My friend on PS5 or Xbox can't find our Palworld server

Your friend on PS5 opens Palworld, goes looking for your server, and it is not there. Meanwhile a friend on PC joined half an hour ago and is happily building a base. Nothing on the dashboard is red, the server is running, and the crossplay switch is on. This is the most common Palworld support question we get, and the crossplay switch is almost never the answer.

The reason it is confusing is that two separate settings control two different things, and the words for them overlap. One decides who is allowed on your server. The other decides who can reach it at all.

Allowed versus reachable

Pocketpair's own server guide is explicit about why the second row is the one that matters here. Its list of cross-play platforms covers Steam, the Xbox series and the Windows PC version downloaded from the Microsoft Store, macOS and PS5 — and then it says that if you want to join the server from the Xbox version or the PS5 version, you need to deploy it as a community server. A console client has no field to type an address into. The browser is the whole interface.

So a console player being unable to find your server is the expected result of an unlisted server, not a symptom of anything broken. The fix is to publish it.

Get a console player onto your server

Everything below happens on one tab: open your server and go to the Settings tab. The settings you need are in two groups — General (the password) and Connection (crossplay and the listing, in its Joining the server section). Each group has its own save bar, and nothing here takes effect until the server restarts, which is the last step.

Turn crossplay on so the console is allowed

In the Connection group's Joining the server section, find the Crossplay row. Its own description, behind the ⓘ beside the label, says it lets Xbox, PS5 and Mac players join alongside Steam, and that off means Steam only. The switch shows as on unless someone deliberately turned it off, so this step is usually a confirmation rather than a change — but confirm it anyway, because with crossplay off the listing will publish a server your friend still cannot enter.

You know it worked when: the switch reads as on. Behind the scenes this is the difference between an allowed-platform list of (Steam,Xbox,PS5,Mac) and one of (Steam).

Set a server password

In the General group, fill in Server password. The line under it says you can leave it blank for no password, and for a private server among friends that is normally fine — but not here. The listing will not publish a server without one.

Pick something you are willing to type into a group chat, because everyone joining from the browser will need it.

Then press Save on the General group's save bar first: the listing row in Connection looks at the saved password, not the one you just typed.

You know it worked when: back in the Connection group, the listing row is no longer locked.

Turn on the Community Servers listing

The row sits under Crossplay in Joining the server and is labelled List in Community Servers (so PS5/Xbox can find it). While no password is saved it is locked and reads "Set a server password first — an open server is never published." Once a password is saved it unlocks; turn it on and press Save on the Connection group's save bar.

That gating is on purpose and it is enforced on the server side, not only in the browser. Listing broadcasts your server to every Palworld client in the world, and a listed server with no password is a far larger blast radius than an unlisted one.

You know it worked when: the switch is on and the "set a password first" line is gone.

Restart the server

Restart the server with the Restart button in the server's header — or, when you save the Connection group, press Save and restart to do both at once. Saving updates the server's setup right away but does not interrupt a running server; a restart is what applies the change.

This is true of every Palworld setting on the Settings tab, not just these two. A saved setting that has not been through a restart yet is stored, not live.

You know it worked when: the server comes back to running. First boots can be slow on Palworld, so give it time before assuming something failed.

Search for the server name on the console

Have your friend open Palworld, choose Community server from the side of the server list, and search for the name in the Server name (in game) field of the General group — not your hostname, which a console has nowhere to type. Then they enter the password.

The Join the game box on the Overview tab says the same thing under its PS5 · Xbox heading: consoles cannot type an address and have to search for the server's name in the Community list — and it tells you whether the server is listed right now.

If it is not there: confirm the server is actually running rather than asleep, and confirm the name you are searching for is the one saved on the Settings tab.

The silent part of this that catches people

The listing needs a non-empty join password, and when there isn't one, nothing complains. The community-listing configuration is simply not written into the server's setup at all — an omission, not a rejection. The server boots normally, the settings page still shows your other choices, the logs are clean, and the server never appears in anyone's browser.

That is why this article exists. Every other Palworld setting fails loudly or not at all; this one just quietly does not happen. If you turned the listing on, restarted, and consoles still cannot see the server, check the password field first — including the case where you set a password, listed the server, and later cleared the password for convenience.

What a PC player types instead

A PC player never needs any of this. Pocketpair's connection guide describes entering an IP address and port below the server list, and that path works whether or not your server is listed.

Both values live in the Join the game box on the server's Overview tab, under the Steam · Xbox on PC · Mac heading, in one field labelled Address (paste it whole, port included) that reads hostname:port. The in-game steps are printed right under it.

Palworld dials a host and a port directly, so the port is genuinely required — unlike Minecraft Java, where the hostname alone is enough. That is why the Copy the address button beside the field copies the whole string at once; after you press it the icon briefly reads Copied. If the field still reads "Port not yet assigned", the port has not been allocated yet; wait a moment and reload the page.

Why a listed server can disappear again

A server that is asleep, stopped or archived is not running, so there is nothing registered in the browser — it drops off the list and comes back when it starts. Our own description of the listing switch, behind its ⓘ, says exactly this.

For a PC player that barely matters: connecting to the address and port is enough to wake a sleeping server, because the wake catcher watches those UDP ports and treats two datagrams from the same player within five seconds as a genuine join attempt rather than an internet scanner. A console player has no address to dial, so they cannot wake anything — an asleep server is invisible and stays invisible until somebody else starts it.

If most of your group plays on console, that is a good reason to leave auto-sleep off, or to start the server yourself before they log in. Auto-sleep is off by default, so unless you turned it on, this is already handled.

This is not Minecraft's crossplay

Both games have a setting with the word crossplay in it and they are unrelated mechanisms. On a Minecraft server here, crossplay is a per-server feature that attaches a Bedrock-facing bridge and gives the server a second, Bedrock-only port. On Palworld it is a list of allowed platforms in the game's own configuration — no bridge, no extra port, no plugin. Knowing how one behaves tells you nothing useful about the other, and the Bedrock port field you may have seen on a Minecraft server has no counterpart here.

Read next

• Palworld dedicated server — what the game itself needs, and what running it yourself costs
• Dashboard tour — the Join the game box, the tabs, and the rest of the page
• Auto-sleep — when a server sleeps, what wakes it, and what that means for a console group
• Port forwarding — if you are hosting Palworld at home instead