Better Days | Sleep and Day-Night Cycle Mod

What the Better Days Mod Changes About Minecraft Time

Better Days is a Minecraft mod that hands you real control over how time moves. It reworks the vanilla sleep mechanic so you get a smooth, natural transition to morning instead of an abrupt snap, and it accelerates the passage of time while you lie in bed. The result is a less disruptive night and a day-night cycle you can actually shape.

On multiplayer servers the effect scales with how many players are asleep. The larger the percentage of players resting, the faster the night moves along. That removes the need for any sleep voting system or player threshold, since every sleeping player contributes to shortening the night.

Customizing the Length of Day and Night

The core of the mod is independent control over day and night speed. Vanilla Minecraft runs on a fixed 20-minute cycle, which is short enough that a full in-game day whips by in a single real-world session. Better Days lets you slow time down so a Minecraft day can stretch to match a real one, or you can speed nights up for a friendlier pace when you just want to get back to building.

Day length and night length are tuned separately, so you can keep long productive daylight hours while trimming the dangerous dark stretches. Settings live in the config file, which you can open directly through the mod menu.

Optional Time Effects That Follow the Clock

When you start stretching time, the rest of the world can feel out of sync. Better Days ships a set of optional time effects that tie other systems to your adjusted clock so they progress at a believable rate. Most are disabled by default and switch on through config.

Effects you can enable include faster crop growth, accelerated grass spread, shifting weather, quicker potion effects, and speedier furnaces and hoppers. Turn on only the ones that fit how you play, and leave the rest vanilla.

Interpolated Time for Sunrise and Sunset

A more advanced option lets you divide the day into segments and assign each one its own speed. This is useful for drawing out sunrise and sunset, or for slowing a particular slice of the afternoon without touching the rest of the cycle. You define segments with simple value pairs in the config, and the mod threads the speed changes through each window of the day.

One note from the project itself, if you push day speed and night speed above 3600 the rapid light changes can be unsafe for players with photosensitive epilepsy. Keep an eye on those values on shared servers.

How to Install Better Days

The mod works across the major Java Edition loaders, so pick the build that matches your setup.

1. Install your loader of choice first. If you are new to modded Minecraft, our Minecraft mod install guide walks through the basics, and we have dedicated pages for Fabric and Forge.
2. Drop the Better Days JAR into your mods folder.
3. Launch the game and open the config through the mod menu to set your day length, night length, and time effects.

The mod runs on both client and server. For multiplayer features like the scaling sleep speed, make sure it is installed on the server side as well.

Compatibility With Other Mods

Better Days plays well with several popular mods and steps aside when it detects a conflicting sleep system. It integrates with Homeostatic, Ready Player Fun, Comforts, Sleep Warp, Fabric Seasons, Serene Seasons, Enhanced Celestials, and Nomadic Tents. When it spots Sleep Tight installed it disables its own sleep handling to avoid clashes.

One thing to watch is Quark. The Improved Sleeping module interferes with Better Days, and the Nerf Clock option breaks the in-bed clock display. Either turn those Quark settings off or disable the Better Days bed clock through the displayBedClock config. If you run a dedicated sleep mod like Sleep Tight, Better Days yields to it automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Better Days remove the need for sleep voting?

Yes. Because time speeds up based on the percentage of players in bed, any number of sleeping players shortens the night. You no longer need a vote threshold or majority rule for night to pass.

Can I set day and night to different lengths?

You can. Day speed and night speed are independent config values, so you might run a long slow day and a quick night, or the reverse, without affecting the other half of the cycle.

Are the time effects turned on by default?

Most are off out of the box. Crop growth, grass spread, weather, potion effects, and furnace and hopper speeds each have their own config flag, so enable only the ones you want.

Is Better Days still maintained?

The last update landed in June 2026, so the project is currently active. Check the project page for the newest release and any notes from the author.

Where do I change the settings?

Open the config through the mod menu in-game, or edit the config file directly. Day length, night length, time effects, and the interpolated time segments all live there.