How to Give a Player OP Permissions on Your Minecraft Server

Operator permissions allow a player to run powerful administrative commands on your Minecraft server. For example, an operator can change the difficulty, teleport players and manage other server settings. In this guide, we explain how to grant and revoke operator permissions through the game panel of your Minecraft server.

Giving a player operator permissions

Note Only grant operator permissions to players you fully trust. An operator can change important settings, manage players, and cause damage to your server or world.

1. Log in to the game panel and go to your Minecraft server.
2. Start the Minecraft server if it is not already running and wait until it has fully started.
3. Open the Console page.
4. Enter the following command. Replace PLAYERNAME with the player’s Minecraft username:

op PLAYERNAME

5. Press Enter. Once the console confirms that the player has been made an operator, the permissions are active.

Tip Does a player’s name contain spaces on a Minecraft Bedrock server? Put the full gamertag in quotation marks, for example op "Player Name". Are you using GeyserMC? Use the exact player name shown in the console when the player joins, including any prefix.

Note Enter commands in the console without /. Do you already have operator permissions and want to run the command in Minecraft? Use /op PLAYERNAME in the chat.

Revoking a player’s operator permissions

1. Open the Console page of your Minecraft server.
2. Enter the following command. Replace PLAYERNAME with the player’s Minecraft username:

deop PLAYERNAME

3. Press Enter. The console will then confirm that the player is no longer an operator.

Tip Are you revoking the operator permissions through the Minecraft chat? Use /deop PLAYERNAME. For a Bedrock gamertag containing spaces, put the full name in quotation marks again.

What is the ops.json file used for?

On a Minecraft server, the ops.json file records which players have operator permissions. It stores information such as the username, UUID and permission level for each player.