Change day and night length on a Rust server

The Rust Config Editor has no row for day length. The game has one console command for it, env.daylength: one in-game day lasts that many real minutes on the server. There is no setting for night length. Players’ screens keep their own sky between time syncs. The Time Of Day plugin changes day and night.

Set the day length from the console

Open the Console tab and type the command with no slash. The October 2026 console listed these:

The console’s help for env.daylength adds two warnings. Clients keep their own sky between time syncs. And the value must never be zero: freeze time with env.progresstime instead.

Type env.daylength alone to read the current value, then type it again with a number, for example env.daylength 60. Not checked as of 11 October 2026: whether 80 is the game’s default.

To be sure the value lasts across restarts, add it as a line to server.cfg. See “By hand” below.

Change day and night length with a plugin

Time Of Day (on uMod under the author misticos) is described on its uMod page as a plugin that alters the day and night duration. The panel offered version 2.3.4 on 11 October 2026. It needs Oxide or Carbon.

Not checked as of 11 October 2026: whether it works on the current game build, how it works together with env.daylength, and the date on its uMod page (an earlier read showed 4 September 2018).

1. Open Plugins. In Search uMod type Time Of Day and choose Install on its card. See the plugin manager guide.
2. Check that its row under Installed says LOADED. If it says NOT LOADED, see plugins not loading.
3. Open the Console tab. Type, with no slash:

Both numbers start at 30. They must be whole numbers above 0. The plugin saves each value to its settings file as soon as you set it. In game chat, /tod prints the sunrise and sunset hours and the current day and night lengths.

To change the values in the file instead, press Config on the plugin’s row. Config appears once the plugin has loaded and written its settings file, TimeOfDay.json. The values sit under Settings as dayLength and nightLength. Save the file and press Reload.

Skip a night or a day

Two more console commands skip the part that is running now: tod.skipnight and tod.skipday. If it is already day, tod.skipnight answers “Day is already active”. The settings autoSkipNight and autoSkipDay, both off at first, skip each night or day by themselves.

Who may type the commands is set by authLevelCmds in the same file. It starts at 1, so moderators and owners can. For a vote that skips the night, see skip night vote.

By hand

When you host Rust yourself, type the env. commands in the server console. A line in server.cfg runs at every start, so this lasts across restarts:

env.daylength 60

In the ArthOS panel, the Config Editor keeps lines it does not know: choose Edit the whole file as text and add the line there. For the plugin, install Oxide or Carbon, then put TimeOfDay.cs into oxide/plugins (Oxide) or carbon/plugins (Carbon). The settings file is TimeOfDay.json, in oxide/config or carbon/configs. Reload it in the console with oxide.reload TimeOfDay or c.reload TimeOfDay.

If it does not work

• The plugin row says NOT LOADED. The Console holds the reason. See plugins not loading. The plugin is old, so a newer game build may break it.
• Players still see the old day length after env.daylength. Their sky keeps its own day length between time syncs. The plugin is the other option.
• A tod. command prints nothing. Your account is below the level in authLevelCmds, or the plugin has not finished loading. Wait a moment and try again.
• The length looks wrong after a change. Type the number as digits only, such as 20. Check it with tod.daylength and tod.nightlength.

Hosting Rust? See the Rust page.

Sources: umod.org: Time of day, umod.org: TimeOfDay.cs, wiki.facepunch.com: Useful commands

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