Change your Minecraft server version from the dashboard
Pick a new Paper version from Server Options — what happens during the reinstall, how to keep your world safe, and what to do if a plugin breaks.
Most operators bump their Minecraft version when a major release lands, when a plugin needs a newer API, or when chasing a bug fix. The dashboard handles the whole thing in a few clicks — but the change isn't free: saving a new version reinstalls the server container, which re-downloads the Paper jar and re-runs the install script. Your world is preserved, but plugins and custom configs may need a second look. Take a backup first (one click on the Backups tab) and you can always roll back.
01 Open the server you want to upgrade
From your dashboard, click the Minecraft server you want to manage. Make sure it's the right one — the server's UUID prefix and the tier badge on the card help you tell two Minecraft servers apart. You'll land on the OVERVIEW tab with live metrics, the console, and below them the Server Options panel where the version selector lives.
02 Find the Server Options panel
Scroll the OVERVIEW page until you see the Server Options card. The current Minecraft version sits in a single dropdown labelled Minecraft version, with a yellow REQUIRES REINSTALL chip on the right — that chip is the dashboard's way of telling you this field is destructive: changing the value and pressing SAVE CHANGES kicks off a fresh install rather than a hot reload.
Click the dropdown and you'll get every Paper build Netlonics can install, driven live by PaperMC's release index. The list looks roughly like this:
Latest— Netlonics resolves "Latest" to the newest stable Paper at install time. Great for fresh worlds, less great for plugin compatibility because you can't pin to a known-good build.- Stable releases —
26.1.2,26.1.1,1.21.11,1.21.10,1.21.9,1.21.8, …, all the way down to1.18. These are the production-ready builds; pin one you've tested with your plugin set. - Pre-releases and release candidates —
1.21.11-pre5,1.21.11-rc3, etc. Only use these for testing — they're not stable and Paper may break compatibility before the final release ships.
Why no screenshot of the dropdown open? The version selector is a native browser
<select>— the popup is rendered by your operating system, not the page. Native popups don't appear in page screenshots, but the dropdown content is exactly the version list above.
03 Pick the new version (but don't save yet)
Click the version you want and the dropdown closes with the new value selected. The SAVE CHANGES button doesn't fire until you click it — so this is your last chance to bail.
Before you click SAVE CHANGES, do these three things:
- Trigger a backup. Switch to the BACKUPS tab on the same page and create a fresh snapshot. Stone tier ships with one backup slot, so you may need to delete an older snapshot first; higher tiers have more headroom.
- Read the plugin compatibility for your target version. Across major versions (1.20 → 1.21, etc.) most plugins need an update; across patch versions (1.21.5 → 1.21.8) they usually keep working. Spigot / Paper's plugin pages list per-version support.
- Pick a quiet moment. The reinstall takes ~60 seconds for Paper — players online will be disconnected and won't be able to rejoin until install finishes.
When you're ready, click SAVE CHANGES. The dashboard kicks off a reinstall on the backend: the chosen Paper jar is downloaded, the install script re-runs, and your world/, plugins/, and server.properties are preserved on disk. The server restarts on the new version once install is done.
Troubleshooting
- My world is gone after the reinstall. It shouldn't be — the install script doesn't touch
world/. If you genuinely don't see your world, switch to the BACKUPS tab and restore the snapshot you took in step 3. If you skipped the backup, open a ticket immediately; the older daily backups may still be available. - A plugin doesn't load on the new version. That's the most common upgrade casualty. Open the CONSOLE on the Overview tab — Paper logs every plugin it skips at boot, with the reason. Usually you need an updated JAR from the plugin's site. Drop it into
plugins/via the file manager and restart. - The reinstall is stuck on "Installing…". Wait 90 seconds — Paper's first-boot setup is slower than the steady-state restart. If it's still stuck after that, open a ticket; we have access to the install log on the backend and can unstick it.
- I picked the wrong version. Easy fix: open Server Options again, pick the right version, and run another reinstall. Your world and backups carry across both reinstalls. Plugins may need re-checking again if you cross a major-version boundary in either direction.
- I just want to roll back. Pick the older version in the dropdown and save. If something corrupted on the way through (rare), restore the backup from step 3 — that puts the server bit-for-bit back to where it was.