Manage server files on uniz.host — edit, upload, extract

Everything your server writes to disk — the world folder, config files, mods, plugins, logs — is browsable from the "Files" tab on the server page. No extra software, no SFTP client. This guide walks the jobs people actually do, along with the limits and traps the screen does not spell out.

When the tab works

It works both while the server is running and while it is fully stopped. While the server runs, the platform talks to a helper alongside the game. While it is stopped, an access path is brought up on demand just for you — which is why the first visit to this tab on a stopped server can sit on "Loading…" for ten to thirty seconds. It retries quietly on its own; there is no need to click again.

The one state where it does not work is while the world is archived, which shows "File management isn't available while the world is archived". There is no disk to browse then — only a compressed copy in storage. Press start once to restore the world onto a disk and the tab comes back.

The tab only appears if you hold the files permission. Owners always do; team members need it granted. Without it the tab is absent rather than disabled.

Getting around

Listings put folders first and then files, each alphabetical. Click a folder to enter it, use the .. row at the top to go up one level, and use the path trail above to jump straight back to any level.

The root you see is the root of your server's data volume. There is no way to climb above it, and no other customer's server is reachable from it, whatever path you type.

Each file shows its size after the name, which is the quickest way to find what is eating your disk.

Editing a config file

Open the Files tab and navigate to the file

The files people edit most sit at the root of the volume — server.properties for Minecraft, or the config file of another game, which is usually nested inside the game's own folder.

Click the filename to open it in the editor

Click the name itself, not the icon buttons on the right. The editor opens with highlighting suited to the file type.

Only files the platform considers text will open, and that decision is made purely on the extension.

Getting a download when you click binary data is not a malfunction. It is a deliberate guard against opening a file in a text editor that would certainly be damaged by it.

Very large text files will not open either, and report "Could not open the file — it may be binary or too large". The editor is meant for configuration, not for a log that has been accumulating for months. To read something big, download it and open it locally.

Make your changes and press save

"Save" overwrites the file the moment it confirms with "File saved". There is no version history and no undo. If the file matters and you are about to try something risky, keep a copy on your own machine first, or take a backup.

Restart the server for the new values to apply

Games read their configuration at start-up, so saving changes nothing in a server that is already running.

The sharper trap sits behind that. While the server runs, the game holds its own values in memory, and many games write their config file back out when they shut down — taking your edit with it. For any file the game owns, the safe order is stop the server, edit the file, then start it.

For Minecraft, the settings people change most have their own fields in the Settings tab, and those handle this timing for you. Prefer them, and keep the Files tab for the settings no screen exposes.

Uploading files

There are two routes, and both land in the folder you currently have open. Navigate to the right place first.

The file picker takes several files at once — right for a handful of mods or a config file.

The "Upload folder" button sends a whole folder with its structure intact, and the folder you picked becomes the first folder at the destination. Pick a folder called mods while sitting at the root and its contents land in /mods rather than scattered across the root. Missing subfolders are created for you.

While it runs, a counter shows how many of how many files have gone. If any file fails, the whole batch stops right there and reports how far it got. Everything uploaded before that point is intact — fix the cause and upload the remainder.

The limits that are genuinely enforced:

• Size — a single file must not exceed that server's disk size. Anything larger is rejected before a byte is sent.
• The owner must have made a real top-up — uploading files is a route for world data to enter, so it uses the same bar as uploading a backup. Coupon credit, referral credit and admin adjustments do not count, and the check reads the server owner's account, not the account of whoever presses upload.
• Actual free space — the ceiling is the whole disk, but how much is already used is on the "Storage" bar in the Files tab, which counts the trash too. Check it before moving anything big in.

Extracting a zip on the server

.zip files get one extra icon button, "Extract here", which unpacks into the folder you have open.

What actually happens differs from what most people assume. The work runs in your browser, not on the server: the archive is downloaded to your machine, unpacked there, and the contents are sent back up one file at a time through the normal upload route. Three consequences follow.

1. The tab has to stay open until it finishes; closing it stops the job
2. Speed depends on your own connection, not the server's
3. Only .zip is supported — no other format gets the button

Extracted content is capped at 512 MB. An archive that expands past that reports "Could not extract this archive". The same message also covers an incompletely downloaded archive, a password-protected one, and a file that is not really a zip whatever its extension says.

For a large modpack, extracting on your own machine and using the folder upload is usually both faster and less likely to fail.

Renaming, deleting, and new folders

Rename — press the pencil on the row and the name becomes an input in place. Press Enter to commit. The part that catches people: clicking away cancels, it does not save. That is deliberate, so that clicking off to press another button never renames a file behind your back. If the name snaps back, you clicked away before pressing Enter.

Delete — always shows a confirmation naming the file. Deleting no longer destroys anything: the file moves to the server's trash and waits there for 7 days, and the trash panel in the Files tab puts it back. Deleting a folder moves everything inside it. The part worth knowing: trashed files still take up your disk until you empty the trash, so deleting on its own frees no space.

New folder — the "New folder" button opens a name field and creates it inside the folder you have open. Most often needed for a mods folder the game has not created yet.

Downloading files out

The download arrow on a file row sends that file to your machine, one file at a time; there is no download-a-whole-folder button. If you want the entire world out, do not click through it file by file here — take one backup in the Backups tab and download that instead, which gives you everything in a single file.

Read next

• Restore a backup — moving a whole world in or out as one file
• Dashboard tour — the other tabs on the server page
• Mods and modpacks — the supported route that avoids touching files at all