How to Change the View Distance on a Minecraft Java Server ​

What is the view distance? ​

The view-distance determines how many chunks a player can see around them. A chunk in Minecraft is an area of the world of 16x16 blocks. This means: If the view distance is set to 10, the player can see in a square of 21x21 chunks - i.e. 10 chunks in each direction. The view distance only affects the loading and display of the world, not the active calculation of e.g. mobs, redstone or the growth of plants.

What effects does the setting have on my server? ​

• Higher values allow a larger world view.
• The more players are online at the same time, the greater the load on the server.
• Too high values can lead to stuttering, connection problems or high RAM utilization.

How do I change the view distance? ​

1. Open server.properties
   Connect to your server via SFTP and open the file server.properties.

2. Find the entry
   Look for the following entry:

   view-distance=10

   view-distance=10

3. Change the value
   Change the value as desired (e.g. 8 or 6).

4. Restart the server
   Save the changes and restart the server.