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
Open dashboard
Go to your Minecraft Bedrock Edition server in the dashboard.Open file browser
Open the file browser.Open config
Open the fileserver.properties.Find entry
Search for the following entry:view-distance=32view-distance=32Change value
Change the value as desired (e.g.12or10).Save changes
Save the changes by clicking on "Save".Restart server
Restart the server so that the changes become active.
Recommendation
6–8→ For large numbers of players & low server performance10–12→ Balanced between performance and visibility16–20→ Only with high server performance32→ 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.