How to use Minecraft Lan Mode over TS?

Hello,
A friend of mine and I regularly play minecraft together and we want to play in my world even if we are not in the same LAN.
We do not want to set up a server because we play it with nearly 100 mods, which our PCs run without lags, but a server from e.g Ploudos won’t even start.
We both have a Windows PC, I have Windows 11 and he has Windows 10.
How can I use Minecraft’s LAN feature over Tailscale?
Out of the box,it does not work, my world doesn’t get discovered even though I clicked the “open to LAN” button.

What do I have to change or set up to make it work like if we were on the same network?

Thanks in advance
Aaron

  1. Install Tailscale on your computer
  2. Register for your own Tailscale account and register your computer
  3. From the Machines tab on Tailscale.com, click the Share button and then the blue button to generate a share link
  4. Send the link to your friend
  5. Have your friend repeat steps 1-4
  6. Use one another’s share link
  7. In Minecraft’s multiplayer you must manually enter your friend’s Tailscale IP address and port. It’s the address that starts with ‘100.’ You will not be able to automatically discover LAN games over Tailscale. Or if you are hosting the game, your friend must enter your Tailscale IP address and the port of your server.

Post a reply if you have trouble with any steps.

edit: It’s possible only the person hosting the game needs to generate a share link. I haven’t tried sharing before, but in Minecraft, the game host doesn’t need to initiate a connection to the players, but the players need to be able to open a connection to the game host, and that’s what Tailscale’s sharing is supposed to allow.

Yup that’s right, only the one who acts as the Minecraft server has to share their device to the others.
Then they enter the tailscale IP of that device into their Minecraft client (+ respective port) and then will be able to connect.

@clarknova what do I have to enter in the “Server IP Address” field? I tried the TS IP without anything else, but that didn’t work.

I previously wasted so much time because I thought that it has to auto-discover the world…

Besides the IP you also have to enter the port. IIRC, then the default port of Minecraft is 25565.

So you should have to enter something like this: 100.102.103.104:25565
Or more generally: <MINECRAFT-TAILNET-IP:PORT>

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@bluefish: thank you very much for your help
I can’t try it atm because my friend has no access to his PC (he isn’t in Germany), but I will try it when he comes back