Use your server console
Published on 3 October 2026
The console is the window in the game panel where you watch what your server does in real time. You start, stop and restart your server there, and you type commands as if you were sitting at the server yourself. It’s the first page of your server in the game panel: Console.
What do you see in the console?
- At the top, your server’s name, its status (Offline, Starting, Online or Stopping) and its address with port next to Address.
- The buttons Start, Restart and Stop.
- The console window with all your server’s messages; new lines appear at the bottom. Clear empties the window without changing anything on your server.
- The input box below the window, saying Type a command.
- Meters and graphs for CPU, memory, disk, uptime and network traffic.
A Minecraft server is ready once you see a line with Done and For help, type "help". The status then switches to Online.
How do you send a command?
- Click the input box below the console window.
- Type your command without a slash. In Minecraft chat you type
/list; in the console justlist. - Press Enter. Your server’s reply appears in the window.
- The up and down arrow keys bring back earlier commands, which is handy after a typo.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
list | Shows who’s online. |
say Cake is ready at spawn! | Sends a message to every player. |
save-all | Saves the world right away. |
whitelist add Name | Adds a player to the whitelist. |
stop | Saves and shuts the server down. |
On Bedrock, list, say and stop work too, but the whitelist is called allowlist. More on letting players in: Turn on the whitelist and add operators.
Stop or Kill: what’s the difference?
Stop sends your game’s proper shutdown command, so the server saves everything first. If that takes too long, the button turns into Kill. Kill switches the server off immediately without saving, and the game panel rightly warns that this can corrupt your files. Only use Kill when Stop really doesn’t work.
How do you find the cause of an error?
Don’t just look at the last line. Scroll up to the first line with ERROR or a red message: that’s usually the cause, often with the name of a plugin or mod. Minecraft keeps older messages in the logs folder, where latest.log is the newest. Open it in File managers or over SFTP.
What are the common mistakes?
- A slash before the command. If a command does nothing, check for a stray
/. - Sending a command while the server is off. Start it first; a server that’s off can’t hear you.
- Thinking the server stops when you close the browser. The console is only a window. Your server keeps running.
Just getting started? Read First steps after your order first. Everything else the panel can do is on the game panel page.
