How To Change the Tick Speed in Minecraft

Managing your Minecraft server involves many different aspects, with one of them being ticks. It controls crop growth, tree farming, and even allows you to pause the world’s time. Understanding how to adjust the tick speed in Minecraft across various game versions will help you be a better owner while hosting your own server. With this in mind, we’ve created this Nitrado guide to show you how to change the tick speed in Java & Bedrock Edition for Minecraft.
 

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Adjusting Tick Speed

The best way to edit the tick speed on your server is by becoming an operator and using commands. Simply head towards the Live Server Console and run op [username] to give yourself operator status. Afterwards, you can run various commands to adjust the tick speed.
 
⚠️ Setting the random tick speed too high can cause severe server lag or crash your Minecraft server entirely. Always increase the values gradually to test what works for your world.

Minecraft Java (1.19 & Below)

In older versions of Minecraft Java Edition, world tick speeds are controlled by the random tick speed game rule. Execute this command on applicable game versions to do it.

• Command: /gamerule randomTickSpeed <value>
• Default Value: 3
• Example: To double the speed of crop growth, type /gamerule randomTickSpeed 6 into the in-game chat.

Minecraft Java (1.20 & Above)

Minecraft 1.20 introduced major upgrades to how ticks are handled. While you can still change the random tick speed for crops, you can now alter the entire world’s speed using the new /tick command. This is also the command to pause and unpause the in-game time.

• To Change Game Speed: /tick rate <value> (Default is 20)
• To Freeze the Game: /tick freeze (Pauses all entities, weather, and growth)
• To Unfreeze the Game: /tick unfreeze

Minecraft Bedrock Edition

As of right now, only random tick speeds can be changed in Bedrock Edition. The command is similar to other gamerule commands on Java. You will also need to be an operator or have cheats enabled to run this on your own world.

• Command: /gamerule randomtickspeed <value>
• Default Value: 1
• Example: To make blocks tick 10 times faster, type /gamerule random_tick_speed 10.

Ticks in Minecraft

To understand what you are changing on your server, it helps to understand what a “tick” actually is in Minecraft. The game measures time through two distinct ticking systems:
 
Game Ticks
The game loop runs at a fixed rate of 20 game ticks per second. Every single tick, the server calculates mob AI, physics, redstone signals, and player movement. In other words, everything uses game ticks to determine all actions and processes. If your server is lagging, the TPS (Ticks Per Second) drops below 20.
 
Random Ticks
Every game tick, the server randomly selects a number of blocks within chunks to update – this is what triggers plants to grow, leaves to decay, and fire to spread. By increasing the random tick speed, you aren’t making the game run faster; you are simply telling the server to update more blocks during every single game tick.