How to turn off fire spread in Minecraft

When you enter the world of Minecraft, you will encounter plenty of obstacles. One of these is the game's fire mechanics. Fire in Minecraft is essentially a non-solid block that can be applied onto any block. When your character's hitbox touches the fire block, the character will start burning and taking damage. Fire can also spread in the game, which can be concerning.

If you are new to Minecraft, you will most likely create a simple hut made up of wooden blocks. However, this can be risky since occasional lightning strikes can set fire to wooden blocks. Furthermore, fire gradually spreads on any wooden block. Luckily, there is a way to stop fires from spreading and destroying blocks.

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Easiest ways to stop fire from spreading in Minecraft

When creating a new world

You can turn off the fire spread before creating a new Minecraft world (Image via Mojang)

If you are creating a new world, you can tackle this problem before even entering the world. While on the creation page, click on the 'Game Rules' tab. This is where you can toggle several settings for the game mechanics.

While most players leave this section untouched for a pure survival experience, tweaking it is the only way to stop in-game fires from spreading automatically. Scroll down to the 'World Updates' section and toggle off the 'Update fire' option. This will essentially stop the game from updating the fire mechanics and prevent it from spreading.

Toggle off the 'Update fire' in game rules before creating a new Minecraft world (Image via Mojang)

This is the best method since you can normally play the game without turning on cheats or using any commands. In contrast, the next method requires you to do exactly that.

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Stopping fire spread in a pre-existing world

Briefly toggle cheats in an existing world through LAN settings in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

If you are already in an existing world, the only way to stop fire from spreading is by either extinguishing it quickly or turning off fire spread using commands. Commands are powerful tools that you can only use if cheats are enabled in your world.

Even if you cannot permanently turn on cheats in a pre-existing world, there is a way to temporarily do so. In the pause menu, head over to the 'Open to LAN' tab. Here, you will see two options: gamemode and cheats. Simply enable the cheats and open that world to LAN. This will briefly give you access to type and execute commands.

Type the gamerule command to stop fire from spreading in Minecraft (Image via Mojang)

Type out '/gamerule doFireTick false' to stop fire from updating and eventually spreading in-game. Once this is done, you can exit the world and re-enter it. Doing this will close the LAN and disable cheats. Some hardcore survival players may not like this method as it requires you to briefly toggle on cheats and commands. Unfortunately, this is the only way to stop fire spread permanently.