Who doesn’t love Mincraft? Everyone does. Who likes paying for a pricey Realms subscription just to be able to play with their friends on their favourite console? No one does!

Thankfully, setting up free cross platform play between consoles is actually very easy. All you need is a computer (or even a Raspberry Pi) and some simple commands.

Before we start, an explanation of how this will work.

Mojang graciously provides us with a free version of their Bedrock server which allows people to create a LAN server so they can play with their friends on the same household (and some other people have also graciously packaged the server in an easily deployable Docker container). So if your friends happen to be in the same house as you, then the following steps are super easy to perform. This server works across all platforms too so you can play with your friends and family across PS4/Xbox/Android/iOS

If your friends live outside you house, it is still possible to have free cross play with them without having to pay for a Realms subscription but the set up is a bit more technical and may require a little bit more work.

First, setting up a LAN server. To do this, on a computer in your network make sure you install Docker (this works on Windows/Mac and Linux) and simply run this command on a terminal (make sure you replace {PATH/TO/A/FOLDER} with an actual path on your computer where you want to store the files of your Minecraft world):

docker run --name test -p 19132:19132/udp -e EULA=true -v {PATH/TO/A/FOLDER}:/data -d itzg/minecraft-bedrock-server

Please note that there are a lot of configuration options for your world (what mode to use, difficulty settings, allowing access to specific people etc) that I will not go through in this guide. For more info, you can read the documentation of the Docker container here

And that’s it. Now open your console(s), start Minecraft, move to the Friends tab and you should see your new world show up in the list under LAN Games (make sure you are connected to the same network via WiFi or ethernet)

Setting up cross play outside of a LAN network is a bit trickier but doable. First, on the computer that will host the game server, perform the steps above to set up a server for your LAN. Then, you need to expose your server to the internet and open the port 19132 to accept UDP traffic and forward it to the computer running docker. A guide on how to do this is way beyond the scope of this post but a simple Google search on how to set up port forwarding should get you started. As a bonus, you can also set up a dynamic DNS with a custom domain pointing to your home so that your friends won’t have to keep typing your IP address (which may frequently change as well) every time they want to play with you. Again, this is way beyond the scope of this article and will require a little bit of research.

Once this is done, you will need to run a few commands on a computer on the same network as each player’s console. So each of your friends will also need to install Docker on a computer in their home and run some commands.

First, they will need to create a text file (we will call it proxy.conf for this article but any name will do) and add this to it:

events {}
stream {
    server {
        listen 19132 udp;
        proxy_pass receiving_servers;
    }

upstream receiving_servers {
        server {HOST_OF_SERVER}:19132;
    }
}

Make sure they replace {HOST_OF_SERVER} with either the public IP address of your home or the custom domain you set up using a dynamic DNS.

Once they save the file, they can then run the following command on a terminal:

docker run --name minecraft -p 19132:19132/udp -v path/to/proxy.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro -d nginx

Make sure they replace path/to/proxy.conf with the actual path of the file they created above. Everything after (and including) the : character should be left intact.

If everything worked correctly, they should now also be able to see your server in their Friends tab as if they were running it locally on their LAN.

Enjoy playing Minecraft!