natural_health_regeneration

booleanJava 26.2 & Bedrock 26.32

Controls whether players regenerate health passively when their hunger bar is full. When false, players must rely on Regeneration potions, golden apples, or the Regeneration effect to heal.

Enable natural_health_regeneration

Players regenerate 1 HP every 4 seconds when hunger is at 18+ (9 full bars) — standard survival behavior.

Java/gamerule natural_health_regeneration true

Bedrock/gamerule naturalregeneration true

Bedrock uses naturalregeneration (all-lowercase, no separators).

Disable natural_health_regeneration

No passive health regeneration. Players can only heal via effects, food items with direct healing (golden apples), or /effect regeneration.

Java/gamerule natural_health_regeneration false

Bedrock/gamerule naturalregeneration false

Default: true. Restore with /gamerule natural_health_regeneration true

What natural_health_regeneration does

Controls whether players regenerate health passively when their hunger bar is full. When false, players must rely on Regeneration potions, golden apples, or the Regeneration effect to heal.

Frequently asked questions

Does disabling natural_health_regeneration affect golden apples?: No — golden apples grant the Regeneration and Absorption effects directly, separate from passive regeneration.
Is this used in UHC (Ultra Hardcore) mode?: Yes — UHC sets natural_health_regeneration false so players can't passively heal.
What happened to naturalRegeneration?: Renamed to natural_health_regeneration in Java snapshot 25w44a. Bedrock uses /gamerule naturalregeneration.

Related gamerules

keep_inventory

All Gamerule commands Java vs Bedrock guide