Play Multiplayer LAN with a Single Minecraft Account on Java Edition
With the recent update of the Minecraft Java Edition, the client now logs in and checks the profile each time it runs. It does this when the launcher runs, and also when the Minecraft game client is launched. As such you can no longer simple edit the launcher_profiles.json and change the profile name in order to play multiplayer LAN with a single Minecraft account.
Why multiplayer LAN with a Single Minecraft Account?
You will need a valid license If you want to play online and have the full experience of Minecraft. There’s no way around this. All Minecraft servers out in the world requires a valid and authenticated account.
However, if all you want is to play multiplayer on a local Minecraft server completely offline, you can do this without having a full Minecraft license running on each computer running Minecraft.
Running a local Minecraft server
This isn’t a complete guide on how to run a local server. To do so, you can simple just follow this simple guide here to download and run the Minecraft Server for Java Edition. A more detailed guide can be found here. I’ve also share a guide on how to automatically update the Minecraft Server as the game client and server gets updated quite often.
In the directory where you run the server.jar file, you will find the server.properties file. There are a bunch of properties that you can change as you like. But there is one properties that needs to be updated so that you can play multiplayer LAN on a single Minecraft account. Search for “online-mode” and change the value to “false”.
This will force the server NOT check if the players that are logged in are valid and authenticated users. Note that this is not recommended if your server is exposed to the Internet. So, only do this if your server is completely safe within the LAN network of your home.
Changing the Minecraft profile name
The main thing that you want to be able to do is to simply change the profile name of the player on the Minecraft launcher/client. The profile name is what the Server uses to determine the different players in the LAN game.
So the trick is to simply force the Launcher to run Minecraft in offline mode. The following would be the steps to take to do so.
- The first time you run Minecraft, you will need to log in with your Minecraft account. Quit the launcher after you have logged in. If you’ve done so already, just skip to step 2.
- Disconnect your computer from the Internet by turning off Wifi or unplugging the network cable.
- Before running the Minecraft Java Edition launcher without access to the Internet, you need to first change the Minecraft profile name on the computer. It is now stored in the launcher_accounts.json file with the latest update of the Minecraft launcher. On macOS, this can be found at ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft, on Windows, %APPDATA%\.minecraft
- Open the launcher_accounts.json file. You will easily find the profile name in the file. Edit the profile name as you like.
- Launch Minecraft still without access to the Internet and you will see that the Launcher will now run the game in offline mode. When you run the game, the modified profile name should still remain unchanged.
- After the game runs, you can now turn on Wifi or reconnect the network again so that you can now find and connect to the local server.
And that’s it! You can now again enjoy playing multiplayer LAN games with just a single Minecraft account.
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It is rather preposterous that such extra work is required to play LAN, while I do appreciate your work I’m rather disappointed it had to come to this just to enjoy a game of minecraft.