How to Change Tick Speed in Minecraft

Last modified on Nov 20, 2023 in General

By Nathan Young

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Overview – Minecraft Tick Speed

As many players know, Minecraft provides an endless environment to explore and use. Whether you’re making Minecraft farms or hunting for valuable treasures, there’s plenty of activities to try out. However, some players may want to speed up everything to have an enhanced experience. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to accomplish this on both Minecraft Java and Minecraft Bedrock. Introducing tick speed, a system that influences the processes of crop growth, mob spawning, and other time-related events. Increasing this on your singleplayer world or multiplayer server makes many activities faster, which improves some gameplay mechanics. This even impacts redstone machines, leading to even better contraptions. Configuring this option is straightforward and quickly done, but we’ve created this Apex Hosting guide to show you the exact process to change tick speed in Minecraft.

Minecraft Ticks

As hinted above, ticks in Minecraft are the measurement of time in-game. This means that it’s responsible for making mobs spawn, trees grow, redstone machines, entity movements, and other similar physics. Without having ticks, Minecraft cannot be functional. Keep this in mind when altering its values, as it plays a critical role in your server and world. The default tick speed for Java is 3, while Bedrock runs on 1. Make sure to remember these numbers if you’re planning on reverting any changes. Additionally, don’t go overboard with their values since it can break everything. We encourage you to review our Minecraft server optimization guide if you’re trying to improve performance.

Changing Tick Speed

Before changing the tick speed of your Minecraft world, regardless of edition, you must enable cheats in Minecraft or become a Minecraft operator. This is required since it’s considered cheating, as it alters how natural events occur in-game. Once you’re starting to edit ticks, make sure to keep its values reasonable. This means you shouldn’t set it to 99999 or similarly large numbers. It’s encouraged to gradually increase the tick speed, as you may find the so-called “sweet spot” for your desired goal(s). Basically, be cautious as you change this feature for your server and world since it can have dire consequences. With this in mind, review the subsections below for your Minecraft edition to get started.

Java Edition

The most popular edition of Minecraft, Java, makes it easy for you to change the tick speed. However, this can become problematic if you don’t have cheats enabled on your singleplayer world. These existing saves can be opened to LAN so you can enable cheating. Alternatively, directly editing your world’s files with NBTEditor is another option to accomplish the same task. As for changing tick speed in-game, it’ll all use the same command. Follow along below to start tweaking this feature in Minecraft.

1. Open Minecraft and navigate to your desired World from the main menu.
   
2. Make sure to enable cheats if they aren’t, as it’s required for this process.
3. Once in-game, proceed to type /gamerule randomTickSpeed [value] in the chat.
   
4. Do this until you’re happy with the tick speed of your singleplayer world.

1. Head towards your Apex server panel, then become an operator if you aren’t already.
2. Afterward, join your Minecraft server and run the /gamerule randomTickSpeed [value] command in-chat.
   

   Optional: Run this command with a slash in the Console area of your panel.

3. Continue doing this until you’re satisfied with the tick speed of your world.

Bedrock Edition

Unlike Java Edition, Bedrock allows you to quickly activate cheats in a singleplayer world without too much work. However, the server requires you to manually enable this feature from our easy-to-use panel. Once you’ve done this, the same command from before will be used to change tick speed in Minecraft. Follow one of the sections below to get started with this process.

1. Launch Minecraft and enter your world, then make sure Activate Cheats are enabled.
   

   Note: This is done near the bottom of the World category in the Settings.

2. Afterward, change the Random Tick Speed value to anything you want.
   

   Optional: Run the /gamerule randomTickSpeed [value] command instead.

3. Repeat this process until you’re satisfied with the tick speed of your world.

1. Head towards your Apex server panel, then click Config Files near the top left.
   
2. Click Bedrock Server Settings, then set Allow Cheats to Enabled.
   
3. Proceed to press the Save button at the bottom and Restart Now when prompted.
4. Afterward, become an operator on the server and join it with your account.
5. Continue to type and enter /gamerule randomTickSpeed [value] in-chat.
   
6. Keep doing this until you’re happy with the results.

Tick Speed Uses

Throughout this tutorial, we’ve mentioned that tick speed can help players grow crops faster, make mobs appear faster, among other aspects of Minecraft. This is primarily used for farming, as the normal amount of time needed can be too long for some users. Almost instantly after changing the tick values, your crops will become ready for collecting. Other uses for this may include building a quicker redstone machine that allows for more complex designs.

For example, clocks and repeaters become more precise to help with the contraption’s functionality. There’s plenty of other activities to use with an increased amount of tick speed, so begin playing around with it.

Common Issues

If you cannot alter the tick speed values on Java or Bedrock, then make sure to check if cheats are enabled. This applies to both singleplayer and multiplayer, with the latter requiring operator permissions. After making sure your world and/or account has cheats, run the command again to see if that works. If the situation persists, then you may be failing to enter it correctly. Keep in mind that randomTickSpeed must be spelled exactly like that, with the exception of Bedrock Edition not needing specific capitalization. Use these solutions to see if that helps resolve the issue.

Once you’ve changed the tick speed value in Minecraft and your server crashes, this means you set it too high or have too many events happening in-game. Make sure to avoid increasing it by too much, as a golden rule is to gradually increase it. However, solving this problem is a bit tedious since the server cannot startup. The first method is to restore from a server backup, which should automatically be done through our panel. As for the other way, you can manually edit the tick speed from NBTEditor after downloading the Minecraft world world, then uploading it back with the new changes. If you have any questions about these methods, contact our Support to get assistance.

After increasing the tick speed value on your world and it begins to lag, immediately decrease it. Whether you revert the changes back to default or simply lessen the number, it’ll help improve the performance. However, limiting events and activities in the world will also make the lag disappear. For example, disabling some redstone machines, reducing render distances, or removing some farms are just a few ways to fix the situation. It’s encouraged to revert all changes if the world cannot handle an increased tick speed though.

Useful Links

How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft
Becoming a Minecraft Server Operator
Minecraft Server Optimization Guide
How to Install and Use NBTEditor