How to Update Your Existing Minecraft World to a New Version

We have a video tutorial on how to update your existing world to 1.20:

 

When Minecraft releases new updates, you may be keen to update your existing world to experience all of the new features. Updating your singleplayer world is relatively easy, but you should make sure to create a backup in case any issues arise.

How you backup and update your world depends on if you play Minecraft: Bedrock Edition or Minecraft: Java Edition.

Updating Your World on Java Edition

Important: You can only update existing worlds to newer versions of Minecraft. Loading an existing world in a version older than the one it was generated with will cause world corruption issues.
  1. Open Minecraft and navigate to the Singleplayer tab.
  2. Select the world you want to update and click Edit.
  3. Click Make Backup to create a copy of your world.
  4. Relaunch the game with the version you’d like to update to.
  5. Join your world.
  6. In the menu that appears, select I know what I’m doing!

If you wish to locate the backup you took later on, you can do so by clicking the Open Backups Folder button in the Edit menu.

Your world will now load the new version of Minecraft in newly-generated chunks!

Updating Your World on Bedrock Edition

  1. Open the game and click Play.
  2. Locate the world you’d like to update and click the pencil icon to the right of it.
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the menu and select Copy World to copy the world in-game, or Export World to save the world locally on your computer.
  4. Join the world normally, as Bedrock updates versions automatically.

And that’s it! You’ve now updated your existing Minecraft world.

If you’d like to update your server to the latest version of Minecraft, you can refer to our guide on How to Update Your Minecraft Server.

If you require any further assistance, please contact our support at: https://shockbyte.com/billing/submitticket.php

Mitchell Smith

Managing Director @ Shockbyte

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