Minecraft is big, in more ways than one. It's big as a cultural institution, it's huge as a sales juggernaut, and each Minecraft world is an enormous physical space.
Each of Minecraft's maps go on for millions of meters, each one filled with diverse biomes and landmasses. A player can walk for hours on end and not reach the edge of the map.
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This is an explorer's dream and a cartographer's nightmare. When there's so much land to explore, it can be hard to keep track of locations. If they're not careful, it's entirely possible for a Minecraft player to lose track of their house.
This is especially relevant in multiplayer sessions, where players might have trouble meeting up. Thankfully, Mojang included a co-ordinate system to help players orient themselves, and it's accessible in their Minecraft Realms server hosting service.
There are two methods, one simple and one a bit obtuse. They both are only available to the realm owner or players with operator privileges.
The most simple version is to enable coordinates before uploading the map. In a currently offline map, the creator can open the settings page, go to "world settings," and click the "show coordinates" button. The coordinates will appear on the top left corner of the screen. Once uploaded, these will appear for all players on the server as well.
Once a realm is online, enabling coordinates can be a bit tricky. The slower method is for the owner to hit the settings button on the realm list, which looks like a pencil, and hit "Download Map." They can then follow the instructions above, return to the realm settings, and hit "Replace the Map" to swap it with the coordinates enabled version.
The faster method involves using Minecraft's console commands. In the chat, the realm owner or an operator player can type "/gamerule showcoordinates true" and coordinates will be activated. In order to turn it off, a player can write "/gamerule showcoordinates false".
Note that Minecraft does not consider turning on coordinates cheating. If someone turns coordinates on, they can still earn achievements, and other players will still be restricted from using actual cheats.
It does feel like this process should be simpler. While it can be fun to set server side rules and keep everyone on the same page, it feels like coordinates should be something done on the client side instead of server side. Ideally, each individual player could choose whether they want coordinates, instead of it being an "all or nothing" deal.
Minecraft is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, and various other platforms.