How to Make Your Minecraft Server Whitelist-Only

One very popular characteristic of many survival servers for Minecraft, particularly smaller ones, is a player whitelist. A whitelist allows you to control which players can access your server, helping protect it from Griefers and "toxic" players. Making a whitelist Minecraft server is extremely simple - Just follow these easy steps:

How to activate whitelist on your server

1. Head to the game panel in your host's site and left click on the panel that says “Console”. If you host your server on your own computer, simply bring up the server console.
2. In the command line type, “whitelist on” and press enter.
3. When doing so, you should see a message “Whitelist is now turned on”.

How to deactivate whitelist on your server

1. Head to the game panel in your host's site and left click on the panel that says “Console”. If you host your server on your own computer, simply bring up the server console.
2. In the command line type, “whitelist off” and press enter.
3. When doing so, you should see a message “Whitelist is now turned off”.

Adding and Removing Players to your Whitelist

When turning on your whitelist initially, you won’t have any players or yourself whitelisted on your server. You may be able to add and remove players from your whitelist but you need to be opped to do so. Check out our tutorial on how to OP yourself if you don't know how.

How to add a player to your whitelist 

1. Head to the game panel in your host's site and left click on the panel that says “Console” - Or just bring up the server console window if you host your server on your PC.
2. In the command line type, “whitelist add {IGN}”, where {IGN} is the name of the player you want to add to the whitelist, and press enter.
3. When doing so, you should see a message “Added {IGN} to the whitelist”.

How to remove a player to your whitelist

1. Head to the game panel in your hosting site and left click on the panel that says “Console” - Or just bring up the server console window if you host your server on your PC.
2. In the command line type, “whitelist remove {IGN}”, where {IGN} is the name of the player you want to remove from the whitelist, and press enter
3. When doing so, you should see a message “Removed {IGN} from the whitelist”

How to list the players that are whitelisted

1. Bring up the server console in your host's site, or your computer, depending on where your server is hosted.
2. In the command line type, “whitelist list” and press enter.
3. If no players are whitelisted, it will display the message “There are no whitelisted players”. If any player is whitelisted, it will instead display: “There are {number of players whitelisted} whitelisted players: {IGNs}”.