Minecraft Java finally gets a Friends List and Peer-to-Peer multiplayer

Minecraft 26.2 Snapshot 7 arrived for Minecraft Java, and finally it's making playing with friends simpler with a Friends List feature and expanded multiplayer.

This is only the start of it with this first versioning having some issues. They've said they will continue improving it over the next few snapshot releases. This snapshot also added in new music and adjustments to Potent Sulfur.

It's great to see Mojang finally make the Minecraft client a bit more useful like this!

For the Friends List it's available on the Title Screen and Pause Menu, set to a default keybind of "O". It has a notification badge for requests, along with the usual features you would expect like sending and receiving requests, cancelling requests sent along with different statuses across: "Offline", "Online", "In a world" and "In a joinable world". You can also adjust how you show up with new privacy options included from the main menu.

I need to make some friends…

To make things even easier they've also enabled Peer-to-Peer networking with a new multiplayer options menu that replaces the original Open to LAN screen, so you can fully open singleplayer worlds to online multiplayer. Here you get the opportunity to invite friends directly, or for them to request to join your world.

See more in the blog post announcement.

Hey, Mojang, if you're reading - next up official proper controller support would be the next most useful thing you can add. We shouldn't need to still resort to modding for that in 2026.