How long is a Minecraft day and how to change time

How long is a Minecraft day? Does it last 24 hours like our real-world day? Whether you’re a Minecraft player or not, please keep on learning to find out.

This might seem strange to a kid but usually, there is no direct correspondence between our 24-hour days and the equivalent day on a game.

Without further ado, here’s the answer: a Minecraft day goes by every 20 minutes.

Solar time is known to be the epicenter in the universe of Minecraft. The spawn and reaction of mobs, zombies, and skeletons, all revolve around the day/night cycle of the Minecraft world.

In this article, we are solving the mystery of how long is a day in Minecraft.

How many minutes in a Minecraft day

Like we said before, a Minecraft day corresponds to 20 minutes in real-time. But there’s more to it; read further below to learn more.

Table of Contents

1. How many minutes in a Minecraft day
2. Real day vs Minecraft day
   1. Real-time to Minecraft-time conversion:
   2. Minecraft-time to Real-time conversion
3. How long is a Minecraft day?
4. How long is a night in Minecraft?
5. How long is a Minecraft full day: the four phases
   1. Daytime
   2. Dusk/Sunset
   3. Nighttime
   4. Dawn/Sunset
6. How to change the time in Minecraft
   1. How to enter the commands
7. Wrap Up

Real day vs Minecraft day

The solar day of the real world is 24 hours. There are 1440 minutes (86400 seconds) in one sidereal day. However, it’s not the same when daylight comes into the world of Minecraft.

The daylight cycle of Minecraft is known to be 20 minutes (1200 seconds) of real-time.

The following table shows the approximate conversions of real-time to Minecraft-time using the data above:

Real-time to Minecraft-time conversion:

How many Minecraft days are in 24 hours?

It can be easily inferred from the table above that Minecraft day passes 72 times faster than a real day. So, there are 72 Minecraft days in 24 (real-time) hours.

Minecraft-time to Real-time conversion

Every game simulation uses a game loop to perform any action, be it either movement of objects or the growth of crops. Minecraft uses ticks per second TPS as its game loop. The majority of activities in Minecraft are synchronized to tick counts.

How many ticks in a Minecraft day?

Minecraft has a constant rate of 20 ticks per Minecraft second. This means that there are 24000 ticks in one Minecraft day.

Below is the conversion table of Minecraft clock time to Real clock time:

How long is a Minecraft day?

The Minecraft day length just like a real day is 24 hours of Minecraft time. A Minecraft day begins with 0 ticks and ends at 24000 ticks. Similar to a solar day in the real world, one Minecraft day also has successive meridian transits of the sun.

If you’re a game player you’ve probably realized that after a full hour of playing you’ll go through 3 full Minecraft days, which means 3 periods of daylight hours.

How long is a night in Minecraft?

You might also be wondering how long is the nighttime in Minecraft. If so, please read on to learn.

How long is a Minecraft full day: the four phases

One Minecraft day has four phases:

Daytime

How long is one Minecraft day? The daytime in Minecraft begins at 6:00:00 (0 ticks) and ends at 18:00:00 (12000 ticks). The daytime lasts for 12 Minecraft hours and makes 10 minutes of real-time.

During the daytime, the sun is seen in the light blue sky and radiates a level 15 light. Daytime is considered to be an ideal time for players as the sun shines on the surface and any hostile mob is unable to spawn.

Dusk/Sunset

The dusk/sunset phase begins at 18:00:00 (12000 ticks) and ends at 19:00:00 (13000 ticks). The dusk time lasts for one Minecraft hour and makes 1 and a half minutes (90 seconds) of real-time.

The sky color grades from bright blue to rustic orange before turning dark blue. At the dusk time, the light level begins to drop from 15 to 4.

Nighttime

When the sunlight disappears everything changes. That’s when a hostile mob or creeper will spawn. Nighttime is without a doubt the time of day when you have to be most careful.

How long does night last in Minecraft? The night-time begins at 19:00:00 (13000 ticks) and ends at 5:00:00 (23000 ticks). The night lasts for 10 Minecraft hours which makes eight and a half minutes of real-time.

Dawn/Sunset

The dawn/sunset phase begins at 5:00:00 (23,000 ticks) and ends at 6:00:00 (24,000 ticks). The dawn/sunset time lasts for one Minecraft hour and makes 1 and a half minutes (90 seconds) of real-time.

The sky color around the sun changes to orange and transforms into light blue at the end of sunset. Any mob can spawn depending on the intensity of light.

How to change the time in Minecraft

It is possible to change the time in Minecraft, for example, changing to the day when it is nighttime, or vice-versa.

It may be very useful as, during the day, you can break and place blocks in new locations to build your structures, while at night, mobs appear for you to battle.

To use the Minecraft change time feature, you first need to turn cheats on in your world. Then you’ll use the appropriate command to set the time.

How to enter the commands

To enter a command in Minecraft, you have to open the chat window and it is where you’re going to type it down. Whenever you’re typing, you’ll see the command appearing in-game, in the lower-left corner of the window.

The command you’re entering to change the time starts with /time set, followed by “day“, or “night“.

For example, if you want to change to daytime, you’ll have to open the chat window and there you’ll type /time set day.

You can also set the time for a desired our of the day, by using the command /time set, followed by the number that corresponds to the desired time of the day. Check the following table.

Minecraft change time of day command:

Now that you know how to change time, things get a lot easier for you to progress in the game.

Wrap Up

Although daytime is the longest phase in one Minecraft day, some users still complain about its short span. It is a common observation by players as you advance in-game levels; the productivity time during the daytime tends to decrease.

The logical reason behind this was found to be the burning of night-time hostile mobs. This action tends to take up a chunk of daytime, thus leading to a decrease in the productive period of daytime for players.

Throughout this article you got to know how long is a Minecraft night, how long is the day-night cycle in Minecraft, how long are Minecraft days, how to change time in Minecraft, and some other relevant info. We hope it has been useful!

Check out some of our other awesome articles:

• How to uninstall or reinstall Minecraft
• Hardware requirements to run Minecraft
• How to run the 64-bit Minecraft version
• Minecraft – Is it 32 or 64-bit?
• Minecraft keeps crashing, why?
• What is the best version of Windows for gaming?