How long does a night last in Minecraft: Everything you need to know

Minecraft is well known for its cyclical day and night cycles. They break the game up into a calm daytime where the player can explore and build with little danger, and a nighttime where enemies and threats spawn all around players, making the overworld's surface much more dangerous.

This means that maximizing the time that players have in each phase of the game, depending on what they need, is crucial for quick game progression. In Minecraft, the day lasts for 9 minutes and 10 seconds, followed by a 50-second sunset. Night then begins, lasting another 9 minutes and 10 seconds, and ends with a 50-second sunrise.

To learn more about Minecraft's daylight cycle, continue reading.

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How long do days and nights in Minecraft last?

The total time of a day

A wall clock which players can use to keep track of the current time (Image via Minecraft)

The total daily cycle of the in-game worlds lasts for 20 real-world minutes. Meaning, at the game’s default tick speed of 20 ticks per second, Minecraft time is exactly 72 times faster than real time. To put it simply, every 50 seconds of real time equates to an in-game hour having passed.

That really makes the days seem short, knowing that an entire hour passes away in less than a minute.

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How long does a day last in Minecraft?

The sun appears after the player uses the /time set day command (Image via Minecraft)

The game's day begins bright and early at 6 AM. After a 50-second sunrise, the daytime lasts for 9 minutes and 10 seconds. Players, as well as villagers, rise from their beds after sleeping through the night.

Interestingly enough, this is not the time that the /time set day command sets the world to, as the command actually sets the world’s time to 7 AM.

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How long does a night last in Minecraft?

The moon's position after a /time set night command (Image via Minecraft)

After daytime ends, the sun will start setting. The sunset lasts for 50 seconds, following which the nightime starts and lasts for 9 minutes and 10 seconds of real-time. This also happens to be the time that the /time set night command takes players to. After the nightime ends, the sunrise will start and last for 50 seconds.

The first tick of time for hostile mobs to start spawning in clear weather does not happen until just shy of 10 seconds after the night's official start.

There are also a few important milestones that take place before the official start of the night at the game's 7 PM mark. The first milestone time is 6 PM, which is the beginning of sunset and when villagers go to sleep.

The next important time is only half a second after this in real time, which is when, if the weather is rainy, players can go to sleep. This is earlier than normal, as in clear weather, players cannot sleep until 6:30 PM, or 10 minutes and 27 seconds into a day’s total cycle.

In rainy weather, hostile mobs begin spawning at around 7 PM in game, or 10 minutes and 48 seconds of real time. This is earlier than their normal spawning time mentioned by a full 10 seconds.