How to put your Minecraft server in maintenance mode

• It turns the whitelist on, so only whitelisted players and operators can join.
• It replaces your server message in the multiplayer list with your maintenance message, so players see the server is closed on purpose and not broken.
• It remembers how things were. Turning it off restores your whitelist setting and your own message exactly.

Your world, plugins and settings are not touched. Only who can join and what the server list says change.

1. Put everyone who helps you on the whitelist first, in the Players tab. Operators can join anyway.
2. Open Settings and find Maintenance mode.
3. Type your Maintenance message, for example Updating to 26.1, back at 20:00. The dark box under the field shows how it will look in the server list.
4. Tick Restart now if the message should show at once and players who are not whitelisted should be sent off. Everyone online is disconnected for about a minute.
5. Click Turn maintenance on.

Without Restart now, the maintenance message appears in the server list after the next restart.

• In the server list: your maintenance message where the normal message was, with the server still shown as online.
• When they try to join: the message that they are not whitelisted, unless they are on the whitelist or an operator.
• On a crossplay server: Bedrock players follow the same whitelist. Bedrock helpers need fwhitelist add with their name, as at any time the whitelist is on.

Players see the message in their multiplayer list. Say what is happening and when the server is back; that saves you a dozen questions in Discord.

Colour codes work with &: &c is red, &6 gold and &l bold. For example:

&c&lMaintenance &7Updating to 26.1, back at 20:00

Put the colour first and then &l, because a colour code ends bold. Change your server icon and MOTD has the full list of colours.

Need to change the text while maintenance is on? Type the new message and click Update message.

A few messages that answer the first question players have, which is when they can play again:

&c&lMaintenance &7Back in about 30 minutes
&6&lUpdating to 26.2 &7New shops and a bigger border
&e&lNew season soon &7Opening Friday at 20:00
&c&lBackup in progress &7Back shortly

Give a time when you can, in the time zone most of your players live in. A message that says back soon for three days makes players look for another server.

Tick Restart now if the server list should show your normal message straight away, and click Turn maintenance off. The whitelist goes back to how it was before, on or off, and your own server message returns.

Players who were on the whitelist before maintenance are still on it. Nobody has to be added again.

Opening the server is only half of it; players have to know. Post it in your Discord or group chat with what changed. With Discord notifications set up on the Overview tab, your channel also gets a message when the server starts. Link your server chat to Discord shows how to set that up.

On the Overview tab, the Performance card covers Players for 24 hours or 7 days. The low point of that graph is the best time for maintenance: the fewest players are sent off, and the fewest find a closed server.

Maintenance mode is the first and the last step of any big change:

1. Tell players in chat or Discord when the maintenance starts.
2. Turn maintenance mode on, with Restart now.
3. Make a backup: see back up and restore your server.
4. Do the work, for example change the Minecraft version or install a modpack.
5. Join with your own account and check that everything works: spawn, plugins, a few builds.
6. Turn maintenance mode off.

The maintenance mode of the panel covers most needs. A maintenance plugin on Paper adds a few extras, such as a countdown before the server closes, a separate icon during maintenance, or a planned end time.

Use one or the other, not both. When two tools change the server message, it is hard to tell which one players see.

On a server network, players see the message of the network in their server list, not the message of each server behind it. The Maintenance mode card says so on those servers. Change the message on the Network card in Settings instead.