Edit your Minecraft server's whitelist
Add and remove allowed players using the dashboard panel, with a fallback to editing whitelist.json directly when you need it.
A Minecraft server with no whitelist is open to the entire internet. Anyone with the address — and they will find it, server-list crawlers are relentless — can connect. The whitelist is the quickest, cheapest way to keep that door shut: only the names on the list get in, everyone else bounces off at login. This guide shows both ways to manage it on Netlonics: the dashboard panel for everyday adds and removes, and editing whitelist.json directly when you'd rather work with the raw file.
01 Open your Minecraft server from the dashboard
From your dashboard, click the card for the Minecraft server you want to lock down. The whitelist tool only appears for Java edition servers running Paper, Spigot, Vanilla, or one of the Forge/NeoForge modpacks — Bedrock has its own equivalent called the allowlist, which we cover in its own guide.
02 Scroll to the Whitelist panel
On the service detail page, scroll past the live metrics and console until you see the Whitelist card on the right. The panel writes straight to whitelist.json on the server and reloads it live — no restart needed. If the panel is missing entirely, the server isn't a whitelist-aware game; double-check you opened the right one.
03 Type a Minecraft username and click ADD
Type the player's exact in-game name into the input. The pattern check accepts 3 to 16 letters, digits, or underscores — Mojang's own rules. Then click ADD. You don't need to know their UUID; the dashboard fetches it for you in the next step.
04 The name resolves through Mojang and the entry appears
Behind the scenes, the dashboard calls Mojang's public profile API to look up the player's real account UUID and the canonical spelling of their name. If you typed notch, it'll be saved as Notch — the spelling Mojang itself returns — so the entry works on online-mode servers without you having to think about it. If Mojang is having an outage, or you're running an offline-mode server, we fall back to a deterministic offline UUID and use whatever you typed; the entry still works, it's just less authoritative.
To remove a player, hit DELETE on their row. To rename an entry — same UUID, different display name — use EDIT. Both changes apply live; the server runs whitelist reload for you immediately.
05 Alternative: edit whitelist.json directly in the file manager
If you want to paste a long list of names from your Discord, or you just prefer working with raw files, open the FILES tab, click whitelist.json, and edit the JSON directly. The format is a top-level array of { "uuid": "…", "name": "…" } objects — same shape Mojang's server expects. Hit SAVE when you're done; the change goes to the live whitelist.json on the server, but direct edits don't trigger whitelist reload automatically — type whitelist reload in the console (or restart) to make the running server see the change.
Troubleshooting
- A player can't join even though they're on the list. Check the spelling and capitalisation against the resolved entry. Mojang's lookup uses the canonical name; if you typed an alias or a freed-up name they no longer own, the UUID points at the wrong account.
- The panel rejects the username with a pattern error. Minecraft usernames are 3–16 characters, letters, digits, or underscore only. Names with dots, hyphens, or other characters aren't valid Mojang accounts.
- Someone is actively griefing right now. The whitelist only blocks new connections — anyone already in the server stays. Open the console, run
kick <player>first, then add the whitelist; otherwise they keep going until they disconnect on their own. - You want everyone out except friends. Add your friends to the whitelist first, then run
whitelist onin the console. The whitelist file alone isn't enforced unless the server'senforce-whitelistsetting is true, but the dashboard panel takes care of that for you when you add the first entry on a fresh server.