The time in Minecraft doesn’t work in mysterious ways. Still, it’s an element that many players struggle with, thanks to the time-specific mechanics of a myriad of components. Like, you have to wait for the night to spawn hostile mobs and for daytime to control your villagers. Luckily, if you know how to set the time to day or night in Minecraft, you can be in charge of your world and make it run at your command. From modifying the day and night cycles to skipping in-game weeks, everything is on the cards in this article. But before changing the time, you’ll have to spend time understanding its mechanics. So, let’s not waste another second and discover everything you need to know about the time command. Also, we will explain the in-game tick and how you can use it to control the time of day.
We will first cover the time cycle mechanics in Minecraft. If you are already familiar with them, use the table below to skip ahead and learn about the time command and its syntax.
- How Does Time Work in Minecraft?Uses of Time Command in MinecraftHow to Use Time Command in MinecraftHow to Set Time to Day in MinecraftHow to Set Time to Night in MinecraftHow Long Is an In-Game Day in Minecraft?Frequently Asked Questions
How Does Time Work in Minecraft?
Time in Minecraft is measured in ticks. A single tick lasts for 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) and finishes an in-game logical loop in that time. This loop does a variety of things in the game, including mob spawning, block updates, Redstone mechanics, and more. You can use our dedicated guide to Minecraft ticks and learn everything about it.
The time command in Minecraft only affects the daylight cycle and the overall world time. This command can’t be used to speed up the world or its processes. Though, you can use it to avoid nighttime, thus, not allowing hostile mobs to spawn. But if you want to speed up or slow down your world, then changing the random tick speed is the only option.
How to Change the Tick Speed in Minecraft?
With every tick, Minecraft updates a random set of blocks. In the Java edition, three blocks are updated, whereas only one block is updated with each tick in the Bedrock edition. You can use the “gamerule” command to change this random tick speed and speed up the updation of blocks, and thus, your world.
The most command way to use the time command is to change the time of your day and set it to noon, day, or night in Minecraft. But you can also use it to check and modify the time of your day. It has three keywords:
How to Use Time Command in Minecraft
Just like all the other useful commands in Minecraft, you can only use the time command in Minecraft in a cheats-enabled world. So, you’ll first need to enable cheats in your game. For that, you have to toggle the “Allow Cheats” option in the LAN settings that are available in the pause menu on the Java edition. Meanwhile, the same can be turned on in the world settings on the Bedrock edition.
Once you have enabled cheats, you need to enter the time command in the chat section (accessible using the T key or right button on your D-Pad) of Minecraft to set the time to day or night. Let’s go over the different syntaxes and keywords to make the most out of it.
Add Time Command
To add time to your Minecraft world, you have to use the following syntax of the time command:
The “query” keyword of the time command is the simplest one and shows the amount of time that has passed in your world. The syntax for this command is as under:
In this syntax, the “Y” can be replaced with “day”, “daytime”, and “gametime”. Each of them displays a different value:
Set Time Command
- The last keyword for the time command is “set”, and it’s the most powerful one. You can use the following format to change the time in the day-night cycle:
/time set B
To understand the time command better, let’s go over some examples and test them in the game. Feel free to follow along and match your in-game results with our screenshots. In the command below, I’m adding 12000 ticks to my current time of the day in Minecraft, hence, it is set to 17726 ticks to switch to nighttime. Also, as you can see, I’m using a command block for this process.
In the next command, as explained above, we will be using the query keyword along with gametime to see the exact time that has passed in your Minecraft world since you created it. Here’s how it works:
/time query gametime
How to Set Time to Day in Minecraft
Now that you are familiar with the time command in Minecraft, it’s time to use it to control the day. Use this command to set the time to day in Minecraft:
Both of the above-mentioned commands will turn your game’s time to early morning. But we suggest you use the “set day” keyword, as it doesn’t affect the number of days that have passed. However, “set 1000” will set your in-game days to zero.
/time set noon OR /time set 6000
How to Set Time to Night in Minecraft
To set your world’s time to night time in Minecraft, you can use the command below:
This command sets the time of your world to early in the night. As soon as you use it, hostile mobs will start spawning in your world. Not to forget, we suggest you use the “set night” keyword instead of “set 13000” to make sure the number of days in your world doesn’t become zero.
/time set midnight OR /time set 18000
As you might guess from the keyword term, this command sets your world’s time to midnight. With that, you can expect yourself to be surrounded by darkness and hostile Minecraft mobs in no time. Now, you know how to easily set the time to day or night in Minecraft.
In terms of in-game ticks, a complete Minecraft day can be broken down into four parts:
Time of the DayTicksSunrise1Noon6000Night/Sunset13000Midnight18000Next Day24000
How do you set the time of day to night in Minecraft?
You can use “/time set 13000″ or “/time set night” to change your world’s time to night time, right after sunset.
