Articles on: Minecraft

How To Install Behavior Packs on a Minecraft Bedrock Server

Before installing any addons, be sure to make sure that they're compatible with your server. Quite a bit changes between major updates, so it's always a good idea to make sure that the addons that you plan to install have been updated to support the version of Minecraft on your server.


It's also important to note that behavior packs that overwrite the same file will not work together. As an example, if two behavior packs modify the player.json file, only the first behavior pack will work properly.


Please note that this article is only for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition servers.

Table of Contents




Installing addons onto a new world


  1. Stop your server.


  1. Create a new world in the Bedrock client and load all addons that you would like to use on your server through the "Resource Packs" and "Behavior Packs" sections in the world creation menu.


  1. Follow the steps in our "How to upload your own custom Minecraft Bedrock world" here.


Installing addons onto an already existing world


  1. Stop your server.


  1. Create a world in the Bedrock client and load all addons that you would like to use on your server.


  1. Export the world to somewhere on your computer.


  1. Right click the .mcworld file that was exported, hover over "Open With", then open the file with an unzip program of your choice like 7-zip or Bandizip.


  1. Extract all of the files and folders somewhere onto your computer.


  1. Open the world folder that was extracted onto your computer, and you should see these folders: behavior_packs, resource_packs, db, as well as a few loose files.


Note: If the behavior_packs folder is missing, that just means that no behavior packs were installed on the world. The same goes for the resource_packs folder with resource packs.


  1. Login to your server with an FTP client like FileZilla. If you do not know how to do this, we have an article available here.


  1. Upload the contents of the behavior_packs folder on your computer to the behavior_packs folder on your server. Repeat this process with the resource_packs folder if needed.


  1. Navigate to the worlds folder, then open the folder with the same name as your active world.


  1. Upload the world_behavior_packs.json and world_resource_packs.json files to this folder. The world_behavior_pack_history.json and world_resource_pack_history.json files can be skipped.


  1. Startup your server to load the addons.


Advanced: Installing addons onto an already existing world


Note: We highly recommend giving the above sections a try first. The two methods above will work regardless of what format your addons are in, as long as you're able to import them into your Minecraft client.


Before getting started: if your addons are in .mcpack or .mcaddon format, before you'll be able to follow these steps, you'll need to extract the folders from inside these files. To do this, follow these steps:


  1. Right click the addon .mcpack or .mcaddon file on your computer, hover over "Open With", then open the file with an unzip program of your choice like 7-zip or Bandizip.


  1. Extract the folder addon folder to somewhere on your computer.


To verify that every extracted properly, open the folder that was extracted and you should see a manifest.json file along with other files and folders.


Setting up for installing addons


  1. Stop your server.


  1. Login to your server with an FTP client like FileZilla. If you do not know how to do this, we have an article available here.


  1. Upload any behavior packs to the behavior_packs folder on your server, and upload any resource_packs to the resource_packs folder on your server.


  1. Open the worlds folder, then open the folder with the same name as your active world.


  1. Right click anywhere in the empty area on the right of the FileZilla window that contains a list of your server's files and folders, hover over "New", click "File", then type in world_behavior_packs.json if you're creating adding behavior packs. Repeat this process if you're adding resource packs, but name the file world_resource_packs.json.


Note: If you already have these files, you can skip this step.


  1. Right click the .json files files that you created and click "Edit" to open the files in your system's text editor. We recommend using Notepad++. Be sure to keep these files open for the remaining steps.


Locating addon UUIDs and versions


Navigate to the behavior_packs or resource_packs folder on your server, open the behavior pack or resource pack you'd like to load, then right click the manifest.json file and click "Edit" and keep these files open.


Copy the lines in the header that contain the uuid and the version. They'll likely look like this:


"uuid": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
        "version": [3, 5, 0]


or this:


"uuid": "10017b89-cbdf-41f9-ba28-123abca8e07d",
	"version": [
		1,
		0,
		0
	]


Adding your first addon to the .json files


  1. Taking the uuid and version that were copied in the above section, paste them into the respective .json file. If you copied the uuid and version of a behavior pack, paste it into the world_behavior_packs.json file. The same goes for resource packs. If this is your first time adding a pack to the .json file, it should look something like this:


json 
"uuid": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
        "version": [3, 5, 0]


or this:


"uuid": "10017b89-cbdf-41f9-ba28-123abca8e07d",
	"version": [
		1,
		0,
		0
	]


Note: If your version section takes up multiple lines, you can consolidate it by getting rid of the extra spaces and lines like this, however, you're welcome to leave it as is.:


"uuid": "10017b89-cbdf-41f9-ba28-123abca8e07d",
	     "version": [ 1,0,0 ]


  1. Change the "uuid" text to "pack_id", then remove the comma at the end of the version line so that it looks like this:


"pack_id": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
             "version": [3, 5, 0]


  1. Add square brackets ("[" and "]") at the start of and end of the file along with curly brackets ("{" and "}") surrounding the addon information like this:


[
        {
             "pack_id": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
             "version": [3, 5, 0]
        }
]


  1. Save the changes, then startup your server to load the addon!


Adding additional addons to the .json files


  1. Inside the world_behavior_packs.json or world_resource_packs.json, add a comma after the last curly bracket, then create two more curly brackets just like you did with the first section. It should look something like this:


[
        {
             "pack_id": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
             "version": [3, 5, 0]
        },
        {

        }
]


  1. Copy and paste the uuid and version from a manifest.json file into the blank space between the two new curly brackets, then rename "uuid" to "pack_id" and remove the comma at the end of the version section so that it looks like this:


[
        {
             "pack_id": "e65d24fc-3154-42be-915f-45b9005eea40",
             "version": [3, 5, 0]
        },
        {
	     "uuid": "10017b89-cbdf-41f9-ba28-123abca8e07d",
	     "version": [ 1,0,0 ]
        }
]


  1. Repeat this process until you add all of the behavior or resource packs that you'd like to load on your server, then save the changes and restart your server to load the addons.


Running into problems with the addons loading?


Try copying the .json file that was edited and paste it into a .json parser like this one. If there are any json formatting issues, it'll tell you where the problem is so that it can be fixed. You can also reach out to us at any time with the blue button in the bottom right corner of the page and we'll be happy to help!

Updated on: 02/04/2025

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