Minecraft · Beginner

Whitelist, OP and server.properties on a Minecraft server

The whitelist controls who may join the server, OP gives players admin rights and server.properties holds the basic server settings. This guide covers all three — with commands you can copy straight into the console.

Where to type commands

All commands in this guide can be typed into the panel console (Console / Terminal tab) — there they are written without a slash. In game they work with a slash (e.g. /whitelist add Steve), but only for players with a sufficient OP level.

Whitelist

With the whitelist on, only players you add can join. It suits private servers for friends or closed testing.

console

whitelist on              # turn the whitelist on
whitelist add Steve       # add a player
whitelist remove Steve    # remove a player
whitelist list            # show the list
whitelist reload          # reload whitelist.json from disk
whitelist off             # turn the whitelist off

The list is saved to whitelist.json (player name + UUID). You can edit the file by hand, but then run whitelist reload.
The whitelist on command also sets white-list=true in server.properties, so the setting survives a restart.
With enforce-whitelist=true in server.properties the server kicks players who are online but not on the list when the whitelist is turned on or reloaded.

ℹ️ Info:Add players by their exact in-game name. The server looks up their UUID with Mojang — this only works with online-mode=true (see below).

OP and permission levels

console

op Steve      # grant OP
deop Steve    # revoke OP

Operators are stored in ops.json. The op command grants the level set by op-permission-level in server.properties (default 4). You can change it per player in ops.json under level (restart the server after editing the file).

Level	What the player can do
1	Build inside spawn protection.
2	Game commands such as /gamemode, /give, /tp and command blocks.
3	Player management: /kick, /ban, /op, /deop.
4	Everything, including /stop and /save-all.

💡 Tip:On a Paper/Spigot server with plugins, give OP only to yourself. Grant others (moderators, VIPs) permissions through a permissions plugin such as LuckPerms — that way you can allow specific commands only.

Kick and ban

console

kick Steve Reason        # disconnect a player
ban Steve Reason         # permanent ban by account
pardon Steve             # lift the ban
ban-ip 203.0.113.10      # ban by IP address
pardon-ip 203.0.113.10   # lift the IP ban
banlist                  # list bans

server.properties basics

The server.properties file is in the server root in the Files tab. Click it to open, change the value and save. Changes take effect after a server restart.

Key	Example	Meaning
`white-list`	true	Enables the whitelist.
`enforce-whitelist`	true	Kicks online players not on the whitelist.
`online-mode`	true	Account verification via Mojang/Microsoft.
`max-players`	20	Maximum players at once.
`motd`	A Minecraft Server	Server description in the server list.
`difficulty`	normal	peaceful / easy / normal / hard
`gamemode`	survival	survival / creative / adventure / spectator
`pvp`	true	Allows player-vs-player combat.
`spawn-protection`	16	Radius around spawn where only OPs can build. 0 = off.
`view-distance`	10	View distance in chunks — see server performance.

⚠️ Warning:Do not change server-port and server-ip. The panel sets them on every start according to the address and port assigned to your server (Network tab).

online-mode

With online-mode=true (the default) only players who own the game can join, and the server verifies that the account really belongs to them. With online-mode=false anyone can choose any name — including the admin's — which makes OP and name-based whitelisting meaningless.

When online-mode=false is fine

Only behind a proxy (Velocity, BungeeCord) that performs verification itself and forwards player identity (e.g. Velocity modern forwarding). Otherwise keep it true.

MOTD — the server list description

The MOTD is the text players see under the server name in their server list. It is set with the motd key in server.properties. Separate two lines with \n and write colours with codes using the § character (in the file as §):

properties

motd=\u00A76\u00A7lM\u016Fj server\u00A7r\n\u00A77Survival 1.21

Accented and special characters are safer written as \uXXXX escape sequences. The easiest way to create colour gradients (RGB) is our free RGB MOTD generator, which outputs the value for server.properties as well as plugin configs.

ℹ️ Info:RGB colours require client 1.16 or newer. Whether RGB written directly in server.properties is shown also depends on the server software — if it is not, use basic colours or an MOTD plugin that supports RGB (e.g. in MiniMessage format).

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