How do you turn on cheats in an existing Java world?

Pause the game, click Open to LAN, toggle Allow Commands on, and choose Start LAN World. Cheats stay active until you leave the world; reopening it normally turns them off again.

How do you enable cheats on Bedrock after creating a world?

Pause, open Settings, find Activate Cheats in the Game settings, turn it on and press Continue on the confirmation pop-up. The change is permanent until you toggle it off.

Are cheats on automatically in Creative mode?

Yes. Creative worlds in both Java and Bedrock have command access enabled by default, unless you deliberately created the world with the setting turned off.

How do you use cheats once they are enabled?

Open chat with the T key, type a command such as /gamemode, /time or /tp, and press Enter. The command runs immediately in your world.

How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft (Java and Bedrock)

Cheats are just Minecraft's name for command access: switching game modes, teleporting, changing the time, summoning items you cannot normally get. Every world decides at birth whether they are allowed, but both editions also give you a way in afterwards. Here is every route, and how to close the door again.

Enable Cheats When Creating a World

Java Edition

On the Create New World screen, look for the Allow Commands toggle (older versions label it Allow Cheats) and switch it on. That gives a survival world full command access. Choosing Creative mode instead enables cheats automatically, with no toggle needed.

Bedrock Edition

In the Create New World menu, open the Cheats section and turn the main Cheats setting on. From then on, that world allows commands and game mode switching even in survival. As on Java, Creative worlds have cheats active by default.

Enable Cheats in an Existing World

Java: the Open to LAN trick

Load the world and pause the game.
Click Open to LAN.
Toggle Allow Commands on.
Click Start LAN World.

You now have cheats for this session. The important detail: LAN access is temporary. When you leave the world, command access switches off again, so this trick is a per-session key rather than a permanent change to the world. One caution — if you switch yourself to Creative while using it, switch back to survival before quitting, because your game mode does persist.

Bedrock: the settings toggle

Pause the game and open Settings.
Scroll through the Game settings to Activate Cheats and turn it on.
Confirm by pressing Continue on the pop-up.

Unlike Java's LAN method, Bedrock's toggle edits the world itself, so cheats stay on in future sessions until you turn them off.

How to Disable Cheats Again

On Bedrock, return to the same Activate Cheats option in Settings and switch it off — this works regardless of how the world was created. On Java, a survival world that only had cheats through Open to LAN resets itself: close the world, reopen it, and command access is gone. Worlds created in Creative with cheats enabled cannot have them removed, although if you create a Creative world with the toggle off, you can still borrow cheats through the LAN trick and lose them again on restart.

One Side Effect Worth Knowing on Bedrock

Bedrock players should flip the Cheats toggle with their eyes open: turning cheats on disables achievements for that world, and they do not come back if you later switch cheats off again. It is a one-way door for that save file. If you are mid-way through an achievement run, finish it in a separate world and keep a clean, cheat-free copy of your main world for earning them. Java has no equivalent penalty — its achievement-style advancements keep working regardless — which is another reason the LAN trick there feels so low-stakes by comparison.

Using Cheats Once They Are On

Press T to open chat, type a command and press Enter. Start with the classics: /gamemode to switch modes, /time set day to skip a night, /tp to teleport. For fast building, /fill replaces whole regions of blocks at once — the closest thing vanilla has to a cheat-build tool, short of mods like WorldEdit.