World Save File Inspector

Read your world's level.dat, a player's .dat file, or check a hardcore world's status — all in your browser, nothing uploaded.

Your world file is read entirely in your browser and never uploaded anywhere. Always back up your world folder before replacing level.dat.

Quick guides

How to use this tool, and the questions players ask most.

Where is the level.dat file located in Minecraft?

In Minecraft Java Edition, level.dat is located in the root of your world save folder inside %appdata%\.minecraft\saves\ on Windows or ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/saves/ on macOS. This file stores global world settings, the seed, and the global spawn coordinates.

What is the level.dat_old file in Minecraft?

The level.dat_old file is an automatic backup created by Minecraft every time the world saves. If level.dat becomes corrupted or drops to 0 bytes, renaming level.dat_old to level.dat restores the previous world state.

Where is level.dat stored in Minecraft Bedrock Edition?

On Windows Bedrock Edition, level.dat resides in %localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\minecraftWorlds\. Unlike Java NBT files, Bedrock uses Little Endian NBT with a header containing an 8-byte version number and file length.

What data is stored inside a level.dat file?

A level.dat file contains root NBT compound tags including DataVersion, the world seed in RandomSeed, the world time in Time and DayTime, game rules, generator settings, and global world spawn coordinates (SpawnX, SpawnY, SpawnZ).

How do you open and edit a level.dat file?

Because level.dat is compressed with Gzip, you must use an NBT reader like this World Save File Inspector or an external editor to view and modify its tags. Standard text editors cannot read binary NBT format and will corrupt the save.

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