Join a Minecraft server on console, without changing the DNS

Search for “how to join a Minecraft server on PS5” and you find the same recipe everywhere: go to the console’s network settings, replace the DNS with an address given in the article, relaunch Minecraft, open a partner server, and a menu appears. The recipe has existed since 2019, it is called BedrockConnect, and it has helped a lot of people. It also has a flaw: it breaks often, and when it breaks, nobody knows why. Here is what it really does, and how Huby gets the same result without touching a single setting.

What the DNS method does, and why it breaks

On console, Minecraft has no “Add server” button. The Servers tab only shows Mojang’s partner servers. The DNS trick consists of lying to the console: when it asks “where is The Hive’s server?”, the modified DNS answers with the address of a different server, which shows a server menu instead of the expected game. The player picks one, and that intermediate server transfers them.

It is clever, and fragile at every link:

• The DNS setting is per Wi-Fi network. Change your router, go to a friend’s, and you start over.
• It applies to the whole console. The store, updates and other games all go through that DNS. If it is slow or down, everything is.
• Some consoles occasionally ignore the setting, or the game reaches the partner servers by another route. The menu does not appear, with no error message.
• The public DNS server everyone uses is sometimes overloaded or switched off. Thousands of consoles depend on a handful of addresses.
• Every major Minecraft update can change how the game resolves addresses, and break everything until a fix lands.

The result: whole threads of “bedrockconnect dns not working”, and players who eventually give up.

What Huby does instead

Huby starts from a door the console has never closed: joining a friend’s world. That feature exists on every console, it is official, and it has no reason to disappear.

Huby runs an Xbox account, HubyOnMC, whose world is open around the clock. You add it as a friend (the request is accepted automatically), you join its world from the Friends tab, and you land in a small world that shows a server menu. You pick one, and the game transfers you: exactly the mechanism the big Bedrock networks use to move you between minigames.

No setting is changed. Nothing depends on the DNS. Your other games are not affected. And if Huby is down for maintenance, you see it right away: its world is not joinable, instead of a menu that fails to appear with no explanation.

What it changes in practice

• Once and for all. The friend stays in your list. Next time, it is Play, Friends, Huby.
• Everywhere. At home, at a friend’s, on holiday: nothing to reconfigure.
• Your list follows you. The servers you add in Huby are tied to your Microsoft account. You find them on another console, on your phone, on Windows.
• Reversible in one move. Remove HubyOnMC from your friends, and nothing is left.

What Huby does not change

Huby works no miracles on three points. You need a Microsoft account signed in to Minecraft, because friends and worlds go through the Xbox network; it is free, and the game walks you through it. Your console has to allow online play: according to the publishers, Game Pass Core on Xbox and Nintendo Switch Online on Switch, and PlayStation Plus may be required on PlayStation. And the destination server has to accept Bedrock players: a Bedrock server, or a Java server that has installed Geyser, like SileneMC.

Where to start

Every machine has its guide, in the order of the game’s menus: PS5, PS4, Xbox, Switch. If you still have a modified DNS in your console, set it back to automatic before you start: Huby doesn’t need it, and neither does your console. And if something gets stuck, the FAQ answers the common blockers, and Discord the rest.