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Generate a Minecraft server.properties

Of all the formats here, server.properties is the most lenient — and that leniency is exactly what hides mistakes. The server boots without complaint and quietly disregards whatever you got wrong.

Start from a preset

Visual Settings

key value Format
Identity

The line shown under your server name in the multiplayer list. Colour codes work but must be written as the unicode escape, not pasted in.

The port players connect on. Change it only if you are running several servers on one machine.

Leave blank. Setting it binds the server to one network interface, which is the most common reason a server works locally but is unreachable from outside.

Direct download URL for a server resource pack. Must be a direct link to the zip, not a web page.

SHA-1 hash of the pack. Without it clients re-download the pack every join instead of caching it.

Message shown when the client is asked to accept the pack.

Disconnects players who decline the pack.

Gameplay

The mode new players start in.

Resets every player to the default gamemode each time they join, overriding anything an operator set for them.

Peaceful removes hostile mobs entirely and stops hunger from doing damage.

Death becomes permanent — players are switched to spectator and cannot respawn. Forces difficulty to hard.

Whether players can damage each other directly. Indirect damage such as lava or TNT still works either way.

Off, the server kicks survival players who appear to be flying. Turn it on if you run flight mods or elytra-heavy builds, or you will get false kicks.

Disabling this makes existing Nether portals inert; players already in the Nether stay stuck there.

Command blocks do nothing at all until this is on, no matter who placed them.

Hostile mob spawning. Turning it off does not remove mobs that already exist.

Passive mob spawning. Off also stops breeding from repopulating an area.

Villager spawning in generated villages.

World

The save folder to load. Changing it does not rename your world — the server looks for a folder by the new name and generates a fresh world if none exists.

Only used when generating a new world. Setting it on an existing save has no effect.

World generation preset. Applies at creation only; it cannot convert an existing world.

Villages, strongholds, temples and the rest. Off still generates caves and ores.

Radius in blocks from spawn beyond which the world stops generating. Lowering it caps how large your save can grow on disk.

Radius around spawn where only operators can build. Set to 0 to disable — a common surprise on servers where nobody can place blocks near spawn.

Players & Access

Slot limit. This does not reserve memory — it only caps concurrent connections.

Verifies players against Mojang. Turn it off only behind a proxy, otherwise anyone can join using any username.

Restricts joining to the whitelist. Enabling it does not kick players already connected.

Also kicks connected players who are not on the whitelist when it is reloaded.

What operators can do: 1 bypasses spawn protection, 2 allows most commands, 3 adds player management, 4 adds stop and server control.

Permission level datapack functions run at. Raise it if your datapacks need commands they are being denied.

Minutes before an idle player is kicked. 0 disables it.

Omits the player sample from the server list ping, so the list shows a count but no names.

Performance

Chunks sent to each player. The single biggest lever on both memory and bandwidth — dropping 12 to 8 usually helps more than adding a gigabyte.

Chunks where mobs, crops and redstone actually tick. Set below view-distance so players see far but the server simulates less.

How far entities are sent to clients, as a percentage of the default. Lowering it reduces bandwidth on busy servers.

Milliseconds a single tick may take before the watchdog kills the server. Set to -1 to disable, which is usually right for heavily modded servers.

Caps runaway redstone chains before they stall the server.

Writes chunks synchronously. Safer against corruption on power loss; turning it off can help on slow disks.

Seconds with no players before the server stops ticking. Saves CPU, but also pauses furnaces and farms. 0 keeps it always running.

Network

Packet size above which compression kicks in. -1 disables it, which is faster on a LAN and worse over the internet.

Blocks players whose Mojang session region does not match their IP. Catches some VPN users legitimately using one.

Linux-only optimised packet handling. Harmless to leave on elsewhere.

Packets per second before a player is kicked. 0 disables it; a low value will disconnect legitimate players.

Whether the server answers the server-list ping. Off makes it show as offline everywhere while still accepting connections.

Allows players to be transferred in from another server. Only relevant if you run a network.

RCON & Query

Remote console access. Leave off unless you need it, and never expose the RCON port to the internet.

RCON listening port. Should be firewalled to your own address.

RCON password. An empty password with RCON enabled is an open remote console.

Shows commands run over RCON to online operators.

Shows commands run from the server console to online operators.

GameSpy-style query protocol. Some server list sites need it; the standard status ping does not.

Query listening port, usually the same as the server port.

Exposes JVM metrics over JMX for external monitoring tools.

Writes player IP addresses to the server log. Turning it off reduces what you store about players.

server.properties

motd=A Minecraft Server
server-port=25565
server-ip=
gamemode=survival
force-gamemode=false
difficulty=normal
hardcore=false
pvp=true
allow-flight=false
allow-nether=true
enable-command-block=false
spawn-monsters=true
spawn-animals=true
spawn-npcs=true
level-name=world
level-seed=
level-type=minecraft:normal
generate-structures=true
max-world-size=29999984
spawn-protection=16
max-players=20
online-mode=true
white-list=false
enforce-whitelist=false
op-permission-level=4
function-permission-level=2
player-idle-timeout=0
hide-online-players=false
view-distance=10
simulation-distance=10
entity-broadcast-range-percentage=100
max-tick-time=60000
max-chained-neighbor-updates=1000000
sync-chunk-writes=true
pause-when-empty-seconds=60
network-compression-threshold=256
prevent-proxy-connections=false
use-native-transport=true
rate-limit=0
enable-status=true
accepts-transfers=false
enable-rcon=false
rcon.port=25575
rcon.password=
broadcast-rcon-to-ops=true
broadcast-console-to-ops=true
enable-query=false
query.port=25565
enable-jmx-monitoring=false
log-ips=true
resource-pack=
resource-pack-sha1=
resource-pack-prompt=
require-resource-pack=false

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The server.properties format

Each line is `key=value`: no spaces either side of the equals sign, and no quotes. Quotes are the textbook slip — motd="Welcome" produces a message of the day that shows the quotation marks, because the parser keeps them as part of the text. Windows paths want forward slashes or doubled backslashes, and the section sign used for colour codes must be written as its unicode escape, not pasted in as-is.

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The mistake that wastes an evening

Editing level-name does not rename your world. It tells the server to go looking for a world with the new name, and when it finds none, it generates a fresh one. The old world is still on disk under its old name, but everyone logs into a blank map and concludes the save is lost. Editing level-seed ends the same way, for a different reason.

Read once, at startup

The server reads server.properties when it starts and not again. Change a value while it is running and nothing happens until the next restart, which makes it easy to conclude an edit did not work. Edit, save the file, restart, and only then test.

Lines from older guides

server.properties has changed across versions, and old guides still circulate. simulation-distance only exists from 1.18 onwards; on older versions the line is ignored. level-type values became namespaced in 1.19, so a guide's level-type=default is minecraft:normal today. A line the current version does not recognise is not an error; it is simply skipped, which is the leniency described above.

What is not in this file

Operators, the whitelist and bans are not set here. They live in ops.json, whitelist.json, banned-players.json and banned-ips.json next to server.properties, and are best changed with the in-game commands (/op, /whitelist add, /ban) so the server writes the files itself in the format it expects.

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