- The length of a Minecraft day is 20 minutes in real time.
- Minecraft measures time in ticks. One tick lasts for 0.05 real time seconds. So, one real time second contains 20 in-game ticks.
- Many different events take place in different time in your Minecraft world, such as villager working hours, hostile mob spawning on the surface, etc.
Have you ever wondered just how long a single day lasts in Minecraft compared to real life? While the sun rises and sets in our world, the blocky universe runs on its own unique clock. Minecraft has a fast-paced cycle, and this keeps the game lively. Whether you’re farming under the sun, fighting the mobs in the dark, or racing to find a bed to escape the phantoms, knowing the current time is quite essential. So, here we’ll explain to you how long a day is in Minecraft, compare it with the real-world clock, and give some commands to change time manually in the game.
What is the Length of One Minecraft Day?
There are two main light cycles in the Minecraft world. The first is the day cycle, and the second is the night cycle. When discussing a full Minecraft day, it encompasses both of these cycles together, which is referred to as a daylight cycle. So, one Minecraft day’s length, the time between the sunrise of one and the sunrise of the next day, is 20 minutes in real-time. Given below is a breakdown of a day, night, and the time in between in Minecraft:
- Daytime: 10 minutes
- Sunset: 50 seconds
- Nighttime: 8 minutes 20 seconds
- Sunrise: 50 seconds
With that said, after doing a little bit of maths, if you play Minecraft for one whole hour and don’t skip nights at all, you will have lived 3 whole in-game days, after which our favorite (sarcastically) flying mobs, the Phantoms, will start to show up during the night.
Key Takeaway:
1. One Minecraft day lasts 20 minutes in terms of real world time.
2. One hour in the real world equals 3 whole days in Minecraft.
3. Spending 100 Minecraft days without skipping the night means 16 hours and 36 minutes in real world.
On the other hand, if you skip the nights by sleeping, you will have played through 6-day cycles. So, to reach the 100-day mark in your world without skipping the nights, you’ll need to play Minecraft for 16.6 hours (16 hours and 36 minutes).
All of these rules change slightly during rainy weather since rain makes the world a bit darker. Then, you can use the bed earlier, and the hostile mobs start to spawn before the start of the night cycle.
What is Minecraft Time in Game Ticks and Real World Time?
Minecraft doesn’t use the minutes and seconds concept, but rather a time value called ticks. One tick lasts for 0.05 real-time seconds. In other words, one real-time second contains 20 in-game ticks. Ticks are important because the entire world runs based on them. And, redstone components like redstone repeaters use ticks as well as the “time set” command.
If you would like to use this handy Minecraft command, input one of the offered words (day, noon, night, and midnight with sunrise and sunset on Bedrock edition). However, to be even more precise, you can type in the ticks as well.
Check out the table below for some useful event stamps of one Minecraft day’s length.
| Ticks | Real Time | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 (or 24000 if you’re seeing it as the end of a previous day) | Beginning of the day, Players and villagers wake up and rise from their beds | Beginning of the day; Players and villagers wake up and rise from their beds |
| 1000 | 50 seconds | When players use the /time command to set the time to day |
| 2000 | 1 minute and 40 seconds | Villagers begin working |
| 6000 | 5 minutes | Noon time, when the sun is directly at the top |
| 9000 | 7 minutes and 30 seconds | Villagers stop working |
| 12000 | 10 minutes | Villagers go to sleep; This time is also achievable by using the /time set sunset command on Bedrock edition |
| 12542 | 10 minutes and 27 seconds | Players can sleep in the clear weather; Undead mobs don’t burn anymore |
| 13000 | 10 minutes and 50 seconds | Beginning of the Minecraft night |
| 13188 | 10 minutes and 59 seconds | Hostile mobs can spawn outside in the clear weather |
| 22812 | 19 minutes | After this point, hostile mobs cannot spawn anymore in clear weather |
| 23000 | 19 minutes and 10 seconds | Hostile mobs can spawn outside in clear weather |
| 23460 | 19 minutes and 33 seconds | Players can no longer sleep; Undead mobs begin to burn |
How to Use a Minecraft Clock
A clock is a craftable and useful item that you can use to tell the time of the day in Minecraft. You can make it by placing four gold ingots in a diamond shape and one redstone dust in the center on the crafting table. Refer to our dedicated guide to making a clock in Minecraft.
You can also find it in chests of ruined portals and shipwreck structures. This item is good to have with you as it shows the time. The most noticeable time stamps it displays are the dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight.
Though you can easily tell where the Sun and Moon are when you’re on the surface, it’s a completely different story underground. There is basically no way to tell what time it is without a clock. That’s why it’s a good idea to have it with you when exploring caves or building an underground dwarven keep. You can even place the clock in an item frame, and it will still show the exact time, which will save one slot of your inventory.
How to Change Time in Minecraft
While the day-night cycle changes naturally, you can use the commands to set the time to day or night in Minecraft manually. You can use the /time command to instantly set the in-game time to any point of the day. Moreover, you can also use the /gamerule doDaylightCycle true/false command to permanently freeze the time as per your setting. That said, here are all the significant time stamps to change the length of a day in Minecraft:
- /time set day: Sets time to daytime or 1000 game ticks
- /time set noon: Sets time to midday or 6000 game ticks
- /time set 12000: Sets time to dusk or 12,000 game ticks
- /time set night: Sets time to nighttime or 13,000 game ticks
- /time set midnight: Sets time to midnight or 18,000 game ticks
- /time set 23000: Sets time to dawn or 23,000 game ticks
So, that’s pretty much all you need to know about the length of a Minecraft day and how the time’s calculated in ticks. By knowing these pieces of information, you can efficiently manage your time in-game and plan your projects accordingly.
However, would you like the Minecraft day to last longer or perhaps be a little shorter? What is your PB time for playing Minecraft in one go? Let us know in the comments below!
You cannot change the length of an in-game day. But you can freeze the daylight cycle with the gamerule command. This will stop the time and allow you to extend it as much as you want.
Yes, Minecraft does become harder as the days go by in the game. This is because of the local difficulty value. If you spend a lot of time in one place in your world, the difficulty of that area will increase, making various in-game aspects slightly more challenging.
100 days in Minecraft is equivalent to 33 hours and 20 minutes in real-world time.
For the first two days of not sleeping in Minecraft won’t affect anything. However, if you haven’t entered a bed or died for 3 Minecraft days (or 72000 ticks), phantoms will start to spawn (and attack you in survival mode).
Aryan Singh
