How can I play online with a friend?

There are a couple ways you can play with your friend:

1. Connect to his Wifi. If you or your friend have a laptop, you might be able to go over to his house and play using LAN, or vice versa.
2. Create an online server. This is probably the most common way to play with distances friends. You can do this by either setting up a server with a free or paid hosting service such as Aternos or Scalacube.
3. Play on a public server. Using a chat app such as Discord, you might be able to find a good public server that you can play on together.
4. Host a server with your PC. If you have a good enough PC and internet, you can run a server file that anyone can connect to.

These are the only ways that I know you could play with your friend from a distance.

When playing Minecraft, you can play a single player or multiplayer game. If you'd like to play with other people, there are three options:

Online server Minecraft Realms Split screen (console versions only)

Playing on an Online Server

Minecraft: Java Edition

You play on an online server by locating and connecting to the IP address of a multiplayer server.

A multiplayer server allows two or more players to play Minecraft together. You can either download the server file needed to set up your own server from Minecraft.net or connect to another person’s server.

To connect to another player's server, log into Minecraft, select Multiplayer from the main menu, click the Add Server button, and enter the IP or web address of that server. If you don't know the IP of a server, thousands of public servers can be located by doing a web search for something that suits your style of play.

Note that to access a server you need to run the same version of Minecraft as the server. If you need help with this, you can learn more in our article on Changing game version.

For general information about servers, see the Minecraft Wiki's server page. For more detailed information on setting up your own server, check out the wiki's Server Tutorials.

Minecraft for Windows 10/Xbox/Mobile Devices

For Minecraft on these platforms there is three official servers available: Mineplex, InPvP and Lifeboat. You can join any of these three from the servers tab by pressing one of them.

It’s also possible to add an external server by pressing Add Server and then put in the necessary information. If you need help locating this information, please contact the server owner. Note: due to platform restrictions, this feature is not available on consoles.

Playing on Minecraft Realms Minecraft Realms is a multiplayer service developed by Mojang. Setup is quick and through the game client and allows for you and up to ten friends to play simultaneously.

Minecraft: Java Edition

You can learn more about Minecraft Realms for PC/Java Edition at Minecraft.net/realms, or browse through our Realms help section.

All other platforms:

Take a look at Minecraft Realms for Win10/Xbox/mobile devices or head over to Minecraft.net/realms.