Fixing the 'You’re at your device limit' Error in Minecraft for Windows (with no devices showing)
Recently, I ran into a weird issue but at this point in my life I feel like I only encounter these.
I launched Minecraft for Windows on my PC (signed into my Game Pass account, active subscription, everything totally normal)… and got this:
“You’re at your limit for the number of devices you can use with Xbox Account.”
Alright, fair enough. I’ve been around the block. I’ve owned a lot of PCs over the years.
So I clicked Manage Devices..
…and saw nothing.
An empty list?
What’s Going On?
At first, I suspected this was triggered by a recent hardware change. I had just upgraded my motherboard, which can make your machine look like a brand new device from Microsoft’s perspective. And I was prompted to login to my Microsoft account which had me like “no time for this, I need to see how good my games look with the new hardware!”
But the real issue turned out to be something much more interesting…phantom device list?
Possible internal api-version differences between systems? Leading question to inspire you to read more? Secret Dungeon? Magic Stones?
The Fix (Workaround)
Here’s the trick:
Don’t trust the browser-based device management page.
Instead, use the Microsoft Store app itself, which appears to use a newer backend.
Steps
- Open the Microsoft Store (not the Xbox app, not Game Pass)
- Try installing Minecraft (or any app)
- When the install fails:
- Click the error message
- Or click Manage Devices
- This opens an internal Store dialog
- Suddenly… your real device list appears
- Remove old devices until you’re under the limit
- Retry the install
Unfortunalely I forgot to take screenshots but it looked like this:
Then clicking the Error looked like this:
And just like that, you’re back in business.
How We Actually Discovered This
This wasn’t something I stumbled into alone.
Huge shout out to Darryl from Xbox Support who was a boss for the following reasons:
- Picked up on the first ring
- On a Saturday afternoon
- Stayed on the call for about an hour
The key insight?
👉 Log into the Microsoft Store using a different account and observe the behavior.
That let us watch the entire device-check flow happen in real time, and it became obvious that the Store UI was calling into a different (newer) backend than the public website.
Absolute legend.
Why This Happens (A Dev’s Perspective)
If you’ve worked on large-scale services, this pattern is instantly recognizable.
You can’t just change production APIs. Too many customers depend on existing behavior. Like, no matter how something works, someone builds a whole production workflow based on the count of whitespace characters in your response, or uses undocumented properties of items to store the entirety of the Bee Movie. (Real issue I had to solve)
Anyway you don’t want to break users so you don’t changet the GA Prod Api, but instead add a new preview-api where you can begin to change things. So my theory of whats happening here is that the device management process for Microsoft accounts
- Maybe introduced a new API version
- Gradually roll it out
- Update newer clients (like the Microsoft Store)
- Leave older endpoints in place for compatibility
If I had to guess then
accounts.microsoft.com/devices→ older API- Microsoft Store internal device management → newer API
Only one of those reflects reality. Or maybe my account (and a few others who left comments in the feedback hub) are too old or have something else going on and so the list the device view doesn’t reflect reality.
TL;DR
If you see:
“You’re at your device limit”
…but your device list is empty
Try using the Microsoft Store and using the pop-up that appears when you encoutner an install error from within there to manage devices instead.
Warning: this UX you’ll see when there is an install error if different than what you see if you’d click here
