Palhelm is a self-hosted web admin panel for Palworld dedicated servers. It is one Docker image and one process with no external database. It talks to your server three ways: the official REST API, RCON, and the world save file itself, which it parses directly (the 1.0 Oodle-compressed format) with a pure-Go parser. You get a live dashboard, player and pal data, a map, safe backups and restores, and a config editor that edits the thing your server actually reads.

Full documentation lives at docs.palhelm.com. The showcase site is palhelm.com. A companion Discord bot lives at github.com/8tp/palhelm-bot.

Features

• Live dashboard. Server FPS and frame-time history with charts, players-online history, per-channel health (REST, RCON, save sync), and an event feed.
• Players. Online and offline players merged from the live API and save data. Kick, ban, unban. Guild membership, playtime, and per-player pals from the save file, with real Paldeck names and locally fetched pal icons.
• Command palette. Players, actions, navigation, and saved RCON commands from one keystroke. Destructive entries are hidden from read-only viewers.
• Console. A real RCON session with history, saved commands, and an honest note about what vanilla RCON cannot do.
• Live map. Player and base markers on Palworld 1.0 tiles with Palpagos and World Tree layers. Tiles are game-derived art, so they are never shipped; a one-shot script downloads them into your data volume.
• Backups. Scheduled and manual snapshots with retention. Browse a snapshot's contents, restore with a dry-run diff and a typed confirmation. Restore refuses to run while the server is up and always takes a pre-restore backup first.
• Config editor that tells the truth. With the popular thijsvanloef/palworld-server-docker image, PalWorldSettings.ini is regenerated from compose env vars on every boot, so editing the ini does nothing. Palhelm edits your compose file's environment: block instead, preserving comments and ordering, shows pending vs effective per setting, and gives you the exact host command to apply. One-click apply is intentionally disabled; see the docs for why.
• Graceful shutdown. Staged, cancellable player-facing countdown broadcasts. Palhelm does not claim it can start the server again; restarts belong to your host supervisor or container restart policy.
• Roles. Admin plus an optional read-only viewer login. The game server's admin password never reaches the browser.
• API-first. Everything the UI does goes through Palhelm's own documented REST API (/api/openapi.json). There is also a separate read-only Integration API with bearer keys for bots and scripts, with strict redaction so a leaked key cannot expose platform IDs, live positions, or moderation state.

Quick start

Security first: never expose the panel to the open internet. Bind it to localhost, a LAN, or a VPN/tailnet interface, the same advice Pocketpair gives for the game's own REST API. See SECURITY.md.

The container image will be published at ghcr.io/8tp/palhelm. It is not published yet. Until then, build it locally from this repo:

docker build -t ghcr.io/8tp/palhelm:local .

Palhelm slots into the Compose project you already run your server from. Minimal service, alongside a palworld service:

  palhelm:
    image: ghcr.io/8tp/palhelm:local   # use :latest once the image is published
    container_name: palhelm
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - palworld
    user: "1000:1000"                  # match the PUID/PGID that owns the save files
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"          # private interface only, never the internet
    environment:
      PALHELM_ADMIN_PASSWORD: "choose-a-panel-password"
      PALWORLD_REST_URL: "http://palworld:8212"
      PALWORLD_ADMIN_PASSWORD: "your-server-admin-password"
      PALWORLD_RCON_ADDR: "palworld:25575"
      PALWORLD_SAVE_DIR: "/game/Saved"
      # config editor (optional): let Palhelm edit this compose file's env block
      PALHELM_COMPOSE_FILE: "/compose/docker-compose.yml"
      PALHELM_GAME_SERVICE: "palworld"
    volumes:
      - ../data/Pal/Saved:/game/Saved   # rw: restore writes here
      - ../palhelm-data:/data           # panel DB, backups, map tiles, Oodle lib
      - ./:/compose                     # dedicated compose dir, rw, for the config editor

The game server side needs RCON_ENABLED=true and an ADMIN_PASSWORD (which also enables the REST API). The full annotated example, including the game service and the compose-directory layout the config editor needs, is in examples/docker-compose.yml. The install guide at docs.palhelm.com walks through every step and the full configuration reference.

Optional extras, fetched once into your data volume because the art is game-derived and never shipped:

scripts/fetch-map-tiles.sh ./palhelm-data/map-tiles   # live map tiles
scripts/fetch-pal-icons.sh ./palhelm-data/pal-icons   # pal preview icons

Known limits

Honest notes so you know what you are getting:

• Save parsing depends on the game version. Palhelm decodes the Palworld 1.0 save format (world meta, guilds, players, pals) and skips sections it does not need. If a game update drifts the format, the panel degrades that feature and shows a format-drift badge instead of breaking, but save-derived data goes stale until the parser catches up.
• The Oodle decompressor is not bundled. 1.0 saves are Oodle-compressed and the library is proprietary, so Palhelm downloads it once at first save parse and verifies a pinned SHA-256. Air-gapped hosts can supply the file via PALHELM_OODLE_LIB.
• Vanilla RCON is limited. No whisper, and Broadcast mangles spaces. Palhelm prefers the REST API for moderation and says so in the UI.
• The game's REST API is limited too. Some data Palhelm would like (live world actor data, for example) is not exposed by the current server build, so features that need it are not built yet.
• Player notes are not a whitelist. The local player ledger is annotation only. It does not control who can join. Real allow-list enforcement is deferred until a supported mechanism exists.
• Restart is external. Palhelm can schedule and cancel a graceful shutdown countdown, but it cannot start a stopped server. Configure host supervision separately and verify it.
• Map tiles and pal icons are fetched, not shipped, for licensing reasons. Until you run the fetch scripts, those screens show empty states.

Development

Prereqs: Go (version in backend/go.mod) and Node 24.

make build      # frontend (npm) + backend (go) -> ./palhelm with embedded SPA
make test       # go vet + go test + frontend type check
make docker     # the shipping image
cd frontend && npm run dev -- --port 5199   # UI against mock data: http://localhost:5199/?mock

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full dev setup, docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for design decisions, and docs/API.md for the API reference.

Related

• Discord bot: github.com/8tp/palhelm-bot, slash commands and notifications backed by the panel's Integration API.
• Docs: docs.palhelm.com
• Site: palhelm.com

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE. The Palworld name, game assets, and map imagery belong to Pocketpair. Palhelm is an unaffiliated fan-made tool, built to fit within their fan work guidelines.