Important server.properties Settings Reference

How to Change These

Use the Settings tab. It edits server.properties through a form, with the ranges and defaults built in. Vanilla, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge share the same 57 settings; Paper shows those 57 plus six more, marked "Paper only" below.

You can also edit server.properties directly from the Files tab. Stop the server first - a running server rewrites the file on shutdown.

Minecraft reads server.properties when it starts. Saving a setting the panel marks restart-required restarts your server for you; anything else is written to the file and takes effect at the next start.

A handful of settings have a live console command that changes the running server as well: /difficulty, /gamemode, /defaultgamemode, /whitelist on|off and /gamerule. Those apply immediately.

The file is plain key=value text, one per line, with # for comments. A missing key means the default.

Server JAR

Server JAR File - a dropdown listing the .jar files in your server directory. It decides which one the server launches. Upload your own through the Files tab or SFTP and it appears here. Restart-required, so saving it restarts the server.

Forge and NeoForge servers whose installer has been run launch from user_jvm_args.txt and the loader's argument file rather than a jar, and the dropdown is only a fallback for them.

Core Gameplay

motd (default "A Minecraft Server") - the line shown in the multiplayer list.

gamemode (default survival) - survival, creative, adventure or spectator. /gamemode and /defaultgamemode change it live.

difficulty (default easy) - peaceful, easy, normal or hard. /difficulty changes it live.

hardcore (default false) - hardcore rules. Restart-required, and it is a world-creation property in practice.

pvp (default true, Paper only) - whether players can damage each other.

allow-flight (default false) - permits flight for non-creative players, which is normally only wanted with a flight plugin or mod.

force-gamemode (default false) - puts every player into the default game mode on join, overriding per-player changes.

spawn-protection (default 16, range 0-256) - blocks around spawn only operators may build in. 0 disables it.

spawn-animals, spawn-monsters, spawn-npcs (all default true, Paper only).

player-idle-timeout (default 0, range 0-1440 minutes) - kick idle players. 0 disables it.

allow-nether (default true, Paper only) - restart-required.

enforce-secure-profile (default true) - restart-required.

hide-online-players (default false), max-chained-neighbor-updates (default 1000000), prevent-proxy-connections (default false).

Performance

view-distance (default 10, range 3-32) - chunk radius sent to clients.

simulation-distance (default 10, range 3-32) - chunk radius that actually ticks. Lowering this saves more CPU than lowering view-distance.

max-players (default 20, range 1-999) - restart-required.

max-tick-time (default 60000, range 0-300000 ms) - how long a tick may run before the watchdog acts.

network-compression-threshold (default 256, range -1 to 65535) - packet size above which packets are compressed. -1 disables.

entity-broadcast-range-percentage (default 100, range 10-1000) - how far entities are sent to clients.

pause-when-empty-seconds (default 0, range 0-3600) - stop ticking a world with nobody in it after this many seconds. 0 disables.

use-native-transport (default true), sync-chunk-writes (default true), rate-limit (default 0), region-file-compression (default deflate).

max-world-size (default 29999984, up to 29999984) - the world border radius in blocks. Restart-required.

Six settings on this page exist on Paper only: pvp, allow-nether, spawn-animals, spawn-monsters, spawn-npcs and enable-command-block. On Vanilla, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge they are not in the Settings form.

Network (mostly read-only)

server-port - your assigned game port. Read-only: GameGrid allocates it and rewrites it on every start. It is not 25565.

server-ip - read-only, left blank so the server binds all interfaces.

query.port - read-only. Query shares the game port on this platform.

rcon.port - read-only. RCON is placed one above your game port and is firewalled to the host, so it is not reachable from the internet.

enable-rcon (default false in the schema) and rcon.password - the platform enables RCON and sets a password on every start, because the console channel, the economy and the chat bridge all use it. Turning it off in Settings will not stick.

enable-query (default false) - restart-required.

online-mode (default true) - restart-required. Verifies accounts with Mojang. Leave it on unless the server sits behind a proxy that does the verification instead.

enable-status (default true) - answers server-list pings.

World Generation

All of these are restart-required, and all of them only affect a world that does not exist yet.

level-name (default world) - the world folder. Changing it starts a new world in a new folder. On Paper the Nether and End are separate top-level folders named after it (e.g. world_nether and world_the_end); on Vanilla, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge they live inside it as DIM-1 and DIM1.

level-seed (default blank) - blank means a random seed. Only used when the world is first generated.

level-type (default minecraft:normal) - minecraft:normal, minecraft:flat, minecraft:large_biomes, minecraft:amplified, minecraft:single_biome.

generator-settings (default {}) - JSON generation settings, mostly used for flat worlds.

generate-structures (default true) - villages, temples, strongholds and the rest.

Players, Permissions and Packs

white-list (default false) - enable the whitelist. /whitelist on and /whitelist off change it live. The list itself is managed in Settings > Player Management.

enforce-whitelist (default false) - kick players who are no longer whitelisted, rather than waiting until they reconnect.

op-permission-level (default 4, range 1-4) - the level a new operator gets. See OP Permission Levels.

function-permission-level (default 2, range 1-4) - the level datapack functions run at.

enable-command-block (default false, Paper only) - restart-required.

broadcast-console-to-ops (default true) and broadcast-rcon-to-ops (default true in the schema; the platform sets it false at start so panel commands do not appear in operators' chat).

resource-pack, resource-pack-sha1, resource-pack-id, resource-pack-prompt and require-resource-pack (default false) - see Setting Up Resource Packs.

accepts-transfers (default false), log-ips (default true), enable-jmx-monitoring (default false), initial-enabled-packs (default vanilla), initial-disabled-packs (default blank).

chat-spam-threshold-seconds and command-spam-threshold-seconds (both default 10, range 1-300).