28) 64‐APSK is proposed in which we take full advantage of the symmetric characteristics of each symbol mapping. Moreover, we map the detected symbol to the first quadrant and then divide the region in this first quadrant into several partitions to simplify the formula. Theoretical analysis shows that the proposed method requires no operation of exponents and logarithms and involves only multiplication, addition, subtraction, and judgment. Simulation results validate that the time consumption is dramatically decreased with limited degradation of bit error rate performance.