How to Whitelist Players on Your Minecraft Server

To whitelist a player, open Player Manager in the left sidebar, click Whitelist, and add their exact in-game username. Restart the server afterward so the change loads. Whitelisted players can then join; anyone else is blocked, even if they know your IP.

Symptoms

• You want to lock your server down to invited friends only.
• A player you added to the whitelist still can't connect.
• Whitelist seems to "turn off" on its own, or a banned/unwanted player got back in.
• You need to remove someone from the whitelist later.

Why this happens

Whitelisting itself is straightforward, but most support tickets come from two things: username formatting, and forgetting to restart after a change. Minecraft usernames are case-sensitive in some whitelist flows, and names with dots, capital letters, or spaces (common on Bedrock) can fail to save correctly through the panel UI. Occasionally the underlying whitelist file gets corrupted after repeated edits, which makes previously-added players stop working entirely. Separately, if whitelist is ever disabled, even briefly for testing, anyone can join during that window, which is how impersonators and unwanted guests have gotten in on other servers.

How to fix it

1. Open Player Manager from the left sidebar.
2. Click Whitelist and add the player's username exactly as it appears in-game, matching capitalization and punctuation.
3. Restart the server from the top-bar Restart button so the whitelist reloads.
4. If the player still can't join, open Console and run whitelist add <username> directly: this bypasses formatting issues that sometimes occur through the Player Manager UI, particularly with capital letters.
5. If multiple players are failing to join despite being listed, disable whitelist temporarily, then re-add every player from Player Manager one at a time and restart again.
6. If problems persist after that, the whitelist file itself may be corrupted. Open a support ticket and ask staff to delete and rebuild it: this has resolved stubborn cases before.
7. To remove a player, go back to Player Manager, find them under Whitelist, and remove them, or run whitelist remove <username> in Console. Restart afterward.

Never leave whitelist disabled longer than you need to for testing, servers have been joined by unwanted players, including impersonators, during even brief windows with whitelist off.

If you're running Bedrock or a crossplay setup, be aware that some Bedrock usernames contain spaces, which can break allowlist commands. If a player's own username won't connect due to this, temporarily disable whitelist to restore access, then reach out to support, changing your server IP and port is a solid fallback that doesn't reset your world. See how to find or change your server IP and port for that process. For full crossplay setup including Bedrock connection details, check Java and Bedrock Crossplay with Geyser and Floodgate. Once players are whitelisted, you may also want to give yourself Operator permissions or review how players connect to your server.

Still stuck?

If whitelisted players still can't join after a restart, or you suspect the whitelist file itself is broken, open a support ticket with the exact usernames involved, staff can rebuild the whitelist from the panel side and confirm it's applying correctly.