How to Add Admins to Your Factorio Server

Admin privileges on a Factorio server are controlled by server-adminlist.json. Any Factorio account username listed in that file has full administrative control, including access to the cheat console. Add only trusted players.

Before editing, make sure you know each player's Factorio username, which is the account name they use to authenticate with the Factorio multiplayer service (not their in-game display name).

Add admins via the game panel

1. Log in to the Game Control Panel and navigate to your Factorio server.
2. Stop your server.
3. Click Configuration Files, locate server-adminlist.json, and click the Text Editor button.
4. Edit the file to include each admin's Factorio username as a string in a JSON array:

   [
     "YourFactorioUsername",
     "AnotherAdmin"
   ]
   

   
   The file must be a valid JSON array of strings. Do not add trailing commas after the last entry.
5. Click Save and start your server.

Verify admin status in-game

Once you have joined the server, open the in-game console with the ~ key (tilde) and run:

/admins

You should see your username listed. If you are not listed, confirm the server restarted after saving the file.

Admin commands reference

The cheat console (/c <lua>) lets you run arbitrary Lua commands. Using cheats disables achievements for that save.

Troubleshooting

• Admin not recognized after joining: Ensure the server was fully stopped before saving server-adminlist.json, then restarted after the save.
• JSON parse error on startup: Validate your server-adminlist.json is a plain array of strings with no trailing commas. Each username must be quoted.
• Player promoted in-game not persisting: Using /promote in-game also updates server-adminlist.json automatically. If it does not persist across restarts, check that your server has write access to the file via FTP.