MC Server Launcher

English · Español

Create, configure and share Minecraft servers on Windows, Linux and macOS from one app — no .bat files, black console windows or editing config files by hand.

What you can do

All in one window, in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.

How to

Open each one to see it in action.

1. Download MC-ServerLauncher-Setup-x.y.z.exe from the latest release.
2. Run it and click Next until Finish. It creates a Desktop and a Start-menu shortcut.
3. Open the app. You don't need to install .NET or Java — the app handles it.

The first time, Windows SmartScreen may warn (new app, no Windows code-signing certificate yet): click More info → Run anyway.

Linux: grab the .AppImage from the same release. macOS: the .dmg; it isn't Apple-signed yet, so the first time right-click the app → Open.

"+ New" → Create a new one → a name, the type and the version → tick I accept the Minecraft EULA → Create server. The app downloads the official server, checks its checksum, sets up the port and starts it.

Already have one? Add one I already have reads the folder (type, version, port and memory) and changes nothing in it.

In the Mods (or Plugins) tab, search, click Install and that's it: the build that fits your server is downloaded, together with any libraries it needs.

With Playit.gg on, the public address appears on its own within seconds; click Copy and send it to your friends. Tunnels shows every tunnel on your account and fixes the ones that don't belong.

Automatic backups happen by themselves. For one by hand, Back up now in the Backups tab; Restore takes the world back to that moment (with the server stopped, after asking you to confirm; the current world is saved first, in case you change your mind).

When there's a new version, a banner appears at the top: Update downloads it, checks it and installs it. When it opens again, What's new tells you what changed. It works the same on Windows, Linux and macOS.

Every feature

• Everything in one window — a side rail with Servers, Tunnels, Settings and About. Making or adding a server happens next to the list, and can be left half-done and picked up again; a server's settings open in the same place, never in a dialog.
• Multiple servers at once, each with its own config and a type badge (Vanilla / Paper / Purpur / Fabric / NeoForge / Forge).
• Create a server automatically: pick the type, version (official Mojang list) and port, and accept the Minecraft EULA; the app downloads the right server, prepares run.bat / server.properties, and installs the correct Java (Temurin) if needed. Fabric, Forge and NeoForge use mods; Paper and Purpur use plugins. The same panel can use a folder that already exists: it recognises the type, the Minecraft and loader versions, the port and the memory, and changes nothing in the folder.
• Change a server's type — to Paper/Purpur/Fabric/Forge/NeoForge or back to Vanilla, keeping the world, with colour-coded warnings about what each change can affect.
• Automatic memory — the app decides how much memory each server may use and gives Java the flags that make it hand back what it does not need: an empty server measured at about 1 GB instead of 3.5-4.7 GB, with the same tick time. All the servers together use at most half the PC, or all but 2 GB if it is only for servers. Manual keeps the minimum and maximum you type, and your own Java arguments always win. In Automatic the ceiling learns: it goes down slowly as the server shows it needs less (never more than 1 GB per start, and only after three real sessions) and up at once when it falls short, and the band says how much memory it will have after a restart. If the PC itself runs short of free memory, a tiny agent inside the server (embedded in the app, no download) makes it hand memory back sooner, empty servers first, and lets go once the PC has room again; it is a switch in Settings.
• Start / Stop / Restart with a clean stop that saves the world; detects and frees a busy port; live CPU, RAM, uptime and port. The RAM figure is the memory the server really holds on your PC (not Task Manager's shared total), with what Java has in use under it.
• Performance — a fifth card says how the server is coping (TPS when they can be measured, or Good / Tight / Overloaded), measured every 30 s with spark, or Paper's without cluttering the console. A one-line band appears only when something is wrong for a while, and offers one-click fixes: lower the distances, give it more memory when that is the cause and the PC can spare it, and mods that speed it up without changing the game.

• Mods & plugins store — search Modrinth inside the app, already filtered by your server's type and version. Every result carries a plain-language summary in your language and a warning when it also has to be installed on the client. The details page (gallery, versions, dependencies, links and related mods) opens without leaving the app, and the Filters panel combines several categories. One-click Install, and enable/disable or delete installed items; the installed list has its own search box.
• Installing a mod brings what it needs — the libraries it depends on (Fabric API and the rest) are installed with it, transitively. Only required ones, and never a second copy.
• Updates — check for updates says what's new and which libraries are missing; update them one by one or with Update all. No junk left behind: the old version and any other copy of the same mod (a duplicate under another name, a disabled copy) are removed, offline too.
• Suggested clean-up — the app points out what is no longer needed: libraries no mod uses (with the reason, e.g. "only Litematica used it, and it's gone") and mods switched off for over a month. It only suggests: you tick, press, and they go; "Not now" hides it for 30 days.
• Send your friends a ready-made modpack — one button zips the mods with instructions in their language. Mods that only do anything on the server (Geyser, Floodgate, a backup mod) are left out automatically, and the app tells you which. The pack carries a script for Windows, Linux and macOS that finds the mods folders — including each Prism, MultiMC, CurseForge or Modrinth App instance — copies everything in and moves aside what was there, never deleting a thing. If Fabric, Forge or NeoForge is missing it offers to install it, checking the download against the loader's own published hash.

• Share to the Internet with Playit.gg — connect your account from Tunnels by pasting a one-time setup code. The app creates the tunnel and runs the Playit agent for you — you install nothing — and the address appears on its own within seconds. The app ships no secret of its own (the credential lives in a small proxy).

• Tunnels — every tunnel on your account in one table: it flags the ones that lead nowhere, the duplicates and the shared ports, with a button to fix each one, and lets you rename or delete them.

• Connection test — Test connection on the Playit card measures each stretch on its own — your server, your internet (latency, download and upload, via Cloudflare), the Java tunnel and the Bedrock one — and says in one sentence whether lag comes from your PC, your line or the tunnel. The technical details (min/avg/max, jitter, loss, peak throughput, samples) are one click away, with a report to copy.

• Play from Bedrock too — one checkbox installs Geyser and Floodgate, picks a free UDP port, creates the second (UDP) tunnel and sets the public port Geyser must advertise. The Bedrock port is changed in each server's settings, and two servers are never given the same one. It depends on the server type:

  Type	From Bedrock	Why
  Paper, Purpur	Works	Plugins run on the server alone, so a Bedrock client needs nothing.
  Fabric	Works	With the mod-content checkbox: Hydraulic converts what the mods add.
  NeoForge	Sometimes	It connects, but any mod the client is required to have shuts Bedrock out, and Hydraulic no longer publishes for NeoForge.
  Vanilla, Forge	No	Geyser publishes no build for them.

• Bedrock players seeing modded content — on Fabric, one more checkbox installs Hydraulic (GeyserMC's own) and Fabric API. Its authors call it very early development, and the app says so.

• Play from other Minecraft versions — one checkbox installs ViaVersion and ViaBackwards (plugin servers only).

• Players — connected (live), operators, whitelist and banned, with buttons instead of commands. The whitelist has its own switch: off lets anyone in and keeps the names; adding someone turns it on. New servers start with it off (Minecraft 26.3 turned it on by default).
• Player history — everyone who has ever joined, with their last connection. Their profile: joins and leaves, chat, deaths and advancements, time played, blocks broken and items used — each with its share — and odds and ends (jumps, damage, distance on foot, flying and by elytra). Filled from the old logs the first time, kept small (500 events and 90 days per player by default) and on your computer only. IP addresses are never kept.
• A console you can read — every line coloured for what it is (errors, warnings, chat, joins and leaves, commands, and what the app says told apart from what the server says), a filter per category with its own count, and what you search for marked inside the line. The app answers the start-up warnings that are its to answer: it enables native access on Java 22+ and asks once whether to accept BlueMap's download. With a command box and a command-help panel.
• Notifications — when a player joins or leaves, someone dies (PvP), the server crashes, auto-restart gives up, or a server stops or starts by itself. Per kind, globally and per server.
• Every notification tells itself apart at a glance — a muted colour and an icon per kind, with what happened in the heading and the server in small print beside the time. A bar along the bottom shows how long is left; resting the pointer on the card pauses it. Colours are changed in Settings, from a palette made for the dark background or with the full picker, which warns you when one would be hard to read.

• Automatic world backups — before every start, on every stop and, if you leave it on, every hour while people are playing — on Paper and Purpur, with the Nether and the End they keep beside the world. A backup of a running server asks Minecraft to flush the world to disk first, so it is never half-written, stopping the server waits for a backup still reading the world, and one nobody played since is skipped — the start's and the stop's too, so a server that sleeps and wakes with nobody coming in does not pile up copies of the same world. Backups you take by hand are counted separately, so the clock never deletes them. The Backups tab shows each pile against its limit, the space they take and when the next one is due, lists them by day and marks the one the next backup will replace. Back up now and one-click Restore.
• Settings, part of the window — language, tray behaviour, Add to desktop, notifications, colours and the player history, each on its own page. Saved as you go.
• Stays out of the way — minimize or close to the system tray and your servers keep running; launching the app again brings that window back instead of opening a second copy.
• Updates itself on all three platforms — the download is checked against its published SHA-256 before it is installed, and What's new then tells you what changed.
• Multi-language — English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German.

Screenshots

The window: side rail, server list and a running server

New server, inside the window

Mods & plugins browser

Player management

Server settings

Platform support

Windows x64	Windows ARM64	Linux x64	macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel)
.exe installer	Via x64 emulation	AppImage	DMG

For developers

git clone https://github.com/JuanP-G/MC-ServerLauncher.git
cd MC-ServerLauncher
dotnet run --project McServerLauncher

# Self-contained build (users install nothing):
dotnet publish McServerLauncher -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained

Built with Avalonia / .NET 9. The small Java agent that helps servers give memory back (agent/) is embedded as a jar and rebuilt byte for byte with python agent/build.py; publishing the app needs no JDK. The Windows installer is x64 only (Inno Setup ArchitecturesAllowed=x64compatible); there's no separate x86 or native ARM64 build.

Documentation: architecture, contributing guide and a full API reference, published with DocFX at https://juanp-g.github.io/MC-ServerLauncher/docs/.

Explore the code: to get your bearings before opening the first file, the architecture article opens with two maps (how the pieces fit, and what happens when a server starts), and two sites draw the repository by themselves: DeepWiki, a wiki by topic whose pages list the files they come from and where you can ask the code questions, and GitDiagram, one clickable diagram of the whole app. Both are written by an AI: they can be wrong and DeepWiki's diagrams do not always render, so when they disagree with the architecture article, the article wins.

[!TIP] Wondering how something works? DeepWiki has a chat with an AI that knows the whole repository and answers by citing the files each thing comes from. For example:

• “How is a backup restored without losing the world?”
• “Where is it decided when a server goes to sleep?”
• “What do I have to touch to add a server type?”

Data: under %APPDATA%\McServerLauncher\ (~/.config/McServerLauncher/ on Linux and macOS): servers.json, settings.json, the installed java\, the console logs\ (kept 14 days, at most 50 MB a day), the store's cache\, what the clean-up panel remembers in content\, what the app has learned about each server's memory in memory\ (its last 30 sessions, and the Java versions that refused the memory agent in memory-agent-failures.json), the playit-agent\ binary, the instance.lock that keeps the app to one running copy, and, on Linux/macOS, .secret.key. Each server keeps its backups in its own backups\ folder, and a hidden .mcserverlauncher-memory\ folder beside its world with the GC log (two rotating files, 16 MB at most) and the memory agent's jar and two small files; the world backup never reads it.

Privacy: nothing is sent anywhere to be collected — there is no telemetry. What stays on this computer: the player history (joins, leaves, deaths, advancements and, unless you turn it off in Settings → Players, chat; 90 days by default, never IP addresses) and the console logs above, which keep every line — chat and the IPs in login lines included — whatever the history settings say. What the app asks other services for, and what they see besides your IP: Mojang, Paper, Purpur, Fabric, Forge and NeoForge (server downloads, and Mojang a player's name when you add them to the whitelist), Modrinth and GeyserMC (mods and plugins), Adoptium (Java), GitHub (updates, and the store's catalogue of topics and summaries, a public file downloaded at most once a day), Playit (tunnels, through the app's proxy when linking an account) and mc-heads.net (each player's avatar, by name, in the player history).

Extra Java flags: there is no field for them in the app, but each server in servers.json has an ExtraJvmArgs entry (empty by default) that is added to the Java command line after the memory flags, for flags such as Aikar's. If they set the memory (-Xmx, a collector other than G1, how memory is returned) the server runs in Manual memory mode and the app leaves its memory alone, and if they configure -Xlog the app does not ask for its own GC log. Edit it with the app closed, since the app rewrites the file as it runs.

Contributing: pull requests are welcome. Start with CONTRIBUTING.md — the short version of the full guide: how to build and test, the code style, and the rule that documentation moves with the code, in both languages.

License

MIT — free to use, modify and redistribute, including commercially, as long as the copyright notice stays. Provided as is, without warranty. Third-party software is listed in NOTICE.

Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Studios / Microsoft; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. The Minecraft server files, Java runtimes, mods and the Playit.gg agent the app downloads belong to their respective owners and keep their own licences.