Minecraft Server Commands Every Admin Needs (Java 26.x)

These are the Minecraft server commands an admin actually types: making someone an operator, locking the server with a whitelist, kicking and banning, changing game rules, time and weather, and saving or stopping safely. Each one below lists its syntax and the permission level it needs, checked against the Minecraft Wiki for Java 26.x.

If you host with us, you run them from the Console of your Minecraft Java server; if you have no server yet, our free Minecraft server guide gets you one in a few minutes. When a command fails because nobody can join at all, start with our can't connect guide instead.

• Console vs chat: in the server console you type op Steve; in the game chat you type /op Steve.
• Levels: players need operator status for most commands. /op gives level 4 by default, the highest.
• Lock it down: whitelist on, then whitelist add <name>. Operators always get in.
• Moderation: kick, ban, ban-ip and pardon work on Java; vanilla Bedrock has no ban command.
• Game rules were renamed: since Java 1.21.11 they use snakecase, so keepInventory is now `keepinventory`.

1. Console or chat: with and without the slash

There are two places to type a command. In the game, you open the chat and start with /. In the server console, the Minecraft Wiki says commands "are not preceded by a /". The console always has full rights; a player in the chat only has the rights of their permission level.

On 1up, the Console tab accepts both forms: it removes a leading slash before sending, so /list and list do the same. It has three modes:

• Beginner: a row of quick commands. Pick one and fill the gaps with buttons; the ones marked with … ask for data before they are sent. For Java the quick commands are say, op, deop, whitelist add, kick, ban, pardon, gamemode, tp, give, time set day, time set night, weather clear, save-all and list.
• Advanced: a command line. Tab completes, the up arrow brings back earlier commands, and the command builder checks each value before it goes out.
• Activity: a feed of chat and deaths, with a K/D table for the period, instead of the raw log.

The panel console only sends commands from its own list. Anything else is refused with "That command is not in the list of the console." The table in section 6 shows which of the commands in this guide it takes.

2. Ops and permission levels

Java Edition has five permission levels. The Permission level page describes them like this:

The commands themselves:

• op <player>: level 3. It writes the player into ops.json with the level set by op-permission-level in server.properties, which is 4 by default. So every op you make can also stop the server.
• deop <player>: level 3. Takes operator status away.

To give a friend fewer rights, op them, stop the server and change their level in ops.json. The Server page lists the fields of each entry: uuid, name, level and bypassesPlayerLimit. On 1up the file is in Files, next to server.properties.

In our panel, op and deop are reserved: "Only the owner and a co-owner can run that command." The Players tab also has an Operators list, and an op / deop button next to each online player.

3. Whitelist commands

A whitelist lets in only the players you name. All of these need level 3 on Java, per the whitelist page:

• whitelist on and whitelist off: turn it on or off.
• whitelist add <player> and whitelist remove <player>: the player does not need to be online.
• whitelist list: shows who is on it.
• whitelist reload: reads whitelist.json again after you edit it by hand.

Two details trip people up. On Java, "server operators can always connect when the whitelist is active", so you never need to add your ops. And since Java 26.3, the white-list property is true by default on a fresh vanilla server, so a new server may refuse your friends until you add them.

On 1up, the switch is the Whitelist on toggle in the Players tab (also offered when you create the server, and off by default). The Whitelist list there has + Add and Import list for many names at once. Turning the whitelist on or off is not a console command in our panel; adding, removing, listing and reloading are.

4. Moderation: kick, ban, ban-ip and pardon

All four groups need level 3, according to the wiki pages for kick, ban and pardon:

• kick <player> [reason]: removes someone now. Without a reason they see "Kicked by an operator".
• ban <player> [reason]: bans the account, online or not. The ban list "supersede[s] any whitelisting in place".
• ban-ip <address|player> [reason]: bans an IP address, or the address of an online player. The wiki notes it cannot ban IPv6 addresses.
• pardon <player> and pardon-ip <address>: lift a ban.
• banlist players or banlist ips: shows the lists.

In our panel, kick, ban, pardon and banlist players work from the console, and the Players tab puts kick and ban buttons next to every online player and Pardon in the Banned list. ban-ip and pardon-ip are not offered: ban the account instead. Bans live in banned-players.json, which you can also see in Files.

5. Game rules: the 26.x names

gamerule <rule> [<value>] needs level 2 (wiki). Without a value it prints the current one. The important change: in Java 1.21.11 (snapshot 25w44a), the Game rule page says all rules "have been renamed to resource locations in snake case instead of camel case". Every 26.x version uses the new names, so the camelCase names in older guides no longer work. If your server runs 1.21.10 or older, the old names still apply.

doFireTick was removed and replaced by fire_spread_radius_around_player. Some renamed rules also flip their value: disableRaids became raids.

Four settings that used to be in server.properties moved too. Since Java 1.21.9, pvp, allow-nether, spawn-monsters and enable-command-block are game rules, now named pvp, allow_entering_nether_using_portals, spawn_monsters and command_blocks_work (server.properties history). On a 26.x server, set them in the game: /gamerule pvp false.

The 1up console does not send gamerule for Java today. Op yourself, join and type it in the chat; level 4 covers it.

6. World commands and a cheat sheet

The everyday world commands, all level 2 on Java:

• time set day, noon, night or midnight (1000, 6000, 13000 and 18000 ticks), time set <ticks> and time add <ticks>. Since 26.1, /time works on world clocks and also has time rate.
• [weather clear|rain|thunder [<duration>]](https://minecraft.wiki/w/Commands/weather): weather clear 1d keeps the sky clear for a day.
• difficulty peaceful|easy|normal|hard.
• [gamemode <mode> [<player>]](https://minecraft.wiki/w/Commands/gamemode): survival, creative, adventure or spectator.
• tp <player> <target> or tp <player> <x> <y> <z>; teleport is the same command.
• [give <player> <item> [<count>]](https://minecraft.wiki/w/Commands/give), for example give Steve minecraft:torch 64.
• say <message> to talk to everyone, and list (level 0) to see who is online.

The Difficulty field in the Game tab applies at once on a running server, without a restart.

7. Saving and stopping: save-all, save-off, save-on, stop

All level 4, per the save and stop pages:

• save-all: saves player data now and marks every chunk to be written. save-all flush writes everything at once and freezes the server for a moment.
• save-off: stops writing the world files so you can copy them for a backup. It "is reset each time the server restarts".
• save-on: writes again. Forgetting it after save-off means anything built since is lost if the server crashes.
• stop: saves, kicks everyone and shuts the server down.

On 1up, save-all is a quick command. save-off and save-on are not offered, because backups are taken by the Backups tab. A typed stop gets this answer: "The console does not stop or restart the server. Use the ■ Stop or ↻ Restart buttons above, which save the world first." If the server stutters after a save, our RAM guide explains how to measure it with spark, which our console also runs. Mods add their own commands too; our mods guide covers installing them.

8. Bedrock differences: allowlist vs whitelist

Bedrock Dedicated Server shares most command names, with a few differences that matter to an admin:

• Allowlist, not whitelist. The Microsoft Learn page lists allowlist add, remove, list, reload, on and off, with /whitelist as an alias. The file is allowlist.json, and the server.properties key was renamed from white-list to allow-list in Bedrock 1.18.10.
• Ops are not exempt. On Bedrock, the wiki says players "must be whitelisted regardless of operator status".
• No vanilla ban. ban and pardon are Java only. On Bedrock you remove a player with kick and keep them out with the allowlist.
• Roles instead of numbers. Players are visitor, member or operator, stored in permissions.json; op needs level 2 rather than 3.
• Old game rule names. Bedrock still uses lowercase names such as keepinventory and dodaylightcycle.

On our Bedrock servers the console offers allowlist add, remove, list and reload and a set of true/false game rules, and the Players tab has the same allowlist switch.

Tested on Minecraft: Java Edition 26.3 (the default version in our wizard), 26.2 and 26.1.2, and Bedrock Dedicated Server 1.26.52.3, 2026-10-06. Syntax and permission levels come from the Minecraft Wiki and Microsoft Learn; the panel behaviour comes from our production code (1up v0.258.0). We did not run every command on a live server for this guide.

Change log

• 2026-10-06: first version.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT SERVICE. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.