How to Use NBTExplorer

What is NBTExplorer?

NBTExplorer is a powerful tool designed for exploring and editing NBT files—the data format that powers Minecraft’s intricate world details. In this guide, we’ll break down the essentials of using NBTExplorer, from navigating its user-friendly interface to making safe and precise edits in your game saves.

You can also use NBTExplorer to fix any issues without having to create a new world!

What Files Can NBTExplorer Edit?

NBTExplorer is based on NBT edit but with more features. It can edit a variety of files such as:

NBTExplorer supports reading and writing the following formats:
Standard NBT files (e.g. level.dat)
Schematic files
Uncompressed NBT files (e.g. idcounts.dat)

What Can NBTExplorer Change?

There are many things that it can change within chunks and regions:

Biomes

Mob data

Positions

Block data

Cheats

Chunk data

Etc.

You can find the GitHub for NBTExplorer here: https://github.com/jaquadro/NBTExplorer

How to Install NBTExplorer

You can find the NBTExplorer downloads here. Those downloads are for Windows computers but you can still find other versions that are linked here. Downloading NBTExplorer is simple and easy. The steps below will guide you through the simple process.

Note: This tutorial is mainly for Java and most likely won't be applicable to bedrock edition.

Download process

Navigate to the aforementioned releases link and download the latest version (the .msi file if on Windows or Linux)
If you're worried about viruses, Virustotal marks it as clear.


From there, you want to run the .msi file and install NBTExplorer.


Run it to make sure it downloaded/installed properly

After all the above steps, you should be able to do some edits!

How to Use NBTExplorer to Modify a Minecraft World

If you're using SparkedHost, you'll first want to grab the level.dat dat file from the file manager on your server. If you're not using SparkedHost, then you can skip those steps but the rest is still applicable. Below we'll explain how to use NBTExplorer.

It's a good idea to make a backup of the server's world before changing any NBT data just in case it's difficult to fix/debug things. You can do this in the backups tab on the righthand side.

Log into your server panel at https://control.sparkedhost.us/

Shut down your server

Go to the file browser tab on the lefthand side


Open the World folder (or world_the_end or world_the_nether, don't worry if you don't have dimension-specific folders because that's from Bukkit)

Click the three dots next to the level.dat file and press download. Level.dat is a standard nbt file that contains your minecraft's world data.


After saving the file to your system, you can open the file in NBTExplorer by clicking file->open




This will contain any of the values and world data that you could access. It uses a directory tree interface that is quite simple to use. You can easily explore multiple worlds with this tool. For a more in-depth guide, go down to the heading about modifying .dat files below.

Make any changes that you want such as changing the value of raining to 1:


Do Control+S to save the file or go to the file tab and press save

If on SparkedHost and you want to re-upload the file to your server, go to the server files like before and go to the same folder that the level.dat dat file was in (the world folder).

Press the upload button and then upload your level.dat file (on the top right of the server file manager)


Restart your Minecraft server

Modifying Dat Files With NBTExplorer

To begin with, it's important to note that 1 = True and 0 = False in terms of NBT data.

Editing a Player's Data

You can change a TON of things with NBTExplorer like the player's position, items, abilities, etc.

Make sure that your server is offline or else the files won't show up

Go to your /home/container/world/playerdata


Download the file like before and put it in NBTExplorer (If you don't know how to do this, this was outlined earlier before)

You can change a ton of settings from here



flying

flySpeed

instabuild

invulnerable

mayBuild

etc.

Are the different kind of things that you can change under abilities

Changing a Player's Inventory

You can also change a player's inventory here by going to Inventory in the tree.

If you want to add an item, you can:

Add a compound tag


Add the Byte values of Count and Slot under the compound tag (slot is whatever slot the item will be in)


Add the string tag of the item with the name ID


Set the value of that item to minecraft:<itemID>



(Note: this image says 'minecraft:carrots' but that's an invalid ID. I used carrot instead.)

Save the file and upload it to the server but delete the server's file before uploading your own.

Restart the server load into your world to verify that the changes work (if you put in an invalid ID like I did then it won't work).



Above is a carrot that I spawned in by editing NBT data.

Still have some questions?

You can reach out to us at https://sparkedhost.com/contact for support. You can also join our discord server here at https://discord.gg/sparked to receive quick answers and support.

Updated on: 06/03/2025