How to Join Any Minecraft Server on the Nintendo Switch

howtogeek.com:

The Nintendo Switch runs Minecraft Bedrock Edition, which has cross-play with other platforms. Due to platform restrictions, the Switch isn’t normally allowed to access any private servers. However, with a few easy tweaks, you can play on any Minecraft server you want.

Minecraft for Nintendo Switch is a version of Bedrock Edition which is able to cross-play with PC, Xbox, and PS4/PS5 users. However, you can only play on Minecraft Realms, Mojang’s paid hosting service, and some featured public servers.

Unlike other platforms, there’s no built-in option to just put in an IP address and connect to any server you want. This is largely done due to legal restrictions with console manufacturers and age ratings—only the servers with sufficient chat moderation and trusted to be in the “featured” list are allowed.

Realms are a great way to play with friends, but they cost money and come with many restrictions. For example, they don’t support many plugins that you may want to install, and it’s much more cumbersome to manage worlds and datapacks through the game’s interface. On top of not being a great server host already, Realms is typically more expensive than running a server yourself.

To get around these restrictions, we will be using a service called BedrockConnect. This is a proxy service, which means it tunnels your network connection much like a VPN does. It uses a custom DNS server to trick the game into thinking you’re connecting to an officially allowed server, when really, you’re connecting to the proxy. From there, you can add any server with its address, and connect to it.

Using BedrockConnect is quite simple once it’s set up, so if you’re a parent wanting to set this up for a kid, they shouldn’t have any issue connecting