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How to Change the View Distance on Your Minecraft Bedrock Edition Server

What is the view distance?

The view-distance determines how many chunks the server loads and sends to clients. A chunk in Minecraft is an area of 16x16 blocks. With a view distance of 10, the player can see 10 chunks in each direction (a 21x21 chunk square).

The view distance only affects the display of the world — how far the landscape is visible. It does not control the active ticking of mobs, redstone or players.

Players or mobs only become visible up close?

That's not handled by view-distance but by tick-distance. Entities are only ticked and shown within the area covered by the tick distance.

Effects on the server

  • Higher values allow a larger world view.
  • The more players are online at the same time, the greater the load on the server.
  • Values that are too high can cause stuttering, connection problems or high RAM usage.

Change the view distance

  1. Open dashboard
    Go to your Minecraft Bedrock Edition server in the dashboard.

  2. Open file browser
    Open the file browser.

  3. Open config
    Open the file server.properties.

  4. Find entry
    Search for the following entry:

    view-distance=32
    view-distance=32
  5. Change value
    Change the value as desired (e.g. 12 or 10).

  6. Save changes
    Save the changes by clicking on "Save".

  7. Restart server
    Restart the server so that the changes become active.

Recommendation

  • 68 → For large numbers of players & low server performance
  • 1012 → Balanced between performance and visibility
  • 1620 → Only with high server performance
  • 32 → Default setting

Client-side note

The server's view distance is the upper limit — the client cannot see further than the server sends. Players also need to set the render distance in their video settings high enough to actually see the full distance the server provides.