MC LAN Proxy — Help & Support

Try this first: is the phone already saved under Servers? If you once added this phone's address there by hand, Minecraft will not also show it under Worlds as a LAN game. It hides the duplicate, and tells you nothing: the app keeps answering, its counters keep climbing, and the world simply never appears. Open Play → Servers, delete the entry for this phone, then look under Worlds again.

Otherwise it is almost always one of five things. Work down the list — each takes under a minute.

1. Is the console actually looking? Minecraft only scans for LAN games while you are sitting on Play → Worlds (Friends on older versions). Open that tab and wait ten seconds. Backing out and returning forces a fresh scan.
2. Same network, really? Check the Wi-Fi name on the phone and the network name on the console. Phones very often sit on the 5 GHz half of a router while the console is on the 2.4 GHz half. If both bands share one name this is invisible — see section 6.
3. Try the alternative connection setting. In the app there is a checkbox labelled "Server not showing up on your console? Try this". It changes how the app answers your console's question about which port to use. Neither setting is more correct than the other; if one does not work, the other usually does. Toggle it, then re-open that tab.
4. Is another app holding the port? Minecraft's LAN discovery uses UDP port 19132, and only one app on the phone can hold it. Other Minecraft server or proxy apps will take it — uninstall them, then restart the phone.
5. Restart the phone. Android occasionally fails to release that port after an app closes badly, and nothing in the app can force it. A restart clears it. If you would rather not restart, go to Settings → Apps → MC LAN Proxy and use Force stop first.

During your very first session the app shows these tips by itself if no console has found it after a minute, next to a Check my setup button. That button checks the network, the LAN port, the server, notifications and battery restrictions in one go, and says which one is wrong.

Still nothing? Check whether your router has client isolation switched on — that one blocks devices from seeing each other while the internet still works perfectly. Section 6 covers it.

First: are you using the free version?

A free session lasts 12 minutes. When it runs out the proxy stops and your console loses the server — which looks exactly like a crash if your phone is in your pocket and you are looking at a TV.

The app does tell you. Two minutes in, a countdown appears on the main screen, a Watch ad - Extend time button appears next to it, and a notification goes to your phone. None of that helps if you are not looking at the phone, which is most people, most of the time.

You have three options:

• Watch a short ad to keep playing. One ad buys at least 15 minutes, and more if the ad runs longer — a second of ad is worth a minute of play, up to an hour. You can do this as often as you like.
• Glance at the phone occasionally and extend before the countdown runs out. Extending early does not waste the time you have left.
• Get the full version for unlimited sessions and no ads.

If you are on the full version, or you have watched an ad and it still cuts out well before your remaining time, read on — that is a different problem.

Otherwise: your phone is closing the app

This is nearly always your phone closing the app to save battery, and it is the single most common complaint about every app of this kind.

Android is allowed to kill a background app whenever it likes, and several manufacturers do so aggressively — often within minutes of the screen going off. When that happens the proxy stops mid-game and your console simply loses the server. The app cannot warn you, because it is gone.

Go to section 4 and allow the app to run unrestricted.

If you have already done that and it still drops

• If your version of the app shows a connection reading on the main screen, check what it says. If the server stopped answering, the problem is at the other end and no phone setting will fix it.
• Weak Wi-Fi where the phone is sitting. Move the phone nearer the router; it is doing real network work, so its signal matters as much as the console's.
• Some phones throttle Wi-Fi hard with the screen off no matter what you allow. Leaving the phone plugged in with the screen on is the blunt test — if that fixes it, it is the phone, not the app or the server.
• Sign out of your Microsoft account in Minecraft on the console and sign back in. Bedrock's session handling drops connections in ways that look like a network fault, and this genuinely clears it.

"Port already in use"

The app needs UDP port 19132 — the port Minecraft uses to find LAN games. Exactly one app on the phone can hold it, and the app cannot take it from whoever has it.

1. Uninstall other Minecraft server or proxy apps. They grab the same port, usually in the background where you cannot see them.
2. Restart the phone. This is the reliable fix. Android sometimes keeps the port reserved after an app has stopped, and a restart is the only thing that clears it.
3. Force stop this app first if you would rather not restart: Settings → Apps → MC LAN Proxy → Force stop, then open it again.

The Start button is greyed out (free version)

Nothing is broken — the free version is waiting for something. There are two cases, and the app says which one under the buttons:

• "Getting an ad ready…" — an ad is loading before the session starts. It usually takes a few seconds. (Your first three Starts after installing show no ad at all.) If it never finishes, your phone may have no internet connection, or there may be no ad available right now; leave the screen and come back.
• "You can start again in … s." — a short cool-down after a session was cut off. Wait for the countdown to reach zero and Start comes back.

Neither of these exists in the full version.

• Check the spelling, and check for a space or invisible character at the start or end. Pasting from a website or a chat message is where these come from.
• Use the address, not an in-game number. It should look like play.example.com. A number you copied off a server list is often already out of date.
• Do not include the colon or the port in the address box. See section 2.
• The phone needs internet, not just Wi-Fi. If the Wi-Fi itself is offline the address cannot be looked up.
• Check the port. Most Bedrock servers use 19132, but plenty do not, and the server's own website is the place to confirm it.

Every packet takes an extra hop through the phone, so the phone's Wi-Fi quality is now part of your connection quality.

• If your version of the app shows a connection reading on the main screen, look at it. It gives the round trip to the server in milliseconds and how many test pings went missing. Under about 100 ms is comfortable; anything over roughly 250 ms, or noticeable packet loss, is what rubber-banding feels like.
• Move the phone closer to the router, or plug it in somewhere with a better signal.
• Distant servers stay distant. High latency with no packet loss means you are simply far from that server, and one hosted closer to you will play better.
• Other traffic on your Wi-Fi — a big download or a 4K stream elsewhere in the house will show up here.

If other servers connect normally, the app is doing its job and the issue is specific to that server.

• The server may be offline or full. Check its website or Discord before anything else.
• Version mismatch. After a Minecraft update, servers take time to catch up, and a server on an older version will refuse newer clients outright. This is the most common reason a server that worked yesterday stops today.
• Sign out of your Microsoft account and back in on the console. Worth doing after every Minecraft update.
• Some large networks do not accept console connections arriving this way, or require sign-in steps a console cannot complete. That is the server's policy and nothing in this app can change it.
• Check the port — see above. A server on a non-standard port fails in a way that looks exactly like the server being down.

Every Android phone has this one, whatever else the manufacturer adds:

1. Open Settings → Apps
2. Find and tap MC LAN Proxy
3. Tap Battery (it may be under App battery usage)
4. Choose Unrestricted

On several brands this alone is not enough — find your manufacturer below as well.

Samsung is the strictest of the mainstream brands, and it needs three separate settings changed. Menu names shift between One UI versions, so look for the nearest match.

1. Remove it from battery optimisation

1. Settings → Apps
2. Tap the ⋮ menu (top right) → Special access
3. Optimise battery usage
4. Switch the list at the top to All apps
5. Turn the switch off for MC LAN Proxy

2. Stop it being put to sleep

1. Settings → Battery (older phones: Device care or Battery and device care)
2. Open Background usage limits
3. Make sure MC LAN Proxy is not in Sleeping apps or Deep sleeping apps — remove it if it is
4. Turn off Put unused apps to sleep

3. If it still drops

• Turn off Power saving mode entirely while you play (Settings → Battery).
• Turn off anything that optimises the phone on a schedule — it will undo the settings above overnight.

A longer Samsung walkthrough, including older Galaxy models, is at samsung_battery_fix.html.

1. Settings → Apps → Manage apps → MC LAN Proxy
2. Tap Battery saver and choose No restrictions
3. Turn on Autostart on the same screen
4. Open the recent-apps view, swipe down on the MC LAN Proxy card, and tap the padlock so the system cannot clear it

Also check Settings → Battery → Battery saver is off while you play.

1. Settings → Battery → Background power consumption management (or App battery management)
2. Select MC LAN Proxy and choose Allow background running / Don't restrict background activity
3. Settings → Apps → Auto-launch — turn it on for MC LAN Proxy
4. On OnePlus, also turn off Advanced optimisation / Deep optimisation under Settings → Battery

1. Settings → Battery → App launch
2. Find MC LAN Proxy and switch it from Manage automatically to Manage manually
3. In the box that appears, turn all three on: Auto-launch, Secondary launch and Run in background
4. Turn off Settings → Battery → Power saving mode while you play

1. Settings → Battery → High background power consumption — allow MC LAN Proxy
2. Settings → Apps → Autostart — turn it on
3. In recent apps, lock the MC LAN Proxy card

These follow stock Android, so the standard setting is usually all you need:

1. Settings → Apps → MC LAN Proxy → Battery
2. Choose Unrestricted

If sessions still end, check that Battery Saver and Adaptive Battery are off while you play.

Yes, in Switch mode, which is experimental. The Switch does not look for LAN games, so the normal method cannot reach it. In Switch mode the app instead publishes your server to Xbox Live as a friend's world, and it appears in the Friends tab on the Switch. Choose Nintendo Switch, or any Bedrock device in the app to use it. It is free in both versions.

Read this before you use it. To do that, the app has to sign in to a Microsoft account and behave like the Minecraft client. Microsoft has not approved that, and accounts have been banned for it. A ban can affect the whole Microsoft account, not just Minecraft. Use a spare account, never your main one. The phone also stays in the data path, so the Switch must be on the same Wi-Fi as the phone.

It has been tested on a Bedrock client; we have not yet confirmed it on a Switch itself.

A step-by-step version is at Minecraft servers on Nintendo Switch.

Yes. From version 6.1 the app answers Minecraft's old LAN discovery (RakNet, UDP 19132) and the new one (NetherNet, UDP 7551) at the same time. In our tests a 26.60 client no longer showed a LAN game found the old way, so update the app before 26.60 arrives. The details are under Minecraft 26.60 and NetherNet.

A console cannot add an arbitrary server address by itself, so this app makes the server appear as a LAN game. Put the phone and console on the same Wi-Fi, enter the server address and port in the app, press Start, then open Play → Worlds on the console and join it. The full steps are in Quick start.

No. A Realm has no public address to point the app at — Minecraft reaches it through your Microsoft account rather than through a hostname and port. There is nothing for the app to relay to.

Realms already appear on your console without any help, so nothing is lost.

Yes. The app keeps a separate connection for each device that joins, so several consoles on the same Wi-Fi can play through one phone at the same time.

They all share that phone's connection, so if the Wi-Fi is marginal it will show up sooner with two consoles than with one.

No — only until you have joined. The console scans for LAN games while Worlds is open (Friends on older versions), which is how it finds the server in the first place. Once you are in the game, it does not matter where you are in the menus.

Yes. The app is not doing a one-off setup — it is relaying every packet between your console and the server for as long as you play. Close it and the connection ends immediately.

You can lock the screen and pocket the phone. You cannot swipe the app away, and you should make sure your phone is not closing it for you — see section 4.

In the normal mode the app does not modify Minecraft, does not touch your account, and gives you no advantage in-game. It makes a server visible to your console on your own network, which is the same thing several long-standing tools do.

Switch mode is different. It signs in to a Microsoft account and publishes to Xbox Live, which Microsoft has not approved, and accounts have been banned for it. See Does it work on Nintendo Switch? before you use it.

Individual servers set their own rules, and a server is free to decline connections for any reason. This app is not affiliated with any server.

Neither. It runs entirely on the phone, with no root and nothing else installed anywhere.

Battery use is modest but real — it is keeping the network awake for the whole session, so expect roughly what a long video call costs.

Data only matters if the phone is on mobile rather than Wi-Fi, since all game traffic passes through it. On Wi-Fi it costs you nothing extra.

Both versions connect to servers, and the connection itself works identically in both. Everything the app tells you about whether it is working — the status messages, the error explanations — is in both versions too.

The free version limits a session to 12 minutes, after which the proxy stops. You can extend it as often as you like by watching a short ad — one ad is worth at least 15 minutes — or end the limit entirely with the full version.

The free version also gives you a gentle start: the first three Starts after installing show no ad, and while those last, Switch mode needs no ad either. The built-in server directory can be opened three times for free.

The full version removes the ads and the session limit, and adds saved favourites, the built-in server directory and the connection history.

There are two separate listings on Google Play: a free one with ads and a paid one. Buying the unlock inside the free app gives you the same result as the paid listing — you do not need both.

Updating the app never clears them. The usual causes are clearing the app's storage in Android settings, uninstalling and reinstalling, or switching between the free and paid listings — those are two separate apps to Android, so they keep separate data.

Android requires a visible notification from any app doing continuous work in the background. It is not an advert, and it is what keeps the system from treating the app as idle and shutting it down. Hiding it will stop the app working.