Minecraft’s Tickrate Command Explained: Here’s How To Change Your Tick Speed

Many online video games work by using a program loop. It is a kind of function that controls how often the event triggers get updated and activated. For liquid blocks, the tick defines how quickly or slowly the fluids can flow. Ticks in Minecraft are one cycle of the game’s algorithm, and Minecraft has a set speed on how fast the ticks will run. So, how would you change the tick speed?

Editor’s Note: This guide was updated in November 2023 and reflects the most up-to-date mechanics in the game.

Ticks affect several mechanics in the game

Every time you wonder how long it will take for your crops to be ready for harvest or how to build some kind of redstone mechanism, you will most likely hear about “ticks.”

The tick rate refers to the speed at which the game processes events and updates the game world. The game operates on a series of ticks, and the tick rate is essentially the number of game ticks that occur per second. The default tick rate in Minecraft is 20 ticks per second.

The tick rate determines how quickly redstone devices operate, mob spawning, crop growth and farming, server performance, and game physics.

Changing your tick rate in Minecraft

The command for changing the tick rate in Minecraft is basically the same in Java and Bedrock Edition, but there are differences in the default tick speed. Minecraft Java Edition has the default tick speed set at 3, while Bedrock Edition is slightly slower, having a tick speed of 1.

You can change your Minecraft tick speed by using the command: /gamerule randomTickSpeed 6. You can replace the number 6 with just about any number but deviating from the default value can have some pretty catastrophic consequences for your gameplay.

If we take into account that in Java Edition, the tick rate is set at three, making the tick speed six will speed up the game while making it two will slow it down.

In Minecraft, a subchunk is a 16x16x16 block area, and they stack vertically to form chunks of 384 blocks. In the Java version, the median time between random ticks, which trigger block updates, is 47.30 seconds. It’s possible to disable block updates by setting the random ticks to 0 in Java.

What happens if your tick rate is too high?

Setting your tick rate too high can have the following consequences:

1. General lag due to the processor being unable to handle or the data of blocks refreshing.
2. A higher tick rate might lead to faster and more responsive redstone mechanisms.
3. Your crops will grow quicker.
4. Mobs will both spawn and despawn faster.
5. A higher tick rate might mess up your game’s physics, such as water and lava flow, and it can affect the server’s performance.

In any case, you should always mess with the game’s mechanics if you know what you’re doing, and understanding why tick speed is the default speed for a reason will hopefully clear up some of the things for you. It does sound great to have crops ready in a matter of seconds, but by gaining crops, you might lose some other stable elements of the gameplay.

What happens if your tick rate is too slow?

Making your tick rate too slow in Minecraft might lead to the opposite effects than what we’ve mentioned above. Redstone mechanisms might become sluggish and unresponsive. Your mob farms will most likely no longer work because they spawn and despawn much slower. Your server performance might appear to be sluggish, and physics issues might also appear.

Most of the players, however, try to set their tick speed as fast as possible and are faced with opposite problems.

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