How to Add an Admin to Your s&box Server

On an s&box server you grant admin rights through the file users.json. What you enter is the player's SteamID64 – a 17-digit number starting with 7656.

Tip

Here you can find a guide on how to find your SteamID64.

Add an admin

1. Stop the server
   Stop your server via the dashboard.

2. Connect via SFTP
   Connect to your server via SFTP.

3. Open users.json
   Open the following file. If it does not exist yet, create it:

   /config/users.json

4. Add the player
   The file contains a list of players. Enter the SteamID64 and the permissions you want to grant:

   [
     {
       "SteamId": "76561198012345678",
       "Claims": [ "admin" ],
       "Name": "Example player"
     }
   ]

5. Start the server
   Save the file and start your server.

Structure of the file

Field	Meaning
SteamId	SteamID64 of the player. It determines who receives the permissions.
Claims	List of permissions assigned to the player
Name	A label for your own reference – it has no effect on the permissions

Additional admins are added as further entries in the same list, separated by a comma:

[
  {
    "SteamId": "76561198012345678",
    "Claims": [ "admin" ],
    "Name": "Player 1"
  },
  {
    "SteamId": "76561198087654321",
    "Claims": [ "admin" ],
    "Name": "Player 2"
  }
]

Warning

The file has to be valid JSON. A single missing or extra comma is enough to make the entire list unreadable, and nobody will receive admin rights.

Which claims are there?

The entries under Claims are free-form text values. Which of them actually do anything is decided by the game mode running on your server.

Important

The official sandbox mode (facepunch.sandbox) only evaluates the claim admin. Among other things it unlocks kicking and banning in-game as well as cleaning up the world. The official documentation shows examples such as kick, ban or restart – those are purely illustrative and have no effect in sandbox mode. Therefore use "Claims": [ "admin" ].

Note

If you run a community game mode, check its documentation for the claims it expects. You can also give a player several claims at once: "Claims": [ "admin", "moderator" ].

Changes while the server is running

The server watches the file users.json and applies changes to it without a restart.

Warning

That watcher is only set up if the file already existed when the server started. If you create users.json for the first time while the server is running, you have to restart it once. After that, saving the file is enough.

Note

The permissions from users.json only apply on a dedicated server like yours. When playing through a locally hosted session, the host is always the admin instead.

Tip

To learn how to remove players from your server as an admin, see Kick & Ban Players.