Host a server.

Before you start

• Online mode checks accounts (release v2026.10.17.07 and newer). With online_mode = true, the default, players who sign in with the official Minecraft launcher join with their own accounts, as on a vanilla server.
• Names you add are accounts (release v2026.10.17.14 and newer). init --player, horizon-server whitelist add and op, and the console's whitelist add, op and ban look a name up the way vanilla does: players already seen (kept in usercache.json), then Mojang's profile service. In online mode a name with no account is refused. So you can whitelist friends before they first join.
• Horizon's own client can't sign in to a Microsoft account yet. That needs an Azure app registration and Mojang's approval, which the project doesn't have (docs/microsoft-account.md). Until then Horizon players can join offline servers only (online_mode = false). An offline server never checks accounts: anyone who reaches it can join under any name. Keep it on your LAN or a tailnet (Tailscale, ZeroTier), or share it only with friends you trust.
• No secure chat. Chat isn't signed, and enforce-secure-profile has no effect. Vanilla clients show chat from the server as not secure.
• Nether and End: the world follows a player through portals when they are alone on the server (v2026.10.17.09 and newer). With several players online, portals don't move remote players yet.
• Movement checks and chunk pacing (release v2026.10.17.16 and newer). The server pulls back players who move too fast ("moved too quickly"), as vanilla does, and sends chunks as fast as each client acknowledges them.
• No Docker image is published. You build it yourself from the repository (below). Publishing an image needs the project owner.
• Nothing of Mojang's is downloaded or shipped. The server reads the game files you prepare from your own copy of Minecraft 26.3.

1. Install

Linux (x86-64) and macOS (Apple Silicon):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ludovic111/horizon/main/packaging/server/install.sh | sh

Windows (x64), in PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ludovic111/horizon/main/packaging/server/install.ps1 | iex

The script downloads the latest Horizon release for your computer from GitHub, checks it against the SHA-256 GitHub publishes, and never asks for sudo or administrator rights. It installs:

• the release in ~/.local/share/horizon/releases/<version> (Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Horizon), with current pointing at the one in use;
• horizon-server and horizon-prepare in ~/.local/bin (Windows: added to your PATH);
• a game-files folder for the files you prepare, kept across updates.

Options: --version vX.Y.Z, --dir FOLDER, --bin FOLDER (Windows: -Version, -Dir). Other systems, such as Linux on ARM, build from source: cargo build --release -p horizon-client --bin horizon-client -p horizon-server and keep both programs in one folder.

The Horizon launcher also installs releases. Every release folder holds horizon-server, so you can run it from there too.

2. Prepare the game files

Horizon reads Minecraft's data from your own copy of the game. You need Minecraft Java Edition 26.3, played once from the official launcher on this computer, Java 25 (a JDK), and the 26.3 server.jar: it's the downloads.server.url in your launcher's versions/26.3/26.3.json. Then:

horizon-prepare --prepare --server-jar /path/to/server.jar

Add --minecraft-dir PATH if your launcher keeps the game elsewhere. The prepared files go to game-files, which updates keep.

On a headless machine (a VPS, a home server), prepare on your own computer instead, with the launcher or horizon-prepare, and copy the prepared 26.3 folder to the server: into ~/.local/share/horizon/game-files/horizon-client/26.3, or into resources/ in the server folder, or anywhere [engine] resources in server.toml names. A folder copied this way needs release v2026.10.17.07 or newer: older ones don't keep registries.json and commands.json with the prepared files, and the server then stops with "registries.json not found next to the resources". Prepare again with a newer release.

3. First run

mkdir my-server && cd my-server
horizon-server init

init asks five things and writes server.toml:

1. whether you agree to the Minecraft EULA: only a yes writes eula=true;
2. the world's name and an optional seed (an existing world or vanilla server folder is kept and its server.properties imported);
3. the port, 25565 by default;
4. whether to use a whitelist (yes by default, as in vanilla) and who to add;
5. whether to make the first player an operator.

It then tells you where it found the game and its files. Every question has a flag, so it also runs from a script:

horizon-server init --eula --world survival --seed 12345 --port 25565 --whitelist --player Alex --op Alex --yes

--no-whitelist turns the whitelist off, and --offline turns online mode off (see "Before you start"). The players you add are looked up as Minecraft accounts in online mode, and get offline UUIDs on an offline server, as vanilla does.

Start the server in the foreground, with the console on your terminal (Ctrl-C stops it cleanly):

horizon-server run

or in the background:

horizon-server start
horizon-server status

Running, up 29 s
TPS 20.0, MSPT 1.0 ms average, 3.1 ms P95
0 of 20 players, 377 chunks loaded
RAM 1.42 GB, CPU 2 % of a core

Players join at your computer's address and the port (192.168.1.20:25565, or a tailnet name). Every command takes --dir FOLDER to work on a server folder from elsewhere.

4. Settings: server.toml

You edit one file. The server writes vanilla's server.properties from it before every start, so the game reads exactly what a vanilla server reads, and a vanilla server folder works as it is.

[server]
motd = "A Minecraft Server"
port = 25565
bind = ""                    # listen on every address, or only on this one (server-ip)
max_players = 20
online_mode = true           # check accounts with Mojang (see "Before you start")
whitelist = true
enforce_whitelist = false
view_distance = 10
simulation_distance = 10

[world]
name = "world"
seed = ""                    # empty: a random seed on the first start
game_mode = "survival"
difficulty = "easy"
hardcore = false

# Any other server.properties key, spelled as vanilla spells it:
[properties]
# spawn-protection = 16

[engine]
path = ""                    # the game program; empty: the one beside horizon-server
resources = ""               # the prepared game files; empty: resources/ here, else the usual places
restart_on_crash = true

[backups]
every = "6h"                 # 30m, 6h, 1d...; "0" turns automatic backups off
keep = 12                    # automatic backups kept; backups made by hand are never deleted

[panel]
bind = "127.0.0.1:8130"      # this computer only, or a tailnet address (100.x); "" turns it off
allow_public = false

The defaults are vanilla 26.3's. Unknown keys and values vanilla would refuse are errors, so a typo stops the start instead of being ignored. When the game changes a setting itself (/whitelist on), the change is copied back into server.toml when it stops, and your comments are kept. Changes to the file apply at the next restart: there is no live reload yet.

Already have a vanilla server? Run horizon-server init in its folder, or horizon-server import server.properties to write server.toml from it. The world, ops.json, whitelist.json and the ban lists keep vanilla's names and formats, so going back to vanilla works too.

5. Commands

horizon-server init                      first run
horizon-server run                       in the foreground, with the console; Ctrl-C stops it
horizon-server start | stop | restart    in the background (its output goes to logs/supervisor.log)
horizon-server status [--json]           up or not, TPS, MSPT, players, chunks, RAM, CPU
horizon-server cmd COMMAND...            one console command, and what it answers
horizon-server logs [-f] [-n N]          the log; -f follows it
horizon-server op|deop NAME
horizon-server whitelist on|off|list
horizon-server whitelist add|remove NAME
horizon-server backup [NAME]             back up now
horizon-server backups                   list the backups
horizon-server restore BACKUP [--yes]
horizon-server service install|uninstall|print [--system]
horizon-server panel                     a one-time login link for the web panel
horizon-server import FILE               server.toml from a vanilla server.properties

While the server runs, op, whitelist and cmd go to the game's console, so they act exactly as vanilla's console commands do. While it's stopped, they edit vanilla's files directly. Any console command works through cmd: horizon-server cmd ban Griefer, horizon-server cmd say Restarting in 5 minutes.

The server restarts the game by itself if it crashes: after 5 s, then waiting longer each time, up to 5 minutes. It keeps the crash report and gives up after 5 crashes in 10 minutes, and status says why.

Coming: update and rollback, console (attach to a server running in the background), ban and pardon as their own commands, and mcp (an MCP server so an AI assistant can run the server).

6. Web panel

The panel runs inside horizon-server while the server runs. It shows live TPS, MSPT, RAM and CPU graphs for the last 10 minutes, the players with their ping (and a kick button), the console with a command line, and the backups (back up now, restore with a confirmation), with Restart and Stop.

horizon-server panel

prints a login link that works once, for 10 minutes. The panel listens on 127.0.0.1:8130, this computer only. To reach it from your other devices:

• put your tailnet address in [panel] bind (for example bind = "100.101.102.103:8130"), or
• forward the port over SSH: ssh -L 8130:127.0.0.1:8130 your-server, then open the link on your computer.

Any other address, such as 0.0.0.0 or a public IP, is refused unless you set allow_public = true, and even then the panel warns at every start. It has no passwords to leak: whoever can read the server folder can make a login link, and no one else can. Never put it on the open internet.

7. Backups

horizon-server backup before-the-update
horizon-server backups
horizon-server restore before-the-update

A backup zips the world, vanilla's files and server.toml into backups/. A running server saves first and stays up: players don't notice. Automatic backups run on the [backups] every schedule while the server runs, and the oldest automatic ones beyond keep are deleted. Backups you make by hand are never deleted.

restore takes a backup's file name, a unique start of it, or the name you gave it. It moves the current world aside to backups/replaced-<time>/ (never deleted), puts the backup in place, and restarts the server if it was running. The panel does the same with one click.

8. Start it with the computer

horizon-server service install

• Linux: a systemd user unit (--system for a system unit, with sudo). To keep a user unit running while you're logged out: loginctl enable-linger $USER.
• macOS: a launchd agent in ~/Library/LaunchAgents.
• Windows: a task that starts at logon (a real Windows service comes later).

The service runs horizon-server run through the installed current release, so an update applies at the next restart. service print shows what it would install, service uninstall removes it and leaves the server folder alone.

9. Docker (build it yourself)

No image is published: build one from the repository. The image holds none of Minecraft's files; you mount the folder you prepared (step 2) read-only.

git clone https://github.com/ludovic111/horizon && cd horizon
docker build -f packaging/server/Dockerfile -t horizon-server .

docker run -d --name horizon -p 25565:25565 --stop-timeout 180 \
  -v horizon-data:/data \
  -v /path/to/26.3:/opt/horizon/.local/horizon-client/26.3:ro \
  -e HORIZON_EULA=true -e HORIZON_WHITELIST=true -e HORIZON_PLAYERS=Alex,Steve -e HORIZON_OP=Alex \
  horizon-server

• HORIZON_EULA=true accepts the Minecraft EULA for this server. Without it the container stops and says why.
• The first start writes /data/server.toml from HORIZON_EULA, HORIZON_WORLD, HORIZON_SEED, HORIZON_PORT, HORIZON_WHITELIST, HORIZON_PLAYERS, HORIZON_OP and HORIZON_ONLINE. Later starts use the file.
• The mounted folder must come from release v2026.10.17.07 or newer (see step 2).
• Manage it with docker exec horizon horizon-server status (and cmd, backup, logs, ...). docker stop saves and stops cleanly; --stop-timeout 180 gives it the time.
• The panel stays on 127.0.0.1 inside the container.
• The image still carries ALSA and udev libraries because the game links them, even though a server never plays a sound. A smaller engine without them is planned.

10. How fast is it

The latest bot benchmark against vanilla 26.3 is in benchmarks/server-2026-10-17. It ran on main at 7bbbf6e9 (in release v2026.10.17.17), on a 4-thread laptop CPU (i7-7500U), with the bots on another machine. Earlier measurements are in docs/server.md. In short:

• Memory: 0.8–0.9 GB with up to 100 players, and 1.4 GB at most with 100 players flying out fast. Vanilla uses 3.4–4.0 GB with its 4 GB heap.
• Start: a new world is ready in 9–10 s, against 15–17 s for vanilla.
• Same work (players exploring at the same pace, so both servers send the same chunks): Horizon's average tick is 44–81 % shorter than vanilla's with 1 to 50 players, and its 95th percentile is lower too.
• Players walking around spawn: Horizon's average tick is shorter at every count. With 25 and 50 players, its slowest ticks (95th percentile) are a little longer than vanilla's (31 against 28 ms, 60 against 56 ms).
• 100 players walking: Horizon keeps 15.8 TPS (63 ms ticks). Vanilla's watchdog stopped it on this machine.
• Players flying out as fast as they can: with 10 and 25 players vanilla's average tick is a little shorter than Horizon's, but Horizon sends 1.6–1.8 times as many new chunks. Vanilla's watchdog stopped it at 50 and 100.

On this 4-thread machine Horizon held 20 TPS with 50 players in every scenario, and 15.8–19 TPS with 100. For more than 50 active players, give it more cores.

When something goes wrong

• "no prepared game files": init and run list the folders they looked in. Prepare (step 2), or set [engine] resources.
• "registries.json not found next to the resources": the prepared folder is from an older release. Prepare again with a newer one.
• Nobody can join: the whitelist is on by default (horizon-server whitelist add NAME), and the port must be open in your firewall. On a tailnet, use the server's tailnet address.
• It keeps restarting: horizon-server status shows the last crash and horizon-server logs -n 200 the log before it. Crash reports are in crash-reports/.
• Report problems at https://github.com/ludovic111/horizon/issues, with the end of the log.