Fast Traveling in Minecraft: How to Link Nether Portals (Java & Bedrock)

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap and welcome back! Today I’m going to be showing you a very cool and efficient way to travel through your Minecraft world incredibly quickly. This technique is called Nether Portal Linking, and it is honestly one of the most useful things you can learn in Minecraft — whether you’re playing Java or Bedrock Edition.

If you’d prefer to watch the video version of this tutorial, you can check it out here: Fast Traveling! How To Link Nether Portals In Minecraft Java and Bedrock!

How Does Nether Portal Linking Work?

Before we get into the steps, it’s important to understand the core mechanic behind this. Essentially, 8 blocks in the Overworld is equivalent to 1 block in the Nether. To put that into perspective, if you were to travel 800 blocks in the Overworld, you would only need to walk 100 blocks in the Nether to cover that same distance. You can already see where this is going — travelling through the Nether is significantly faster, and by linking your portals correctly, you can take full advantage of this.

What You’ll Need Before You Start

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a Nether portal built at both of the locations you want to connect. For this tutorial, I have one portal already set up, and I’m going to be building a second one in a nearby spruce forest. It’s also important to make sure that both portals are relatively aligned on the same axis. They don’t need to be perfectly lined up, but keeping them within roughly 16 blocks of each other on the axis you aren’t travelling along will help ensure the portals link correctly.

Step-by-Step: Linking Your Nether Portals

Step 1 — Build and Light Both Overworld Portals

Set up and light your Nether portal at your first location, then head to your second location and do the same. Make sure both portals are active before you start calculating your Nether coordinates.

Step 2 — Record Your Coordinates

Once your portals are built, you need to find out the distance between your two locations. Open your debug screen using F3 (on Java Edition) and take note of your X and Z coordinates at each portal location. For this tutorial, my coordinates were X: 390, Z: -83 at the first portal and X: 161, Z: 68 at the second. Write these down or copy them somewhere handy.

Step 3 — Calculate the Distance

Now that you have both sets of coordinates, you’ll want to subtract the smaller coordinate from the larger one along the axis that changed the most. In my case, the X coordinate changed the most, so I calculated 390 − 161 = 229 blocks. This gives you the Overworld distance between your two portals.

Step 4 — Convert the Distance for the Nether

Now simply divide that distance by 8 to find out how far you need to travel in the Nether. So, 229 ÷ 8 ≈ 29 blocks. That means in the Nether, you only need to travel approximately 29 blocks to cover the same 229-block Overworld distance. Pretty amazing, right?

Step 5 — Build Your Nether Portal at the Correct Spot

Step through your first Overworld portal and into the Nether. From where you exit, travel in the same direction as your Overworld portals are spread apart — in my case, that was along the X axis — and count out 29 blocks. Once you’ve reached that spot, build and light a new Nether portal there.

Step 6 — An Important Note Before You Walk Through

One thing to be careful about — do not walk through the second Nether portal before both portals are fully set up and linked. If you do, it can cause some disruption in the linking process. You might end up with two portals linked to the same Overworld portal, which can cause you to teleport to the wrong location. Make sure everything is built and lit before testing the connection.

The Result

Once everything is set up, walk through your first Overworld portal, travel 29 blocks in the Nether, and step through the second Nether portal. You’ll come out at your second Overworld location — having just travelled around 200+ blocks in the Overworld by only walking 29 blocks in the Nether. It’s genuinely one of the most satisfying things to set up in a survival world, and I’ve been using it in my own world for a while now.

Final Thoughts

I know this video is a little different from my usual command-based content, but I wanted to share this because I’ve spoken to a lot of people who know what Nether portal linking is but have no idea how to actually do it. Hopefully this has made it nice and clear for you! If you enjoyed this kind of tutorial and want to see more content like this alongside my command tutorials, I’d really appreciate a like on the video and a subscribe to the channel. It means the world to me. I also cannot believe I hit 3K subscribers — thank you all so much for the incredible support. Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you in the next one!