Minecraft Server Commands: op, whitelist, gamerule and More (26.3)

Applies to: Minecraft: Java Edition 26.3 dedicated server (all commands tested on a 26.3 server)

Minecraft servers are run with console commands: making players operators, managing the whitelist, changing rules and saving the world. We ran each command below on a 26.3 server and quote what it answered.

Where to type them

• Server console (the terminal, tmux session or LinuxGSM console): type the command without a slash.
• In game, as an operator: the same command with a slash, for example /op Steve.
• From a script: with LinuxGSM, ./mcserver send "say hello" (see LinuxGSM).

Players and permissions

op Notch                 # Made Notch a server operator
deop Notch               # Made Notch no longer a server operator
list                     # There are 0 of a max of 20 players online
kick Steve Taking a break
ban Steve Griefing
pardon Steve
ban-ip 203.0.113.99      # Banned IP 203.0.113.99: Banned by an operator.
pardon-ip 203.0.113.99

Commands that target a player who isn’t online, such as kick or gamemode, answer No player was found.

Whitelist

whitelist add Notch      # Added Notch to the whitelist
whitelist list           # There are 1 whitelisted player(s): Notch
whitelist remove Notch
whitelist on             # Whitelist is now turned on
whitelist off

New 26.3 servers start with white-list=true in server.properties, so add your players before they try to join.

Game rules: new names in 26.x

The old camel-case game rule names no longer work: gamerule keepInventory true answered Incorrect argument for command. The rules now use lower-case names with underscores:

gamerule keep_inventory true               # Game rule keep_inventory is now set to true
gamerule advance_time false                # stop the day/night cycle
gamerule advance_weather false             # stop weather changes
gamerule pvp false                         # no player-versus-player damage
gamerule players_sleeping_percentage 50
gamerule mob_griefing false

Type help gamerule in the console to list all 58 rules on your version.

World and time

difficulty hard          # The difficulty has been set to Hard
time set day
weather clear            # Set the weather to clear
defaultgamemode survival
seed
say Server restart in 5 minutes
save-all                 # Saving the game ... Saved the game
stop                     # saves and shuts down cleanly

Performance

Vanilla Minecraft has no tps command (it answered Unknown or incomplete command). Use tick query instead; our idle server reported Target tick rate: 20.0 per second and Average time per tick: 0.7ms (Target: 50.0ms). An empty server pauses after 60 seconds by default (Server empty for 60 seconds, pausing).

More: open port 25565, give the server more RAM and make a Minecraft server on Linux. Our Minecraft VPS includes a free Vanilla, Paper or Bedrock installation on request.