How to use commands in Minecraft
Minecraft as a game is simple to play if you’re not looking to build impressive structures. There’s plenty in it to explore and if you’re starting off, you may spend some time learning basic recipes but it’s not hard.
Outside the gameplay, there are a few tools and features in Minecraft that are worth learning and occasionally using. Commands are one such feature.
Commands in Minecraft
Commands in Minecraft allow users to change the world, change certain attributes of the player, change the player’s position relative to the world and more.
Commands are sorted into two types; cheats, and non-cheat commands. The list of non-cheat commands is rather small. There isn’t much you can do with a non-cheat outside of sending private messages to other players or getting the seed value for the current world but, the cheat commands are impressive.
Commands, cheat or non-cheat, are executed the same way but cheat commands have to be enabled first.
Enable cheat commands
Cheat commands are enabled on a per-world basis. You can enable and disable cheats however, you should know that enabling cheats will disable all achievements for that world. This cannot be undone even if you turn cheats off later.
- Open Minecraft.
- Select the world you want to enable cheats on.
- Go to the world’s settings.
- Scroll down to the Cheats section.
- Turn the Activate Cheats switch on.
- Confirm you want to enable cheats.
Use commands in Minecraft
With cheats enabled, you have access to all the useful commands that Minecraft supports. To use a cheat, follow these steps.
- Open Minecraft and select a world to play.
- Once the world loads, tap the forward slash key.
- An input bar will appear at the bottom with a list of commands you can enter.
- Enter a command e.g. Locate.
- Additional parameters that you can pass to that command will be listed.
- Enter a parameter, and tap Enter.
- The command will be executed.
Example
Enter the following;
/locate
This command can list the location of nearby structures. Enter a parameter i.e., which structure you want to find, and tap Enter.
/locate stronghold
The coordinates for the stronghold will be displayed. You can use the tp command to teleport to the location.
Conclusion
Minecraft doesn’t have a large number of commands. The list is fairly modest and you can look them up on the official Minecraft Wiki over at Gamepedia. Commands can be run on a local game and on a server though the server’s settings may restrict which commands can be run. Commands can be used to ‘win’ the game more easily e.g., instead of spending hours and hours looking for a stronghold or a fortress, you can use the locate command but there is still plenty left to do in terms of ‘playing’ the game.
