CouchPortal
The server you want,
on the console you own.
Minecraft on PlayStation and Xbox will show you a handful of servers someone else picked, and gives you no way at all to type in an address. CouchPortal is an iPhone and iPad app that puts the server you choose in front of your console anyway.
How it works
1. Pick a server on your phone
Type an address, or pick one you saved. Keep as many as you like; the free version has no limit on them.
2. CouchPortal checks it before anything else
It pings the server and tells you plainly whether it answered, with the version and the player count if it did. A wrong port, a server that is down, and a version mismatch are all caught here — before you have touched the console, and before any ad plays.
3. Open Minecraft on the console
The server appears under Friends, in the list of LAN games. Tap it, and you are in.
The phone is not a relay
This is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes the app usable rather than a novelty. When your console taps the server, it talks to the phone just long enough to receive a single instruction pointing at the real server. From that moment the console is connected directly, and the phone has stopped mattering — you can lock it, close the app, or walk out of the room. Nothing about your game passes through the phone, so it adds no lag and drains nothing.
Apps that proxy the whole session have to stay open and in the foreground for as long as you play, which iOS does not really allow. Handing off instead of relaying is why CouchPortal does not ask that of you.
Which consoles
PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, and Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. The handoff was developed and proven against a PS5, and Xbox uses the same mechanism.
Not Nintendo Switch, and not because of anything we chose. The Switch version of Minecraft has no LAN games list at all, so there is nothing for a discovered server to appear in. No phone app using this method can reach a Switch, and any that claims otherwise is describing a different and riskier trick. We would rather say so here than sell you a download that cannot work.
Built because the failure mode is the product
There are already apps that do roughly this, some of them free and without ads, and the most visible of them sits at well under three stars. Read the reviews and the complaint is almost never the price or the advertising — it is that the connection did not work and nothing said why. That is the entire reason this app exists, and it is why the server check runs first, why a failed ad connects you anyway rather than blocking, and why there is a report button on the screen where things go wrong.
What it costs
Free, with one short ad break before each connection — about half a minute — and a small banner on the main screen. Everything the app does is in the free version: unlimited saved servers, the server check, the connection doctor. Nothing that ships free will ever move behind the paywall.
A single $4.99 purchase removes the ads permanently. No subscription, and it is shared with your Apple Family, so one purchase covers the household.
There is no account, and no analytics SDK. The privacy policy and support both live on couchportal.com.
NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.