Can I alt-tab out of Minecraft without the game auto-pausing?

This answer is no longer relevant to current Minecraft versions, because F1 no longer hides menus; also, F1 is now a toggle and the tricks for holding it down are irrelevant.

Since you mention that your concern is that you can't see (as opposed to having the menu up at all), I have a fix for that: with the menu up, use F1 to hide it. Pressing F1 removes all HUD elements and leaves only the game view.

However, you have to hold down F1. There are several tricks for this to fool the game into thinking you have F1 down:

• Press F1 and switch out of Minecraft while holding it down. (Tested on Mac)
• Before releasing F1, press the Alt (Windows (and Linux?)) or ⌘ Command (Mac) keys.
• Mac-specific: If you have a system where you have to press fn-F1, just release F1 before fn.

Since the update that merged the single- and multi-player code bases, you can press T to start typing in chat, which will let you tab out without pausing or hiding the game.

Go into your minecraft folder and open up options.txt. Find the line that reads

pauseOnLostFocus:true

and change true to false. Now Minecraft won't pause to the menu screen when you tab away.

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You can find your minecraft folder in a couple ways:

1. Using the file system: Navigate to...

   • %appdata%.minecraft (on Windows)
   • ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/ (on Mac OS X)
   • ~/.minecraft/ (on Linux)

2. Using Minecraft's menus:

   1. Start Minecraft and click Options, Resource Packs, and then Open resource packs folder. In the file system window that opens, go up one folder and you'll be in your minecraft folder.

You can press F3+P to let the game not auto-pausing. Press F3+P again to re-enable it.

Whilst all the other solutions look perfectly fine, I thought I'd add the method I use, when I want to not have the game pause, I hit esc, and "Open up to LAN". The game doesn;t pause then on focus loss.

here's how I did it, I was mining, in a map called Minevolution, I was in full screen mode and then, while holding down left click, I pressed F11 at the same time I let go of the left click button, and it continued to mine, then I just did the whole Alt+Tab thing to get out of it and it worked

If you just open a LAN connection the game no longer can be paused, even if you're in the game menu. A LAN connection only allows people to jump in if they are on the same internet connection, so it is pretty secure.

Changing the options is the best way to do it. In Multiplayer you can Alt-Tab and Automine while pressing T or Esc doesn't let you do anything while AFK.

This works for Minecraft Bedrock on Windows.

1. Press E to open your Inventory
2. Press E to close your inventory but immediately press ALT+TAB to switch to another (any other) window.

You need to get your ALT+TAB in while the Inventory is closing but it's not too difficult with a bit of practise.