AutoRejoin
Every Minecraft developer knows the pain. You stop the server to test a tiny tweak, rebuild the jar, and start it up again. Then you sit there, staring at the disconnected screen, mashing the reconnect button until the server finally decides to accept your handshake. It is a tedious loop that breaks your flow and wastes precious minutes. AutoRejoin is a small client-side Fabric mod built specifically to kill that loop for good.
Instead of forcing you to watch the clock, AutoRejoin adds two simple buttons to the vanilla disconnected screen. The first is a standard Reconnect button that immediately rejoins the last server you were on. The second is a persistent Auto-Reconnect: ON / OFF toggle. When that toggle is on and the disconnected screen is open, the mod takes over. It pings the server every few seconds, and the moment it detects that the server is back up, it automatically starts the normal join cycle. You get a status line under the buttons that tells you exactly what is happening, like "Checking again in 3s (attempt 4)" or "Server is up - joining!".
Why AutoRejoin for Minecraft is a Developer's Best Friend
The workflow becomes beautifully simple. You run /stop, rebuild your plugin or mod, start the server, and before you can even alt-tab back to your IDE, you are already in the world. No more frantic clicking. No more wondering if the server is actually listening on the port yet. AutoRejoin for Minecraft handles the timing so you can focus on the code.
Smart, Non-Intrusive Behaviour
One of the best things about this mod is how respectful it is of your attention. It only runs on the disconnected screen. If you press the vanilla button, hit Escape, or navigate to any other menu, the retry loop cancels instantly. There is no background polling while you are in a menu or exploring another world. The mod is completely dormant until you are staring at that specific screen, which means it never wastes resources or causes unexpected behaviour.
The check itself is not a simple TCP port probe. AutoRejoin performs a real Server List Ping, using the same handshake as the multiplayer server list. This is a crucial detail. A server whose port is open but which is still loading its world will not be counted as ready. The mod also resolves DNS SRV records and respects your client's blocked-server list exactly like a normal join would. You will never be thrown into a world that is not fully initialized.
Capturing the Right Server
AutoRejoin captures the server address while you are still connected, because Minecraft clears the current server entry during the disconnect process. This means Direct Connect and LAN servers work flawlessly. Realms is skipped entirely, since those addresses are temporary and would not be valid for a reconnect anyway.
Performance is also a priority. The checks run on their own daemon thread, so a hanging DNS lookup or a firewalled host will never freeze the game. You can alt-tab out and watch a video, confident that the mod is working in the background without stuttering your client.
Configuration and Settings
AutoRejoin is highly configurable through a simple JSON file, config/autojoin.json, which is written on first launch. Here is what each option does:
- autoReconnect — This is the same value that the in-game button toggles. Set it to
trueto have auto-reconnect enabled by default. - pingIntervalSeconds — The delay between checks. The minimum is 1 second.
- maxAttempts — Set to
0to keep retrying forever, or specify a number to limit the retries. - pingTimeoutMillis — The connect and read timeout for a single check.
- requireStatusResponse — When set to
false, an open TCP port is enough to trigger a rejoin. This is only useful behind a proxy that accepts connections before it can answer a status request, but beware, it can make the client rejoin too early. - playSoundOnReconnect — Plays a small ping sound when the rejoin fires, so you notice it even while alt-tabbed.
Being kicked from a server is not treated differently from a crash. If you were kicked, the server is obviously up, so the mod will rejoin you. If that is not what you want, simply turn the toggle off or set a maxAttempts value.
How to Install AutoRejoin
Installing AutoRejoin is straightforward. First, ensure you have the Fabric Loader installed for your Minecraft version. The mod supports a range of recent Minecraft versions, so check the specific version compatibility for the release you are downloading. To download AutoRejoin, head to the official Modrinth or CurseForge page for the project. You will need to match the mod file with your exact Minecraft version and Fabric API version.
Once downloaded, how to install is simple: place the downloaded .jar file into your mods folder. That is it. The next time you launch the game with the Fabric profile, AutoRejoin will be active. For those who prefer a more streamlined approach, the foxygame.net launcher offers a one-click install for AutoRejoin, pulling the correct version directly from its add-on catalog, so you never have to worry about mismatched dependencies again. The launcher also handles auto-updates, ensuring you always have the latest bug fixes for AutoRejoin without manually checking for new releases.
Conclusion
If you restart your dev server even a few times a day, AutoRejoin is an essential quality-of-life tool. It is small, efficient, and does exactly one thing perfectly. It eliminates the dead time between server startup and your re-entry into the world, letting you stay in the creative flow. Whether you are a plugin developer, a modpack creator, or just someone who plays on a flaky server, AutoRejoin for Minecraft is a download worth making. Stop watching the clock and let the mod do the waiting for you.