
Pause Day Cycle
Pause the in-game day if nobody's online or when all players are AFK. Fixes local difficulty on small SMP servers.
Screenshots

About this Mod
Pause Day Cycle
To enable AFK detection feature, Detect AFK Players must be installed.
When nobody's on a Minecraft server, the in-game time still increases. This means you can't track the number of days played, and the local difficulty will also increase. That's not a concern for servers that have players online almost constantly, but for small/medium sized servers, this is a problem.
This is a very light-weight data pack to prevent game time from increasing when nobody's online or when every player online is tagged as afk, without pausing the server itself so that automatic farms can continue to run.
Why another one of these?
There are already a few mods and data packs that do the same thing as this one, but none of them did quite what I need:
- It integrates with Detect AFK Players, allowing AFK players to also not skyrocket the game time.
- It's easy to integrate with other datapacks so that the pause/unpause doesn't break.
Details
When nobody is online or all online players are tagged as afk (see Detect AFK Players) the following gamerules will be set to false:
doDaylightCycledoWeatherCycle
doMobSpawning is not changed because it allows automatic farms in spawn chunks or manually loaded chunks to function with nobody present.
Note: If one of the gamerules is already set to false while the time isn't paused, that gamerule will not be changed - this pack respects your options!
Extending it
This datapack provides two function tags: pause_day_cycle:pause and pause_day_cycle:resume. These will be called when the day cycle is paused and resumed. Below is an extremely simple example of an add-on data pack that uses these tags to log to the server when the day cycle is paused.
announce/data/pause_day_cycle/tags/functions/pause.json
{ "values": ["announce:pause"] }
announce/data/announce/functions/pause.mcfunction
say Day cycle has been paused
Available Versions
How to Install Pause Day Cycle on Your Server
Order Server
Order a Minecraft Java server with at least 3 GB RAM (4 GB recommended).
Set datapack Loader
In the panel under "Egg", select the datapack loader and matching Minecraft version (1.21.8).
Install Mod
Open the mod browser in the dashboard and search for "Pause Day Cycle". Click "Install" – done! Alternatively, upload the .jar via SFTP to the /mods folder.
Compatibility
Mod Loaders
Minecraft Versions
1.21.8, 1.21.7, 1.21.6 (+40 more)
Server-side
✓ RequiredRecommended RAM
4 GB(min. 3 GB)Frequently Asked Questions
Pause Day Cycle server crashes on startup – what to do?
Most common cause: wrong datapack version or insufficient RAM. Check the server log (latest.log) for "OutOfMemoryError" or "Mixin" errors. With Mado Hosting: ensure at least 3 GB RAM is allocated and the loader matches the mod version (1.21.8). You can switch loaders with one click in the panel.
Is Pause Day Cycle compatible with datapack and fabric and forge and neoforge and quilt?
Pause Day Cycle officially supports datapack, fabric, forge, neoforge, quilt for Minecraft 1.21.8, 1.21.7, 1.21.6. Note: Forge and Fabric mods are NOT cross-compatible – pick one loader and stick with it. The Mado dashboard automatically detects incompatible loader combinations.
Server lagging with Pause Day Cycle – how to optimize performance?
Recommended RAM: 4 GB (per 8 players). Use /spark profiler to check if Pause Day Cycle consumes the most tick time. Common fixes: reduce server view-distance to 8-10, install "performant" or "starlight" as supplementary mods on Forge. With Mado Hosting, your server runs on NVMe SSDs with dedicated CPU cores for minimal latency.
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Rent Modded Server
Install Pause Day Cycle with just one click on your server.
