Docs · Project Zomboid

How to use RCON on your server

RCON (Remote Console) lets you run Project Zomboid’s admin commands — kick a griefer, save the world, broadcast a message — without being logged into the game. Every Forgehold server has it. You can run commands straight from the dashboard, or point a third-party client at it. This guide covers both, plus the PZ-specific quirks that trip people up.

The Console tab

Open your server in the Forgehold dashboard and switch to the Console tab. While the server is running, you get a live console: type a command, hit Send, and the server’s reply appears in the output pane. There are quick buttons for the three you reach for most — players (who’s online), save (flush the world to disk), and Broadcast (send an in-game message to everyone).

Nothing to set up: RCON is provisioned with the server. If you created your server before RCON shipped, it gains the feature automatically on its next restart — the Console tab says as much until then.

Connecting a third-party client

The same Console tab has a Third-party access card. It shows your server’s RCON address as host:port, plus a reveal-to-view RCON password, each with a copy button. Any tool that speaks the Source RCON protocol works — command-line clients like mcrcon or rcon-cli, and the Project Zomboid Discord bots that let you run admin commands from a Discord channel.

Point your client at three things:

• Host and port — the host:port pair from the card.
• Password — reveal it, copy it, and paste it into your client.

With mcrcon that looks like mcrcon -H host -P port -p password players. From there you can issue anything Project Zomboid’s RCON accepts.

Project Zomboid command quirks

RCON commands are not the in-game chat commands, and PZ has a couple of edges worth knowing before you start:

• No leading slash. In-game you type /players with a slash; over RCON it’s just players. The dashboard console strips a stray leading / for you if you type it out of habit, but third-party clients want the bare command.
• Broadcasts turn spaces into underscores. servermsg treats a space as an argument break, so servermsg Server restarting soon arrives as Server_restarting_soon — a Project Zomboid limitation, not a Forgehold one. The dashboard’s Broadcast button handles the underscoring for you, so type your message normally there.
• quit is blocked in the dashboard console. Stopping the server belongs to the platform’s Stop button, which shuts the container down cleanly and keeps the dashboard status accurate. A third-party client can still send anything PZ accepts, but if you stop the server over RCON the dashboard status will simply self-heal once the platform notices — so we recommend the Stop button for shutdowns.

Commands worth knowing

A handful of the ones you’ll use most:

• players — list who’s currently connected.
• save — force the world to save to disk immediately.
• servermsg — broadcast a message to everyone in-game.
• kickuser — disconnect a player by username.
• banuser — ban a player from the server.
• setaccesslevel — grant or revoke admin/moderator rights.

For the full list — every argument and every command — the PZwiki admin commands reference is the authority.