How to Make Only One Player Sleep to Skip Night on Your Minecraft Server
By default, every player on your Minecraft server has to be in a bed before night skips. Since Minecraft 1.17, the playersSleepingPercentage game rule lets you change that, so one sleeper is enough to roll over to morning.
The Command
Join your server as an operator and run:
/gamerule playersSleepingPercentage 1
Minecraft will confirm with a message like Game rule playersSleepingPercentage is now set to: 1. The change is saved into the world data, so you do not need to redo it after a restart.
You can also run it from the Pterodactyl console without joining the game. Open your server in the panel, click the Console tab, and type the same command without the leading slash:
gamerule playersSleepingPercentage 1
What the Values Mean
| Value | Behavior |
|---|---|
| 0 | Any single sleeping player skips the night immediately |
| 1 | One player must enter a bed, then night skips |
| 50 | Half of online players must be asleep |
| 100 | Default, every online player must sleep |
For most servers, 1 is the right choice. The bed animation and respawn-point behavior stay intact, and you only need one volunteer instead of the whole crew.
Setting the value to 0 skips the night the instant a player enters a bed, with no animation wait. Convenient, but it can clash with sleep-related plugins.
Verify the Current Setting
Run the command with no value to print what is currently active:
/gamerule playersSleepingPercentage
Bedrock and Older Java Versions
The gamerule only exists on Java Edition 1.17 and newer. For anything older, or for Bedrock, use a plugin or datapack:
- Paper or Spigot (any version): install a one-player-sleep plugin such as EasySleep or MorePaperLib SleepMost
- Vanilla Java 1.16 and earlier: drop a one-player-sleep datapack into your world's
datapacksfolder, then run/reload - Bedrock Edition: install a behavior pack that overrides the sleep tick check, since Bedrock has no equivalent gamerule
Common Issues
Unknown game rule: you are on Bedrock or on Java below 1.17. Check your version in the bottom-left of the Minecraft title screen.- Setting reverts after a restart: a plugin or startup script is overwriting it. Check your plugin configs for a sleep manager that controls the rule itself.
- Night still does not skip: a player is in the Nether or End. Since 1.19, only Overworld players count toward the percentage, so make sure no one is stuck in another dimension on older versions.
- Phantoms still spawn: phantoms track each player's personal time since their last sleep, not the server's night skip. Players who never personally sleep still get them. Disable phantoms entirely with
/gamerule doInsomnia false.
Related Game Rules
While you are tuning sleep behavior, a few other game rules pair well:
doInsomnia false: stops phantom spawns for players who avoid bedsdoWeatherCycle false: locks the weatherdoDaylightCycle false: freezes time of day entirely
For the full list and what each one does, see our Minecraft game rules guide.