On a PC or a phone, Minecraft lets you add a server by typing an address. On a PlayStation, Xbox or Switch, that field does not exist. You get a curated list and nothing else.
People assume they have missed a setting, or that it is a bug, or that their version is somehow the wrong one. None of that is true. The field was never there, and the reason is more interesting than it looks.
The short answer
Console Minecraft can only reach servers Mojang has approved in advance. That list, the Featured Servers, is a commercial arrangement between Mojang and a handful of large operators. There is no mechanism for you to add to it, because it was never meant to be a list of servers. It is a list of partners.
Why it works this way
Three things point in the same direction.
Console platforms hold publishers responsible for what players see. PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo each require that online content in a game be moderated. An open address field is a door to anything, and the publisher wears the consequences. A curated list is a bounded, reviewable set.
Minecraft’s audience is unusually young. A field where a child can type any address is a different proposition from the same field in a game played by adults. The curated list is, among other things, a child-safety decision.
The list is a business. Featured Servers carry marketplace transactions, and Mojang takes part of that. Servers on the list have commercial agreements. An open field competes with a revenue stream.
None of these is a conspiracy against you. They are ordinary consequences of shipping a game for children on platforms that hold you accountable for it.
So why do the workarounds exist, and are they legitimate?
This is the part worth understanding, because it changes how you feel about using one.
Every tool in this space works by using a feature Minecraft already ships, rather than by breaking anything.
Local network discovery. Minecraft can find games running on your own network. It is the feature that lets you join a family member who has opened a world to LAN. Your console asks, about once a second, whether anything nearby is hosting. Anything on your network is allowed to answer. A phone app answers.
Server transfers. The Minecraft protocol has always included a way for a server to send a player to a different server. Large networks use it constantly to move you between games. A connector app uses the same instruction to hand your console to the server you actually wanted.
Put together: your phone answers a question your console asked, then tells it where to go. Nothing is patched, nothing is bypassed, no file is modified, and your console does not know or care that anything unusual happened.
The DNS method is a little more indirect. It intercepts the lookup of an approved server’s address and points it somewhere else, which then shows you a list. Also not a modification of anything, though it does mean changing a network setting on your console.
Is it against the rules?
Nobody can promise you what a company will decide in future, and anyone who does is guessing.
What can be said is what has actually happened. These tools have existed since 2019. The largest is an open-source project that has been public on GitHub the whole time. The best-known phone app has been on the App Store since 2020 and is still there. In all those years, neither method has produced a documented account ban.
The one genuine exception is worth knowing. A few tools reach the Nintendo Switch by signing into a Microsoft account and publishing a fake multiplayer session. That technique does risk the account being banned, and the tools that offer it say so themselves. It is specific to that method, not to third-party servers in general.
What this means practically
If you want to play on a server that is not on Mojang’s list, you are not doing anything exotic. You are using local network discovery and a server transfer, both of which are ordinary parts of the game.
The guides for each console are here:
And if something is not working, it is very often the port rather than anything else. That is covered on the Bedrock ports page. For a comparison of the tools themselves, see the alternatives page.
One of those tools is ours
CouchPortal is a free iPhone and iPad app that does the local discovery and transfer handoff described above for PlayStation and Xbox. It does not work on Nintendo Switch, for the reason given on the Switch guide. Details at couchportal.com.
Disclosure: the owner of this wiki has a financial interest in CouchPortal.
NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.
