I’m using Minecraft Java Edition on Windows 10. The current version is 1.16.4 which is the most up to date at time of writing.

My son is trying to join a Realm which is played by a girl in his class and her brother. I gave them his in-game name so they could invite him, but the game couldn’t find him when they (their dad, actually) put the username in. Similarly, their dad gave me their usernames and I tried inviting them to my son’s Realms, and it couldn’t see them either.

The dad also gave me these instructions:

"If you go to join realm and type in <11-char-key> that should get him to the realm".

(for obvious reasons I don’t want to put the actual key in this post)

But, in the game, I can’t see an option to put in a key to join another realm – it seems that the only way you can connect realms is via invite.

He also have me a url:

https://realms.gg/same-key-as-above

That url seems to work in that it takes me to a page which has his son’s username on it. It has two options: "Play Minecraft" and "Download Minecraft". The Play button does nothing, and if I go to the Download page i have options to take a free trial, or buy it. But, we’ve already bought it.

I know that there are two different versions of Minecraft, Java and Bedrock. Is that the issue here? Are these kids playing on Bedrock, and because i’m in the Java edition it’s a totally different thing where you can’t play multiplayer between different versions?

If that is the case then I guess I just need to buy the Bedrock edition? We have an ongoing monthly Realms subscription – will that carry over into the Bedrock edition?

Grateful for any advice, thanks.

Edit – i’ve since discovered that

1. the other kids are playing Bedrock Edition.
2. the version I saw advertised to buy was the Windows 10 edition.

Am I able to connect to a Bedrock Edition realm from within the Windows 10 version?