How To Read a Minecraft Crash Report

Minecraft writes a crash report whenever the game or server stops unexpectedly. Look here:

• crash-reports/
  A timestamped file like crash-2026-06-08_14.23.51-server.txt. This is the dedicated, detailed report.
• logs/latest.log
  The full running log. If there is no crash report (the process just exited), the error is here at the bottom.
• logs/debug.log
  A much more verbose log, useful when latest.log is not detailed enough.

On a server these folders sit in the server root; on a client they are inside the instance/.minecraft folder. Always open the newest file by timestamp.

Every report has the same parts, from top to bottom:

• Header & description
  A one-line Description summarising what failed, plus the time. This is your first clue.
• The stack trace
  The exception type, then a list of code lines showing where it happened, often followed by one or more Caused by: blocks.
• Affected level / details
  For world or entity crashes, the coordinates, dimension, and entity/block involved.
• System Details
  Minecraft version, Java version, allocated memory, the mod loader, and the full mod list. Gold for diagnosis.

1. Read the Description line. It is a plain-English summary, e.g. "Exception ticking entity" or "Unexpected error". That already tells you the category.
2. Find the exception type at the top of the stack trace (e.g. java.lang.OutOfMemoryError, NullPointerException, NoClassDefFoundError). The type often names the problem outright.
3. Jump to the last "Caused by:". When several are chained, the deepest one is usually the real root cause, not the first.
4. Look for a mod or plugin name in the package path (e.g. com.somemod.Thing). That points straight at the culprit. A pure net.minecraft.* trace points at vanilla/world data instead.
5. Check System Details. Confirm the Java version matches your Minecraft version, see how much memory was allocated, and scan the mod list for duplicates or outdated entries.
6. Match the symptom to a known fix. Use the cause you found to jump to the matching solution (see the examples below).

• OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space
  Not enough memory. See Out of Memory.
• Exception ticking entity
  A single corrupted entity. See Ticking Entity.
• A single server tick took 60.00 seconds
  The server froze. See Watchdog Crash.
• NoClassDefFoundError / ClassNotFoundException
  A missing library. See NoClassDefFoundError.
• Exit code -1 with no crash report
  Read latest.log instead. See Error Code -1.

Browse all of them on the Common Issues page.

Sometimes the process just exits (often with exit code 1 or -1) without writing a crash report. In that case the real error is at the bottom of logs/latest.log. Scroll up from the end to the first ERROR, FATAL, or Exception line, that is where things went wrong. To understand the log format itself, see Understanding Minecraft logs.