How to Set Up a Whitelist on Your Minecraft Server

A whitelist restricts your server to only approved players. Anyone not on the list is denied access when they try to connect.

Enabling the Whitelist

Run the following command in the server console (the Console tab in the control panel):

whitelist on

This takes effect immediately — no restart needed.

To disable the whitelist later:

whitelist off

Adding and Removing Players

Add a player

whitelist add PlayerName

The player can now join, even if they're offline when you add them.

Remove a player

whitelist remove PlayerName

They'll be kicked on their next connection attempt (not immediately if already online).

View the whitelist

whitelist list

Managing the Whitelist File Directly

The whitelist is stored in whitelist.json in the server root. You can edit it through the file manager:

[
  {
    "uuid": "player-uuid-here",
    "name": "PlayerName"
  }
]

After editing the file manually, run this in the console to reload it:

whitelist reload

Using the Whitelist with Operators

Server operators (ops) are not automatically whitelisted. If the whitelist is on, you need to add ops to the whitelist too, or they won't be able to join.

Whitelist vs Online-Mode

The whitelist checks player names against a list. online-mode=true in server.properties verifies that players own a legitimate Minecraft account through Mojang's authentication servers.

Keep online-mode=true. Disabling it lets pirated clients connect and makes your server vulnerable to UUID spoofing.