Minecraft whitelist: add players, set ops

Minecraft has two player lists that control your server: the whitelist decides who can join, and operators (ops) decide who can run admin commands. Manage both in the panel's Players tab, or with commands in the Console.

Set up the whitelist in the Players tab

The Players tab has a tab for each list: Whitelist (it reads Players while the whitelist is off), Operators, Bans and Banned IPs, then Give Items. The count at the top right shows how many players are online.

1. Log in, open Servers and press Open on your server.
2. Choose Players under Essentials in the left rail. On a phone or tablet, pick it from the section menu at the top of the panel.
3. On the Whitelist tab, press Add, type your own Minecraft name and wait for your head and UUID to appear, then press Add to whitelist.
4. Add each friend the same way. Names are 3 to 16 characters: letters, numbers and underscores.
5. Press Turn whitelist on. From then on only players on the list, plus your operators, can join.

The panel checks each name with Mojang before adding it, and Add to whitelist stays greyed out until it finds the account. If your server runs in offline mode (online-mode=false), names without a Mojang account can be added too.

A Bedrock player's name starts with a dot (.BedrockPal). With Floodgate installed you can add them straight away; without it, they need to join once before you can add, op or ban them.

On a server that has never been started, Turn whitelist on fails with Start your server once so it can create its config files, then try again. Start it, wait for the Done line in the Console, and try again. While the server is starting or stopping, changes wait: try again once it has finished.

Op, ban or kick a player

Each row has two buttons: Make operator (or Remove operator) and Ban (or Unban). The panel asks you to confirm before it makes anyone an operator, and a ban asks for an optional reason, which the player sees when they try to reconnect.

Click a player's row to open their profile under it. It shows their health, hunger and hotbar, their inventory, ender chest and stats, and has buttons to Heal, Teleport, Give item, Kick and to add or remove them from the whitelist. Heal, Teleport and Kick need the player to be online. Click the row again to close the profile.

The Operators, Bans and Banned IPs tabs each have a box at the top to add a name or an IP address to that list. Players who are online are listed first, with an Online tag.

Changes apply straight away while the server runs. When it's stopped, the tab says Your server is stopped, and your changes take effect the next time it starts.

Use console commands instead

Type these into the Console tab without a slash, or into game chat with a leading / once you're an operator. In the Console, op, deop, kick and ban ask first: press Run command or Enter to send them. The Players tab shows the changes after you open it or press Refresh.

Whitelist commands

Operator and moderation commands

What can an operator do?

An operator can run every command, from teleporting and changing the time to banning players and stopping the server. Operators can also join while the whitelist is on, even when their name isn't on it. The panel asks you to confirm before it makes anyone an operator.

For per-player permissions ("can use /home but not /ban"), add a permissions plugin or mod such as LuckPerms, which runs on Paper, Purpur, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge. See How to install plugins (Paper / Purpur) or Install Fabric and Forge mods on your server.

Fix "You are not whitelisted on this server"

A player the whitelist turns away sees one of these messages, depending on the server software:

• You are not white-listed on this server!
• You are not whitelisted on this server!

Work through these in order:

1. Is their name (or yours) in the list? Search for it on the Whitelist tab. If the name isn't there, add it.
2. Is it the account they play on? The name has to match the Minecraft account signed in to their launcher.
3. Should the server be open instead? Press Turn whitelist off, or run whitelist off. Anyone with your server address can then join.

A banned player sees a ban message with your reason instead. Press Unban on their row (the Bans tab lists everyone banned) to let them back in. For other join errors, such as Connection refused or Incompatible client, see What each connection error means.