How to find your Minecraft seed
Every Minecraft world is generated from one number. Before you can map a world you need that number — here is how to get it in singleplayer, on a server, and from a world save.
Singleplayer: the /seed command
Open the world, press T to open chat, type /seed and press enter. The seed appears in chat as a clickable value — clicking it copies the number to your clipboard. This works in every modern Java Edition version and does not require cheats to be enabled in singleplayer.
Multiplayer: ask an operator
On a server, /seed requires operator permission by default. If you run the server yourself you can also read the level-seed value from server.properties, or run /seed from the server console.
From the world save
The seed is stored in the level.dat file inside the world folder, under Data → WorldGenSettings → seed. You need an NBT editor to read it. Save folders live in .minecraft/saves on Windows and Linux, and in ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves on macOS.
Before you create the world
On the world creation screen, whatever you type into the seed field is the seed. Leave it empty and Minecraft picks a random one. Type text and Minecraft converts it to a number using Java string hashing — the seed map performs the same conversion, so you can paste either form.
Numeric and text seeds
- A numeric seed is any whole number from -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807.
- A text seed is hashed to a 32-bit number, so text seeds only ever cover a small part of the full seed space.
- Because the hash is deterministic, the same text always produces the same world.
Next steps
With the seed in hand, open the seed map, choose the version your world was created in, and start exploring. Version matters: the same seed produces different terrain in 1.17 and 1.18.