AFK players on your Minecraft server: kicking idle players, /afk and farms

Kicking idle players without plugins: player-idle-timeout

Minecraft has its own setting in server.properties: player-idle-timeout, in minutes. With 0 (the default) it kicks nobody; with 30, it kicks whoever has spent half an hour doing nothing.

What counts as activity: pressing the movement keys (walking, jumping, sneaking, sprinting), breaking or placing blocks, attacking, using an item, switching the item in your hand, touching an inventory or a crafting table, writing on a sign and typing in chat or a command. Just turning the camera doesn't count: that's what catches out people who think they “weren't AFK”.

It makes no exceptions: admins (op) get kicked too. If you want staff to be exempt or a warning before the kick, you need a plugin, such as EssentialsX (below).

1. Open the settings

   In the NapNodes panel, the server's “Settings”, the “Joining and players” section.

2. Set the minutes

   In “Kick idle players (minutes)” type how many minutes of doing nothing you'll put up with (0 = never). It saves on its own.

3. Restart

   server.properties is read on startup: press “Restart” for it to apply. If you don't want to restart, the command setidletimeout 30 in the “Console” changes it on the spot.

Marking players AFK and kicking only when needed: EssentialsX

EssentialsX (a plugin for Paper, which is what NapNodes Minecraft servers run) adds the /afk command, which marks a player as “away” and says so in chat, and it can do it on its own after a while standing still. How to install it and grant permissions is in the EssentialsX guide; here, just the AFK part.

What confuses people most: automatic AFK (auto-afk, 300 seconds by default in plugins/Essentials/config.yml) only applies to players with the essentials.afk.auto permission, and nobody has that permission by default, not even ops. Without granting it, nobody goes AFK on their own.

Kicking is a separate thing: auto-afk-timeout, in seconds, is -1 by default (never). If you set it to 1800, a player is kicked after half an hour AFK. Anyone with essentials.afk.kickexempt is spared; by default ops have it.

Instead of kicking, you can do something else with afk-timeout-commands (for example, send them to spawn). Careful: the list has to take the player off the server or out of AFK, or those commands repeat every second.

Other useful settings in the same file: broadcast-afk-message (whether the whole server sees the “is AFK” notice or just them), disable-item-pickup-while-afk (no picking up items while AFK: it slows down mob farms with the player standing still), freeze-afk-players (freezes them and makes them invulnerable while AFK; they leave it with /afk) and cancel-afk-on-move (whether moving ends AFK).

1. Grant the permissions

   With LuckPerms, in “Console”: lp group default permission set essentials.afk true (to use /afk) and lp group default permission set essentials.afk.auto true (for automatic AFK).

2. Adjust the times

   In “Files”, plugins/Essentials/config.yml: auto-afk (seconds until marked AFK) and auto-afk-timeout (seconds of AFK until kicked; -1 = never).

3. Exempt your staff

   lp group admin permission set essentials.afk.kickexempt true, with the name of your admin group.

4. Apply it

   Type essentials reload in the “Console” or restart the server.

Stop AFK players from blocking the night

For the night to be skipped, everyone online has to sleep (the players_sleeping_percentage rule, 100 by default). One AFK player blocks it.

Two ways out: lower the rule (with players_sleeping_percentage 1, a single player sleeping is enough; change it in “Settings” with the server running or with /gamerule, as explained in the gamerules guide) or, with EssentialsX, sleep-ignores-afk-players, which is already true by default: players marked AFK don't count for sleeping.

AFK farms: why someone has to be online

Minecraft only runs the world near players: crops grow, mobs spawn and redstone moves within someone's simulation distance. With nobody nearby, the farm is stopped, even if the server is on. That's why “AFK farms” exist: someone stays next to them, standing still.

You change the distance in “Settings”, “Performance” section, “Simulation distance” (in chunks, from 3 to 32; 6 to 10 recommended). A larger distance makes farms work further away from you, but every player makes the server work harder: raise it carefully if you notice stutters.

Don't count on spawn: on today's versions the spawnChunkRadius rule no longer exists (it's not in Paper's list of rules), so there's no area that keeps running with nobody there.

If a farm runs slower on the server than in your single-player world, it's usually because the server, to save work, moves entities that are a bit far away less often (entity-activation-range, in spigot.yml). The simplest fix is to put the waiting spot closer to the farm; if the lag is everywhere, see the lag guide.

And the server: does it shut down with someone AFK?

On the NapNodes free server, an AFK player counts as online: the server doesn't shut down while they're in (it shuts down on its own after an hour with nobody). But if there are people in the queue to start, the server that's been on for more than 1 hour is shut down so someone else can play, with a warning 5 minutes before in the panel and in chat. And if you set player-idle-timeout, kicking the last player leaves the server empty and an hour later it shuts down.

With a paid plan the server is always on with no queues. An AFK farm still needs someone nearby (that's the game, not the hosting), but the server doesn't shut down for being empty or because of turns.

Either way, to be AFK your computer or console has to keep Minecraft open: the AFK player is you, connected.

Frequently asked questions