Foundry VTT Updated April 27, 2026

Setting Up and Resetting the Admin Password

How to set the Foundry VTT admin password on first run and reset it if forgotten by removing the admin.txt hash file.

Foundry VTTadmin passwordsecuritysetup

Overview

Foundry VTT uses two separate password systems: the admin password, which controls access to the Setup menu, and world passwords, which control access to individual game worlds. This article covers the admin password only. World passwords are configured per-world inside Foundry after the server is running.

The admin password is not stored in plain text. Foundry hashes it and stores the hash in:

<dataPath>/Config/admin.txt

For example, with --dataPath=/foundry-data:

/foundry-data/Config/admin.txt

Setting the Admin Password on First Run

When you start Foundry for the first time (or after deleting admin.txt), the Setup screen is accessible without a password. You should set a password immediately.

  1. Navigate to http://<your-server-ip>:30000 in a browser
  2. The Setup screen will be visible without requiring a password
  3. Click the gear icon or navigate to "Configuration"
  4. Enter a new admin password in the "Administrator Password" field
  5. Confirm the password and save

Foundry will hash the password and write the hash to Config/admin.txt. From this point on, accessing the Setup menu requires that password.

Resetting a Forgotten Admin Password

If you have forgotten the admin password, you cannot recover it — the hash is one-way. However, you can reset it by deleting the hash file:

1. Stop the Foundry server.

In a Pterodactyl/WISP panel, use the Stop button. On a bare server:

# If running under systemd
systemctl stop foundry

# If running manually, find and kill the process
pkill -f "main.mjs"

2. Delete the admin password hash file:

rm /foundry-data/Config/admin.txt

3. Restart the server.

4. Access the Setup screen.

The Setup menu is now accessible without a password. Set a new admin password immediately as described in the previous section.

Security Considerations

  • The admin password protects the Setup menu, which allows installing/removing modules and game systems, changing server configuration, and creating or deleting worlds
  • Do not reuse a world password as your admin password — they serve different purposes
  • After any server migration or reinstall, verify admin.txt exists and contains a hash before exposing the server publicly
  • If you reset the password, the Setup screen is temporarily open to anyone who can reach port 30000 — set a new password before sharing the server address

Checking Password Status

To verify whether an admin password is currently set:

# If admin.txt exists and is non-empty, a password is set
cat /foundry-data/Config/admin.txt

An empty file or a missing file means no password is currently protecting the Setup menu.

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