How to Lock Chests on Your Minecraft Server: Bolt, /lock and Access for Friends

Bolt, LWC or claiming land

There are two ways to protect chests. Per-block locking: each chest, furnace or door belongs to whoever places it, wherever it is (Bolt, LWC). Land claims: the player marks an area and nobody else can break or open anything inside (GriefPrevention). They can be combined; how they compare is in the griefers guide.

Bolt was written by the same author who maintained LWCX, to replace LWC: it protects any block (not just containers) and also entities like item frames, armour stands or chests in boats and minecarts, and it doesn't make the server wait to read its database. If you're coming from LWC, Bolt imports its protections with an admin command (/bolt admin convert, with both plugins installed; the steps are in its wiki).

It's a plugin: it runs on Paper (and Spigot or Purpur), not on Fabric, Forge or NeoForge. At NapNodes, Minecraft servers are delivered with Paper. Players don't have to install anything.

Installing it

1. Make a backup

   In the panel, “Backups”. Installing a plugin doesn't touch the world, but it's the habit that saves the day when something goes wrong.

2. Find it in “Mods & plugins”

   Search for Bolt and install it: the panel only shows what works for your Minecraft version and your server type. If it doesn't appear, download it from its official page on Hangar (hangar.papermc.io) and upload it to the plugins folder from “Files”.

3. Restart

   On startup it creates plugins/Bolt, with its config.yml and the bolt.db database, where every protection is stored. Don't delete it: without it, every chest is left open.

What gets protected by itself

From the moment you install it, anything newly placed is protected as private in the name of whoever places it: chests, trapped and copper chests, barrels, shulker boxes, furnaces (blast furnaces and smokers too), dispensers, droppers, hoppers, brewing stands, anvils, lecterns, beacons, jukeboxes, the crafter and more. Also armour stands, item frames, paintings and chests in boats and minecarts.

Doors, trapdoors, fence gates, signs and banners can be locked, but they aren't locked automatically (otherwise nobody could walk through the door of someone else's house at spawn). The ender chest is marked public: what's inside already belongs to each player.

Anything placed before you installed Bolt isn't protected automatically: you have to lock it with /lock (below). All of this is changed in the blocks section of plugins/Bolt/config.yml; after editing it, /bolt admin reload.

Each player's commands

In Bolt almost everything works the same way: you type the command and then click the chest (or door) you want to apply it to. If you click another one by accident, the command applies to that one.

1. Lock: /lock

   /lock and click the block: it becomes private and in your name. It works for things already placed and for doors or trapdoors.

2. Unlock: /unlock

   /unlock and click: it's free again. Only its owner (or an admin) can do it.

3. See who owns it: /bolt info

   /bolt info and click: it tells you the protection type and who owns it.

4. Let a friend open it

   /bolt edit add Name and click the chest: that player can now open it, put things in and take things out. /bolt edit remove Name takes it away.

5. Give it to someone else: /bolt transfer

   /bolt transfer Name and click: the chest becomes theirs (for example, when you move out of a shared house).

Friends on everything you own: trust and groups

Going chest by chest gets tiring. With /bolt trust add player Name you give that player access to all your protections at once, the ones you have and the ones you place later; /bolt trust remove player Name takes it away. Bolt shows you the list and may ask you to confirm the change.

For a group that changes (a clan, the people in a shared house), create a group: /bolt group create house Ana Luis. Then /bolt modify add normal group house and click each of the group's chests. When someone new joins, /bolt group add house Marta and they can open them all, without touching the chests; /bolt group remove house Luis takes him out.

Mailboxes, display chests and password chests

When locking you can choose the type, which says what others can do. /lock display: they see it open, but can't put in or take out (a display case or the rules chest at spawn). /lock deposit: they can put in, not take out (a mailbox or a donations chest). /lock withdrawal: they can take out, not put in (the starter kit chest). /lock public: anyone uses it, but it stays in your name and nobody else can break it. If the block is already locked, /lock with another type and a click changes it.

Password: /bolt modify add normal password yourpassword and click the chest. Whoever knows it types /bolt password yourpassword and can then open it. Useful for giving access to people whose names you don't know yet, but it isn't completely secret: admins see the command in the console.

Useful modes

/bolt mode nolock: stops automatically locking what you place (to build spawn or a shop without everything ending up in your name). The same command again turns it back on.

/bolt mode persist: repeats the last command on every click, to lock or share twenty chests in a row without typing it twenty times. /bolt mode nospam removes the messages that appear when you use something protected.

Hoppers, redstone and farms

Your hopper under your chest keeps working: Bolt checks who owns each one and lets items pass between those with the same owner, hopper chains included. What it doesn't do is let another player's hopper drain your chest, the classic trick for robbing a locked one.

Redstone is allowed on private blocks by default (otherwise a door with a button or an automatic furnace would stop working). If a farm stops working after installing Bolt, check with /bolt info who owns each chest and hopper: usually one of them belongs to another player.

What you can do as an admin

Careful: ops can open and break any protection (bolt.admin, which ops have by default). For a moderator who can open and look inside any chest (say, after a theft report) without being able to change or break protections, give them only bolt.mod with LuckPerms from the panel's “Console”: lp user Name permission set bolt.mod true. How to do it by groups is in the LuckPerms guide.

/bolt admin find Name shows where a player has protections; /bolt admin nearby 20, the ones within 20 blocks. /bolt admin transfer Name Other moves all of one player's protections to another (someone leaving the server who hands the house to a friend) and /bolt admin purge Name deletes all of theirs (what's inside the chests isn't touched: they're left open).

/bolt admin expire 60 days removes protections nobody has used in 60 days: it frees spawn from the chests of people who never came back. And if you've wiped areas with WorldEdit, /bolt admin cleanup clears protections for blocks that no longer exist from the database.

Bolt doesn't let you see what someone with access took from a chest: that's CoreProtect (in the griefers guide). And if someone empties something before you add the plugin, the way out is a backup.

Messages in Spanish

Bolt's messages are in English, and it also ships a Spanish translation made by its community, though not fully complete (some admin messages stay in English). By default, each player sees the messages in their game's language if there's a translation (per-player-locale: true in config.yml). To show them in Spanish for everyone, set language: es in plugins/Bolt/config.yml and run /bolt admin reload.

Frequently asked questions