download a friends minecraft world using realms How to Play Minecraft with Friends. For years, Minecraft has been known as one of the world’s most popular video games. While many may think that this is due to the expansive features and seemingly endless possibilities in single-player, one of the main reasons is the ability to play Minecraft with your friends – even those who are far away. Minecraft singleplayer is great for sure, however, one can really expand their gameplay experience simply by playing multiplayer with others. There are many ways to play with friends, including LAN servers which allow you to connect with players who are on the same internet as you, Realms which allow you to play across the globe, and servers which is by far the most popular option as it allows you to play modded Minecraft with your friends. You may be wondering how you can play Minecraft online and which option is best for you. That is why in this guide we’ll be breaking down the different ways to connect and play together. How to Play Minecraft with Friends on PC. LAN World. In Minecraft, you have the ability to connect with friends through LAN. This will be accessible only to others within your local network. For example, if your friend is over at your house and connected to your wifi, you can create a LAN world to join. How to make a LAN world. Open up Minecraft, and join your single-player world. Press the escape key to open up your Game Menu. Press “Open to LAN”, then select if you want to allow cheats and what game mode you want the other users to have, then press “Start LAN World”. How to join a LAN world. In Minecraft, click on the “Multiplayer” tab. Scroll to the bottom of the list, you should see a message that says “Scanning for games on your local network”. Once it finds the world, you will see a listing named “LAN World” with your friends username and the world name under it. Double click it to join, or select it and press “Join Server”. Minecraft Server. Owning a Minecraft server is one of the best ways for you and your friends to connect with each other through Minecraft. Having your own server stands on top of the other options for a few reasons: You can set it to any version of Minecraft, you can modify it past Vanilla, and servers don’t cap the number of players who can join (of course, you would need a powerful server depending on the number of players you want online.) Playing Minecraft Java Edition with friends on a modded server is one of the most flexible, and fun, ways to enjoy the game. Keep in mind that you cannot join a Bedrock Edition server off of your Xbox, PS4, Nintendo Switch, or any other similar platform. It can only be joined from PC (Windows 10 Edition), IOS, and Android. The directions on creating a server are directed to creating one through Apex Hosting. You can also create one on your home computer, but this is not recommended as many factors play into owning a server such as DDoS protection, 24/7 uptime, support, etc. All of which are provided by Apex. How to create a Minecraft Server. Head to the pricing page on our website. You are going to see a few different plans here. We have a guide that goes over how much ram you will need here. Once you decide what plan you want, go ahead and click on “Order Now”, then proceed to follow the instructions. Once you have paid for your server, you will receive an email with all of your account information for our Game Panel. With Apex, the server is created for you. On the Game Panel, you will see your IP address. This can be used to connect to the server. How to join a Minecraft Java Edition Server. Open Minecraft and go into the “Multiplayer” tab. Towards the bottom, click on “Add Server”. Put any name under “Server Name” and then enter the server IP address and port, then press “Done”. After pressing done, this will take you back to the multiplayer tab, you should see the server now listed. Select the server and press “Join Server”. You should now be connected to the server. How to join a Minecraft Bedrock Edition Server. Open Minecraft and press “Play”. Select the “Servers” tab, then press “Add Server”. Fill in any name for “Server Name”, then type in the IP address without the port into the “Server Address” slot. After that, fill in the “Port” slot with your server port. Press “Save”, then scroll down and click on the server to join it. Realms. Alternatively, if you do not want to use server hosting, you can use Minecraft’s built-in Realms. This is not recommended as Realms does not allow the use of mods/plugins, it limits player slots significantly and restricts who can and cannot join, and it’s quite pricey for what you are getting. Ontop of all of that, you do not get any of the benefits that come along with server hosting such as 24/7 support, one-click modpack and gametype installations, the ability to create a public world that anyone can join, and much more. However, if you want to play Minecraft with friends on Xbox, PS4 or Switch. How to create a Realms Server for Java Edition. Open Minecraft and press “Minecraft Realms” To the bottom of Minecraft, click on “Buy Realm”. This will take you to Minecraft’s website where you can set up your subscription. If you already had a Realm setup, you will see a listing with it. You can press “Subscribe” which will also take you to Minecraft’s website so you can set up the Realms. Once you have paid for it, head back to the Realms tab in Minecraft and you should see the listing with a green light. Press it and then click the “Play” button. How to join a Realms Server in Java Edition. To join a Realms Server, you must have been invited. To invite someone to your Realms, go to Configure Realms, then press the Players tab. Click on the + and type in your friend’s username to send them an invitation. To the top of your Realms page, you should see a little icon named “New Invitations!”. If you click that, you can see the Realms you have been invited to. Simply select it and press “Play”. How to create a Realms Server for Bedrock Edition. Open Minecraft, and click “Play”. On this page, you will need to be in the “Worlds” tabs. If you are signed in to an Xbox Live account, you can start a new Realms by clicking on “Create New”. Once you click that, you can either create a new world or use a premade Realms world. If you aren’t signed in, you can use the free 30-day trial option. Locate the section named “Realms” at the top and click on the listing for your Realm. Click on “Buy Now” and follow the instructions to pay for your first month. How to join a Realms Server in Bedrock Edition. You need to be invited to a Realms in order to join it. You can invite a player by clicking on the pencil icon next to your Realm’s name, then select “Members”. Click the “Share” tab which will bring up an invite link. Send this link to your friends. This will prompt them to sign in/sign up to their Xbox Live account, then it will add them to your Realm’s whitelist. If you are invited to your friend’s Realm, click on the “Friends” tab and you should see a listing, select it to join. Conclusion. It’s time to jump into the world of Minecraft along with your friends! With so many different ways to join, you may have trouble deciding which is the best option for you. If you want to just play Vanilla Minecraft with people who live in the same house as you, the LAN option is the best. If you want to play Vanilla Minecraft with a few friends across the world, either Realms or a server is best. Having the server would be more cost- effective than realms as they are generally going to be cheaper than the Realm’s starting price at $3.99 for just 2 players. Minecraft Servers also allow for customizations such as plugins and mods, and for expansion globally so your server can attract more than just your group of friends. If you host your server with Apex, you also get access to our premade gametypes, modpacks, 24/7 support, and customized game panel. All of this information may seem like quite a bit, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not too bad. Playing Minecraft with friends adds a whole new experience to the game. Start Your Minecraft Server. Get started with your own minecraft server in 5 min and start trying out these great features. How to Back Up and Restore Your Minecraft Realms Worlds. Jason Fitzpatrick is the Editor in Chief of LifeSavvy, How-To Geek's sister site focused life hacks, tips, and tricks. He has over a decade of experience in publishing and has authored thousands of articles at Review Geek, How-To Geek, and Lifehacker. Jason served as Lifehacker's Weekend Editor before he joined How-To Geek. Read more. It’s easy to invest a lot of energy in your Minecraft creations. Thankfully, it’s just as easy to back them up. Read on as we show you how to ensure your Minecraft Realms worlds are safe and sound. Why Do I Want To Do This? While the most obvious reason for backing up your Minecraft Realms world is simply to have a safe second copy of it, it’s actually a bit more nuanced than that. Yes, you always want to back up anything you’ve worked so hard on. While Minecraft Realms is a top-notch service run by Mojang itself, there’s always room for potential error and any world you’ve invested any serious energy in building–large structures, towns, or Redstone creations– should be backed up every now and then just to play it safe. In addition to backing up your world to protect against unlikely server failure, it’s also practical to back up your worlds to protect against the much-more-likely chance that your friends (or you) might do something that causes a great big mess. Take, for example, the lovely village in the screenshot above. We’ve been encouraging the villagers to breed, and we’re about to start working on building fortifications around the village. It’s not a huge project yet, but it is a pain to find a good village in a survival world. We’ve already done a fair bit of work inside the buildings, and stored a lot of supplies in chests. What could go wrong at this stage? We’re not going to name any names but somebody tried jazzing up one of the bigger village houses with a fireplace that clearly didn’t meet Minecraft building code for fire containment, and the next time we logged in we found the village ablaze with fire spreading from roof to roof. This is a perfect example of where both the built-in Minecraft Realms backup system (which does on-server backups) and the restore-from- backup function (where you upload backups you’ve kept on your computer) prove very useful. Backup is also useful when you want to take a world you like out of rotation, but keep it available for later play. Minecraft Realms only has four total world slots and one of them is reserved for minigames, thus you can only have three traditional worlds loaded at any given time. There is a good chance that at some point in the lifespan of your Realms server, you will have a world you’re not ready to truly delete yet, but don’t often play. Downloading a just-in-case backup so you can return to the world later on is a great way to avoid losing your build forever. Finally, there’s a use case that gets away from pure backups: working on your world offline. Let’s say that you’re going to be somewhere without reliable Internet access for an extended period of time and you’d like to use some of that time to work on your world. You can use the backup function to download your Minecraft Realms world right to your laptop and take it with you (only to turn right back around after your trip and upload it with all your additions). Let’s take a look at how to do all those things–server backup, local machine backup, and world restoration–now. How to Back Up Your Minecraft Realm. There are two ways to back up your Minecraft Realms worlds. The first uses the server-side backup system which happens automatically in the background so even if you’re not on top of your backup routine, there are server-side backups to restore from. The second method involves actually downloading your Minecraft Realms world to your local PC where you can store it, play it, or both. We’ll take a look at both methods but first you’ll need to launch Minecraft, click on “Minecraft Realms” on the main menu, and then click on the configuration wrench seen in the screenshot above. Force a Server Backup. We noted in the beginning of this section that server-side backups occur automatically in the background at intervals while your server is active. Curiously, however, there is no GUI button or in-game console command where you can force a backup, like typing “/backup” while playing on the server. Nonetheless, you can actually force a backup in a clever way if you need to. If you and your friends are planning on doing a major change to your builds that would be really annoying (if not impossible) to reverse, this is a great little trick. Pull up the configuration menu of your Realms server and unload your current world and temporarily replace it with a minigame by selecting the Minigame button, seen above, and picking a game. This is a completely undocumented trick, but it works like a charm. When you switch to the minigame level (you don’t even have to load the minigame and actually play it), Realms automatically performs an immediate backup of your current world before unloading it and replacing it with the minigame. Simply select your world (e.g. “World 1”) to reload it and the backup process is complete. Download a Server Backup to Your Computer. If you want a copy of the world from your Realms server on your local PC, either for archival purposes or for playing offline, you can download it easily. Make sure the world you wish to back up is the active world. For demonstration purposes we’re downloading “World 1” which, as seen in the screenshot above, is the currently loaded world. With the world selected you wish to download the backup for, select “World backups”. Here you can select “Download Latest” to download the latest backup of your world. A warning screen will display, indicating that the current world will be downloaded and added to your single player worlds on your local PC. Click yes that you want to continue and the world will be downloaded and stored with the other single player worlds on your PC. From here, you can load up a single player game and play the map or you can copy the worlds folder out of the Minecraft directory and store it separately from Minecraft to ensure that it stays in a pristine state (which, if you’re doing this for backup purposes only and not local play, we highly recommend). For information on how to backup your Minecraft local saves, if you’re unfamiliar with the process, check out our guide on the subject here. How to Restore Your Minecraft Realm. Just like there are two ways to back up your Minecraft Realms world, there are two ways to restore it. You can restore your worlds from server- side backups (which is a single click affair and can be performed even if you have no local backups) or from saves located on your local computer. Restore from a Server-Side Backup. You’re in the game, you realize you just goofed something up pretty big (like, I don’t know, lighting the roof line of the entire village on fire), and you want to immediately jump back to the last save point. Just hop back into the configuration menu (via the wrench icon on the main Minecraft Realms screen) and select the “World backups” button as we did in the previous section of the tutorial. Select the little red restore arrow next to the version of the world you wish to restore. You’ll receive a confirmation screen detailing the time and date the restoration was created and prompting you to confirm or deny the restoration. Confirm the restoration to continue. Once the restoration is complete, and it should only take a moment or two, you can jump right back into your world. Here’s our village, seen from the opposite side, with all the roof lines intact thanks to our backup-restoration firefighting technique. Restore from a Local Backup. To restore from a local backup, you essentially perform the same steps we outlined in our guide to uploading custom worlds to Minecraft Realms, except this time you’re not uploading a world you downloaded or started on your local machine, but a world you’ve previously downloaded from your Realms server. Select the world you wish to restore, in our case “World 1”, and then select “Reset world”. In the reset world menu, you’ll be warned that the process will delete your current world and then be prompted to make a world change selection. Select “Upload world”. Look for the local entry that matches the Realms name, the world name, and the backup date of the file you wish to upload. In the screenshot above, you can see the world is clearly labeled “Blockland (World 1)”. If you do not see the world you wish to upload in the list this means that it is not in the local Minecraft /saves/ directory (most likely because you moved it somewhere else during the backup process), you’ll need to take a copy of the world folder and dump it back into the /saves/ directory. Select the “Upload” button and your local world save will be uploaded to your Minecraft Realms server. Set that world map as the current one and then hop right back into the world and resume play as if it was the day you backed the map up. Minecraft Realms: Are They Worth It? Want a Minecraft server of your own? Maybe realms will do. Tweet Share Email. Consoles & PCs Gaming Services Game Play & Streaming Mobile Gaming. Playing Mojang's Minecraft with friends can be difficult and costly, depending on how you set it up. The developer created Minecraft Realms to simplify the setup and provide an easy way to play with up to 10 of your friends. What Is a Minecraft Realm? Minecraft Realms are Mojang’s answer to hosting a Minecraft server. Playing Minecraft with friends over the internet has never been easier. For a fee of $7.99 per month or a one-time payment for 30-, 90-, or 180-day plans, Mojang sets up and hosts a private, always-online server for you and your friends. Only people you invite can play in your world, and your friends play for free in your realm. Each server has the functions you usually find in a typical Minecraft experience plus more. All of Minecraft’s various game modes (Survival, Creative, Adventure, and Spectator) are available. In addition, mini-games supported by Mojang are preloaded onto the Minecraft Realms setup. The Minecraft Hardcore Mode is not currently available in Realms. The Pros of Minecraft Realm Play. A major plus of using Minecraft Realms rather than a third-party server is convenience. When optimizing a third-party server, you usually need to go onto a website to adjust settings, hoping to find the perfect setup. With Minecraft Realms, everything is optimized in the Minecraft client itself. If you want to invite a person to your server or switch to a mini-game that Mojang has provided, upload your own world, or customize anything else, you do it all in the client. A significant downside to using Realms is the lack of support for mods. As modifications to the game are a huge part of the Minecraft experience, this can cause problems for gamers who want to play something like the Aether Mod, for example, with their friends. Minecraft Realms Security. If you’re afraid to start a server because you think uninvited guests may destroy your world, worry not. When you use a Minecraft Realm for your server, only players who are invited by you may join. As the host, you can add and remove people from a safe list with ease. Worlds are automatically backed up for server safety. You can invite up to 200 players to access to your server, although only 10 can play at any given time. Minecraft Realms Platform Compatibility. Two versions of Minecraft Realms are available from Mojang: Minecraft Realms version for mobile devices, consoles, and Windows 10 platforms Minecraft: Java Edition for PC, Mac, and Linux platforms. The two versions are incompatible, so players using Minecraft: Java Edition on a Mac or pre-Windows 10 computer can't play with players on a mobile device or console. Overall, Minecraft Realms are a worthwhile and official answer to creating and managing a server for Minecraft if you want a simple gaming experience. Hosting your own server provides a user-friendly alternative to third-party server hosts. However, Minecraft Realms are not for everybody. If you’re into the scene of modding, you should stick with a host that allows those adjustments. Minecraft Realms Will Have Cross-Platform Support. The thing about consoles is that Microsoft and Sony have their own online services, which is why usually multiplayer games aren’t cross-platform compatible. This means that despite playing the same game, PS4 players can’t play with Xbox One gamers, and vice versa, which can be disappointing for some gamers. However the good news is that if you play Minecraft Realms, Mojang has recently announced that the game will support cross-platform play. What this means is that regardless of what platform you’re playing the game on, whether it be console, PC, or even mobile, you will be able to play together. That being said, we should point out that this only applies to Minecraft Realms. If you aren’t a subscriber then we guess you’re out of luck. For those unfamiliar, Minecraft Realms is basically Mojang renting you out a server to host your games on, which is why we guess they have control over who gets to play with who. The only downside is that the servers only support up to 10 players at once, so if you have a huge group then we guess maybe it isn’t really for you. However as Kotaku notes, it is possible that the limit is expanded eventually, especially if cross-platform play becomes a huge hit with the game. Update : to clarify the image above, it is for illustration purposes only. The actual platforms on which cross-play will be available remain to be determined. The Minecraft Team has this statement for our readers: We are working toward a future where Minecraft players can play together using the devices they want. As we announced at E3, we are working on bringing cross-device multiplayer to consoles next year in addition to the cross-device multiplayer we have today on mobile, Gear VR and Windows 10. The image tweeted was an error – while we are working on enabling our players to play together on the devices they prefer, we don’t have further to share at this time. – Minecraft spokesperson. Minecraft Forums. I dont see an option for it in the management GUI, and when I put one into my world save file, it works fine on Singleplayer, but when I upload it to my Realm, it goes away. View User Profile View Posts Send Message. Tree Puncher Join Date: 8/18/2015 Posts: 22 Member Details. The Wiki says that you can, but I have no idea how. View User Profile View Posts Send Message. Out of the Water Join Date: 9/16/2018 Posts: 2 Member Details. I know this is 3 years old but has this been resolved? Does it work for MCPE? The instructions for how to do it are here: https://minecraft.net/en-us/addons/faq/ (under "How Do I Use Add-Ons On Realms"). But I followed those steps and they don't work for me. Same results as Nawor3566. Works in single-player but when I put the world on Realms (using "Replace World"), then it's as if the add-on doesn't exist. Note: built world and uploaded to Realms on MCPE for Windows10. Checked the box that says players must download resource packs to join. Tried playing Realm world on Windows10 and iPad. No add-on.