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MineCraft Crossplay with Switch and Java

There’s a whole ecosystem of different MineCraft server technologies that I have yet to explore, but for now I’m able to play MineCraft from my Switch on Java Servers. I haven’t found a way to play on Java Realms, but for now I can make do with this.

I needed the following:

BedrockConnect DNS
GeyserMC
Java Server

BedrockConnect DNS

I did not run BedrockConnect, I just entered one of the Public BedrockConnect DNS servers as my Switch primary DNS and then I put Google in for the secondary. The result is that if I’m unable to reach that DNS server, I lose access to private servers on my Switch and end up connecting to the regular featured servers.

The way it works is that someone somewhere is hosting a BedrockConnect server and a DNS server, and when the Switch attempts to resolve the IP address of the featured servers (something you can’t change on the Switch,) the Switch gets an IP address for the BedrockConnect server instead of the selected featured sercer and the switch loads one of those instead of any of the featured servers. You can tell it’s working if the description for the featured server says to connect to view the server list.

GeyserMC

There are a few flavors of Geyser, I chose to run a standalone server. I’m running a Geyser server on my PinePhone. In the config.yml for Geyser I put in the Java server I wanted to be able to play on. When I hit the public BedrockConnect server I edit the server list and add an entry for my PinePhone. Once I pick my Geyser server as my destination, that will immediately forward me to my server.

After a few times of having to do the annoying Microsoft Login, I edited the config.yml to include my GamerTag as one for whom it saves the login credentials. This causes a scary message to pop up when connecting for the first time, but after doing the aka.ms/remoteconnect stuff I don’t have to log in again.

Java Server

I already have a Java Server running. I didn’t make any changes to it at all. In fact, I’ve connected to a few different ones by swapping out the Geyser config.yml and relaunching Geyser whenever I want to change servers.

All together

So, I pick one of the major servers from the menu, it sends me to a public system that has replaced the featured server entries, from there I enter the address of my Geyser server, and then Geyser forwards me to my Java Minecraft server.

That was easy

It seems easy, and it kind of is, but the documentation for doing it is written by people that have done it before and seemingly want to include every damn option possible in the setup documentation and reading through it was not fun. The docs kept mentioning all kinds of other projects and products that you could also use. I just needed one way that worked so I could use it and then maybe look for a better way. Even here the details are pretty bare, but that’s because I wrote this for future me.

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