How to add a password to your Minecraft server

Why there is no password field#

Java Edition's server.properties has no join-password key. The server.properties reference covers the whole file, and the only password in it is rcon.password - "The password for rcon." RCON is console access, not a gate at the door: enable-rcon is "Whether to enable rcon, which allows access to the server console over a network", and rcon.port is "The TCP port number rcon listens on." Setting a RCON password does not restrict who can join the server - it protects the remote console itself, and the reference's day-one advice is to leave enable-rcon off unless you need it.

What Java Edition does have is account verification. online-mode (default true) is "Whether to only allow players verified with the Minecraft account database to join" - it is what keeps uninvited, unverified accounts out. A shared join password can leak and be passed around; a whitelist of verified accounts is tied to each player's own account.

The whitelist is the password equivalent#

The whitelist answers the actual question - keep strangers out while your friends get in:

• Run /whitelist on from the server console, or set white-list=true in server.properties and restart the server. As of Java 26.3 (snapshot 2), white-list is true by default - "The white-list property is now true by default" - while servers on older versions default to false.
• Add your players with /whitelist add <targets>; they do not need to be online to be added.
• With the whitelist enabled, "users not on the whitelist cannot connect."
• Keep online-mode=true so a whitelist entry matches a real, verified account.

Two keys whose names ask to be confused: white-list is the one that enables the whitelist. enforce-whitelist (default false) enables nothing - it decides whether players who are already online and not on the list are kicked when the whitelist is reloaded.

One bypass worth knowing before you rely on the list alone: Java Edition operators can connect even if not whitelisted. The ban list also overrides the whitelist - anyone on it is blocked from connecting, whatever the list says.

Managing the list#

Entries live in whitelist.json in the server root, each with two fields: uuid - "The UUID of the player, in hyphenated hexadecimal format", dashes included - and name. Edit the file by hand while the server runs and the change is not picked up on its own: run /whitelist reload, which "refreshes the profile list from disk, used when whitelist.json has been modified outside of Minecraft." /whitelist remove <targets> takes a player off the list, and /whitelist list shows who is on it.

Paper and Bedrock#

Paper changes none of this: PaperMC's getting-started documentation (page last updated September 18, 2026) records no differences from vanilla for /whitelist or whitelist.json, or for the white-list, enforce-whitelist and op-permission-level keys. Bedrock Edition is a separate edition with its own allowlist - the command is /allowlist, the file is allowlist.json, and the properties key is allow-list.

The command-by-command reference for everything on this page is the whitelist, op and ban commands guide, which also covers the permission levels these commands require. Password-protect or whitelist your server covers the games that do have join passwords, and the Minecraft availability page carries current plans if you would rather not run the server yourself.

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