Valheim Admin Commands and Player Management
How to become an admin on your Valheim server, and the full list of in-game console commands for kicking, banning, and managing players.
Becoming an Admin
Valheim uses three text files at the root of your server folder to manage permissions: adminlist.txt, bannedlist.txt and permittedlist.txt. Each takes one identifier per line, in the form Platform_UserID.
On GameGrid, you do not need to edit these files by hand. Open the Settings tab and pick Player Management from the category list on the left.
To add yourself as admin from the panel:
1. Open Settings > Player Management for your Valheim server.
2. Expand Admin List and type your identifier into the box.
3. Use the full Platform_UserID form: V_ followed by your SteamID64 (e.g. V_76561198000000000), S_ for PlayStation 5, N_ for Nintendo Switch 2, or M_ for Xbox/Microsoft Store. The bare 17-digit number on its own will not match. The platform dropdown beside the box does not add the prefix for you.
4. Click "Add admin". The file is written straight away, but Valheim reads these lists at startup - restart the server for it to take effect.
To find your id: press F2 in game while connected, or watch the Console tab for your join line when you connect.
Finding Your Platform User ID
Steam players: V_ followed by your SteamID64, a 17-digit number - e.g. V_76561198000000000.
PlayStation 5 players: S_ followed by the Sony account ID.
Nintendo Switch 2 players: N_ followed by the Nintendo account ID.
Xbox / Microsoft Store players: M_ followed by the Xbox account ID. As of Valheim 1.0, the old Steam_ and Xbox_ prefixes no longer work.
The easiest way to find it is to connect to the server and watch the Console tab: the server logs a player's identifier when they join.
A player can also read their own id from the F2 panel in game.
In-Game Console Commands
Press F5 in game to open the console. You must be on the server's admin list for these to work. The following work on dedicated servers without any mods:
kick [name] - kicks a player from the server. They can rejoin.
ban [name] - bans a player from the server. They cannot rejoin until unbanned.
unban [name] - removes a ban.
banned - lists all currently banned players.
ping - shows your ping to the server.
info - prints system and performance information.
lodbias [value] - adjusts draw distance (0.1 to 5). Higher = farther draw distance but more performance cost.
save - forces an immediate world save. Useful before doing something risky.
devcommands - toggles cheat commands on or off. Disabled on dedicated servers by default - see below.
These run against the live server, so a ban or kick applied this way takes effect immediately, unlike an edit to the lists in the panel.
The Console tab in the GameGrid panel is a live view of the server's output, not a second place to type these. Valheim exposes no command channel of its own, so admin commands are typed in game.
What the panel can and cannot reach
Valheim's dedicated server has no RCON, no telnet and no admin API. What the panel talks to instead is the GameGrid Bridge, a BepInEx plugin installed on your server, and that plugin's reach is the boundary of what the panel can do.
Commands reach the server as six bridge actions: broadcast a message, save the world, spawn an item for a player, list players, server info, and a health check. Those six are the Command Manager's Valheim catalog, and the Console tab and the Command Manager are both limited to them. The bridge answers other calls too - the Game Tools map, chat and events read from it - but none of those is a command you can send.
The in-game F5 console commands — kick, ban, unban, devcommands, god, fly — are not reachable from the panel at all. They live in the game client's console, not in anything the server exposes. Use the in-game F5 console while connected, or the Player Management page for bans that survive a restart.
Shutting the server down is not a bridge action either. Use the Stop button in the panel.
Those six actions can be put on a repeating schedule — hourly saves, restart broadcasts, a weekly item drop for everyone online — from the Command Manager tab on the Event Manager page. Valheim has its own quirks there, chiefly that a world save can legitimately take 90 seconds and that a player's session ID changes on every reconnect. See Valheim Command Manager.
Cheats and Devcommands
Vanilla Valheim devcommands (god mode, fly, spawn items, debugmode) are intended for singleplayer and do not work on dedicated servers out of the box. The server simply ignores them.
To enable cheat commands on a dedicated server, you need the Server Devcommands BepInEx mod. This mod runs on your own game client (not the server) and unlocks the cheat command set for admins. You must be on the server's admin list for the mod commands to work.
Warning: using cheats disables Steam achievements for that session. Also, game-changing mods can cause desync for console (crossplay) players - use vanilla servers for mixed-platform groups.
See the Mods guide for BepInEx installation instructions.
Permitted List (Whitelist)
The permittedlist.txt file acts as a whitelist. While it has any entry in it, only the players on it may join - everyone else is refused, even with the password.
Important: adding even one player locks everyone else out. Only use this if you want a strict whitelist.
To enable a whitelist from the panel: open Settings > Player Management, expand Permitted List (Whitelist), add each player's Platform_UserID, then restart the server. Add everybody before you restart rather than one at a time.
To disable it: delete every entry from the Permitted List and restart. The server returns to open access.
Player Management from the Panel
Settings > Player Management holds three lists - Admin List, Permitted List (Whitelist) and Banned List - each one an editor for the matching text file.
Each list shows the identifiers currently in it with a Delete button beside each, and an input box with an Add button beneath. There is no roster of everyone who has connected, no last-seen column and no promote or demote buttons: you add and remove identifiers.
Changes are written to the files at once, but Valheim reads them at startup, so restart the server for any of them to take effect. The in-game console commands are the way to act on a running server.
For bulk editing you can open the files directly in the File Manager. They sit at the root of your server folder, beside valheim_server.exe - not inside worlds_local.