The Rust Player Manager is a live moderation panel built into your Loafhosts control panel for every Rust server. It shows you who is connected right now — with their Steam avatar, ping, health and how long they have been online — and lets you kick, ban, unban, kick everyone at once, or broadcast a chat message to the whole server, all with a couple of clicks. There is nothing to install, no RCON password to type, and no separate tool to open: every action runs over your server’s RCON connection through the panel. This guide covers where to find the Player Manager, what each tab and button does, exactly how kicking and banning behave, and the few rules to know — like which actions need the server running. Whether you searched for a Rust admin panel, a way to ban a Rust player by Steam ID, or how to kick players on your Rust server, everything you need is below.
What the Rust Player Manager Is
The Player Manager is a moderation screen that only appears on Rust servers. It talks to your running server the same way the in-game console does: it sends RCON commands like playerlist, kick, banid and say over the server’s console pipe and reads the results back. Because the stock Loafhosts Rust server already runs with web RCON enabled, you do not need to find or enter an RCON password anywhere — the panel handles the connection for you. The online list, the ban list and every action are driven from this one screen, so you can moderate without ever opening the raw console or a third-party RCON app.
Note: The Player Manager sidebar item only shows up on Rust servers — it will not appear on Minecraft, Arma or other game servers.
Note: No RCON password is needed; the panel connects over your server’s console for you.
Note: Every action is recorded in your server’s activity log with who did it, the player’s Steam ID, and the reason.
Finding It in the Panel
Open your Rust server in the Loafhosts panel and look at the left sidebar — you will see a Player Manager entry alongside the other server tools. Click it to open the manager. The screen opens on the Players tab and immediately starts pulling your live online roster. If your server is stopped, you will still be able to read the Banned list (it comes from a file on disk), but live actions and the online roster need the server to be running.
Tip: Like the other sidebar tools, you can drag the Player Manager item to reorder where it sits in your server’s nav.
Tip: If the tab looks empty, give it a second — the online list is fetched fresh from the server, not from a stale cache.
The Players Tab: Who Is Online
The Players tab is your live roster. By default it polls the server roughly every five seconds, so the list stays current while you have the page open. Each player row shows their Steam profile avatar, their name, their 17-digit Steam ID, their current ping, a health bar, and how long they have been connected. Coloured chips flag each player’s status at a glance: Online or Offline, plus Admin, Mod or Banned where it applies.
At the top of the list there is a segmented filter — All, Online, Offline — and a search box that filters by name or Steam ID as you type. The search and filter work instantly on the list you already have; they do not hammer your server with new requests. A live count of connected players sits next to the search box.
Note: The poll interval defaults to five seconds; your host can raise it on a very busy server to keep console noise down.
Note: The Offline filter (seeing players who are not currently connected) needs the optional data plugin described near the end of this guide; without it the roster shows who is online plus your admins, mods and banned players.
Tip: Ping and the health bar are colour-coded, so a spiking ping or a near-dead player stands out without reading the numbers.
Kicking a Player
To remove someone temporarily, click Kick on their row (online players only). A small dialog appears titled Kick player. You can enter a reason — it is optional and capped at 128 characters — or leave it blank, in which case the server uses a default of “Kicked by an admin”. Confirm and the player is disconnected immediately. A kick is not a ban: the player can reconnect right away, so use it to clear someone out of a situation rather than to keep them off the server.
There is also a Kick all button at the top of the Players tab. It disconnects every player currently on the server at once, with an optional reason (default “Server maintenance”). Like a single kick, kicked players can rejoin immediately — it is handy right before a restart or a wipe, not as a punishment.
Note: A kick is instant but temporary — the player can reconnect straight away.
Tip: Reasons can be up to 128 characters and cannot contain quotation marks, backslashes or line breaks (those would break the underlying console command, so the panel blocks them).
Banning and Unbanning by Steam ID
To keep someone off the server, click Ban on their row. The Ban player dialog asks for a reason, which is required here (also capped at 128 characters). Bans are keyed to the player’s Steam ID using Rust’s banid command, which works even on a player who is not currently connected, and the ban is written to your server’s on-disk ban file so it survives restarts. Once banned, the player is removed and cannot rejoin until you unban them.
To reverse a ban, click Unban — it appears on banned players’ rows on the Players tab and on every row of the Banned tab. Unbanning removes the Steam ID from the ban list and lets that player connect again.
Note: A reason is mandatory when banning; the panel will not submit the form without one.
Note: Bans are by Steam ID, so they hold even if the player changes their display name.
Tip: You can ban a player who is not currently online — you do not have to wait for them to reconnect.
The Banned Tab
Switch to the Banned tab to see everyone currently banned from the server. Each entry shows the player’s name (where it is known), their Steam ID, the ban reason, and their Steam avatar. The list is read straight from your server’s ban file on disk, which has two useful consequences: it is the authoritative record of who is banned, and it loads whether your server is online or offline. From here you can unban anyone, or open a player to manage them further.
Note: The Banned tab reads from your server’s
bans.cfgfile, so it works even when the server is stopped.Note: Adding or removing a ban still sends a live command, so the server must be running to ban or unban — only viewing the ban list works offline.
Broadcasting a Message
The Broadcast button at the top of the Players tab opens a Broadcast message dialog. Type a message and it is sent to everyone on the server as a chat message (Rust’s say command). Messages are required and can be up to 255 characters; quotation marks, backslashes and line breaks are not allowed. It is the quick way to announce a restart, a wipe time, an event, or a rules reminder to the whole server at once.
Tip: Use Broadcast to warn the server before a restart or wipe — for example, “Server restarting in 5 minutes”.
Note: Broadcasts go to everyone; there is no per-player chat from the Broadcast button (per-player messaging is part of the optional data plugin covered below).
Managing a Single Player
Click anywhere on a player’s row, or the Manage button, to open that player’s detail view. Alongside Kick, Ban and Unban, the detail view gives you the rest of the moderation toolkit for that player: Kill their character, Mute Chat or Mute Voice (and unmute), Teleport them to another online player (pick the destination from the Teleport to player dropdown and click Teleport), and Give item by item shortname (for example wood or rifle.ak) with an amount between 1 and 10,000. These are live actions, so the player must be online and the server running.
The detail view also has Make Admin and Make Mod buttons, which grant in-game owner or moderator rights and save them to the server’s config. Because in-game admin and moderator powers are a big step up from kicking and banning, only the server owner (or a panel admin) can use those two buttons — a sub-user you have given moderation access cannot promote themselves or a friend.
Note: Kill, mute, teleport and give-item are live — the player has to be online and the server running.
Note: Granting in-game admin or moderator is owner-only, even for sub-users who can otherwise kick and ban.
Tip: The built-in Teleport sends a player to another online player — choose the destination from the dropdown. Teleporting to exact X/Y/Z map coordinates needs the optional data plugin covered below.
When the Server Must Be Running
Almost every action here talks to the live server over RCON, so the server has to be running for it to work: viewing the online roster, kicking, banning, unbanning, kick-all, broadcasting, killing, muting, teleporting and giving items all send a command to the running game. If the server is stopped, the panel will tell you the server must be running rather than failing silently. The one thing that works while the server is off is reading the Banned tab, because that comes from a file on disk.
Note: If you see a “server must be running” message, start the server and try the action again.
Tip: Plan a kick-all or a broadcast for before you stop the server — once it is off, those live actions are unavailable.
Permissions: Who Can Do What
The Player Manager respects your server’s sub-user permissions. Viewing the roster and ban list needs the read permission, and taking actions — kick, ban, broadcast and the rest — needs the update permission. So if you add a moderator as a sub-user on your server, give them the update permission and they can kick and ban, but the owner-only Make Admin and Make Mod buttons stay locked to you. Player IP addresses, where shown in the detail view, are only revealed to users with the moderation (update) permission.
Tip: Add trusted moderators as sub-users with the update permission instead of sharing your account — every action is logged against the person who took it.
Note: Read-only sub-users can watch the roster and ban list but cannot kick, ban or broadcast.
The Optional Data Plugin (Full Roster and Live Details)
Out of the box the Player Manager covers the moderation essentials over plain RCON. If you want more — your full offline roster (every player who has been on the server, not just who is online now) plus live inventory, health/water/food vitals, exact world position (with a one-click teleport to coordinates from the position card), kills/deaths stats, and private whispers to a single player — the server owner can install an optional data plugin from a one-click banner on the Players tab. It writes a small companion plugin onto your server (Rust’s Oxide/uMod modding framework auto-loads it) and unlocks those extra panels. Installing it is owner-only because the plugin can read and change player state. It is entirely optional; everything earlier in this guide works without it.
Note: The data plugin is optional and owner-installed; the core view/kick/ban/broadcast tools do not need it.
Note: It relies on Oxide/uMod, so it suits modded Rust servers; it loads automatically once installed.
Tip: Install the data plugin if you want a complete player history and live inventory/vitals — skip it if you only need to kick, ban and broadcast.