Set Up a Minecraft Whitelist Without Locking Yourself Out

A whitelist limits your server to an approved list of players, and the trick to enabling it safely is to add yourself and your admins to the list before you turn it on.

A whitelist limits your server to an approved list of players, and the trick to enabling it safely is to add yourself and your admins to the list before you turn it on.

What a whitelist does

With the whitelist on, only names on the approved list can connect. Everyone else is refused at the login screen. It is the simplest way to keep a private server private, whether it is just for friends or a paid community.

One important detail: the moment you enable a whitelist, anyone not on it is kicked, including you if you forgot to add yourself. That is how people lock themselves out, so follow the order below.

The safe order to turn it on

Do this from the Console tab so you always have access, even if you are not currently in-game.

  • Add yourself: whitelist add YourUsername.
  • Add your admins and friends, one per line: whitelist add FriendName.
  • Double check the list: whitelist list.
  • Only now turn it on: whitelist on.

You can also flip white-list=true in server.properties, but adding names first from the Console is safer because the Console always works regardless of the whitelist.

If you lock yourself out

Do not panic, the Console bypasses the whitelist completely:

  • Open the Console tab.
  • Run whitelist add YourUsername.
  • Run whitelist reload.
  • Try connecting again.

If you prefer, you can edit whitelist.json directly on the Files tab. It is a list of player names and UUIDs. Add an entry, save, and run whitelist reload in the Console.

Ops and a few gotchas

  • Server operators can be set to ignore the whitelist, but do not rely on that. Add yourself to the list properly.
  • Names are tied to Mojang accounts, so a player who changes their username keeps access thanks to their stored UUID.
  • Keep online-mode=true. Whitelisting depends on verified accounts to match names to UUIDs correctly.
  • To remove someone, run whitelist remove PlayerName.

Running Bedrock instead?

Bedrock Edition calls this feature the allowlist and sets it up a little differently. If your GuavaHost server is Bedrock, see our separate allowlist guide for the exact steps.

Take a quick Backups snapshot before your first public opening so you can restore if a setting goes wrong.

Still stuck? Jump into our Discord at discord.gg/GuavaHost and the team will help you out.