server.properties, whitelist and op: the settings that matter

server.properties is the main settings file of every Minecraft Java server. It sits in the server's root folder and holds around fifty settings, most of which you will never touch. This guide covers the dozen that actually change how your server plays, where to edit them in the Torchlite panel, and the console commands that decide who can join and who can run commands.

Everything here applies to every Minecraft type we offer. Paper, Purpur, Spigot, Fabric, Folia, NeoForge and Forge all read the same file.

Where to edit server.properties

The panel at game.torchlite.host gives you two ways in.

The Configs page. Open your server and choose Configs in the sidebar, then pick server.properties in the Config File list. Every setting gets its own box: on/off settings are switches, difficulty and gamemode are drop-down lists, and the rest are text fields. Type part of a name into Search Settings to jump to it. The search matches the real setting name, so view finds view-distance and white finds white-list.

There is no Save button on this page. The editor saves on its own about a second after each change.

The same page also edits other config files once they exist, such as bukkit.yml, spigot.yml and purpur.yml.

The file manager. Go to Files, click server.properties, edit the text and press Save Content. This is handier when you want to change several lines at once or paste a setting someone sent you. Keep the key=value format exactly as it is: one setting per line, no quotes around text.

Whichever way you choose, the server only reads the file when it starts, so nothing changes until you restart.

Name, gameplay and distance

motd and max-players

motd is the line of text players see under your server's name in their multiplayer list. Keep it short, because long lines get cut off. max-players is how many people can be online at once, 20 by default. Raising it does not make the server any stronger, so pick a number your plan can actually carry.

difficulty, gamemode and pvp

difficulty takes peaceful, easy, normal or hard. gamemode is the mode new players start in: survival, creative, adventure or spectator. It does not change players who have already joined, unless you also turn on force-gamemode.

pvp decides whether players can hurt each other. Newer Minecraft versions moved PvP out of server.properties and into a game rule, so if your file has no pvp line, type gamerule pvp false (or true) in the console instead.

view-distance and simulation-distance

view-distance is how many chunks around each player the server sends, which is how far players can see. simulation-distance is how many chunks around each player are actually active: mobs move, crops grow and redstone runs only inside it. Both default to 10.

These two have the biggest effect on performance of any setting in the file, because the area grows with the square of the distance. Lowering simulation-distance first is usually the best trade: players keep a decent view while the server has far fewer chunks to update. The lag guide goes into this in detail.

Who can join and build

Four settings decide who gets in and what they can touch near spawn.

white-list and enforce-whitelist

With white-list=true, only players on the whitelist can join. enforce-whitelist=true goes one step further and kicks anyone online who is not on the list as soon as the whitelist is reloaded. Leave both off for a public server and turn both on for a private SMP.

online-mode and spawn-protection

online-mode must stay true; the next section explains why. spawn-protection is the radius in blocks around the world spawn where only operators can place or break blocks. It defaults to 16. Set it to 0 to turn it off, which most survival servers do so the spawn area works like the rest of the world. While nobody on the server is op, it has no effect at all.

Why online-mode must stay true

With online-mode=true, the server checks every player who joins against their Microsoft account, so the name they show up with really belongs to them. Turn it off and the server accepts whatever name a player types. Anyone could then join as you and get your op powers, your inventory and everything you built.

It also causes problems that are hard to undo. In offline mode every player gets a different internal ID than in online mode, so switching modes makes everyone appear as a new player with an empty inventory. Plugins that store data per player lose track of people the same way.

The usual reason people turn it off is to let Bedrock players in. There is a proper way to do that which keeps online-mode on: Geyser with Floodgate, explained in the crossplay guide.

Whitelist, op and bans from the console

Open the Console page and type commands into the field that says "Type a command...", without a leading slash. These commands apply straight away, with no restart. Ops can run the same commands in game with a / in front.

whitelist on
whitelist add Steve
whitelist remove Steve
whitelist list
whitelist off

whitelist on and whitelist off also update white-list in server.properties for you.

op Steve makes Steve an operator, who can run every command, including stopping the server. deop Steve takes it back. Only op people you would trust with the whole world: an op can deop or ban any other op, including you. On Paper, a permissions plugin such as LuckPerms lets you hand out single commands instead.

ban Griefer123 Broke the spawn
pardon Griefer123
ban-ip Griefer123
banlist

ban takes an optional reason, which the player sees when they try to join. ban-ip with the name of an online player bans the address they are connecting from, and pardon-ip with that address lifts it.

The lists live in whitelist.json, ops.json, banned-players.json and banned-ips.json, next to server.properties. Use the commands rather than editing these by hand, because the server rewrites the files itself and can overwrite your edits.

Apply your changes with a restart

After editing server.properties, press Restart in the panel. On Torchlite, Restart is better than Stop followed by Start: a running server restarts on its slot straight away, while Start on a stopped server can put it in the start queue if the node is full.

Two lines you can ignore are server-port and server-ip. The panel rewrites them every time the server starts, so the server always listens on the port shown in the panel and editing them has no effect.

One trap: if you edit the file while the server is running and then use whitelist on or whitelist off before restarting, the server saves its own copy of the settings and your edit can be lost. Restart right after editing to be safe.

Common problems

My change did nothing

Restart the server; it only reads the file at startup. If the change still does not show, open the file again and check that it is still there and spelled right: true and false in lowercase, numbers without units.

server.properties is missing from the Config File list

The list only shows files that already exist in the server folder. Start the server once so it creates its files, then reload the Configs page.

A friend gets "You are not white-listed on this server!"

Add them with whitelist add and their exact Java Edition username, then let them try again. Bedrock players joining through Floodgate are added with fwhitelist add instead, as the crossplay guide shows.

Everyone lost their inventory after I changed online-mode

Switching modes gives every player a new ID, so the server treats them as new players. Set online-mode back to what it was and restart; the old player data is still in the world folder and comes back.