Minecraft MOTD Generator

What is a Minecraft MOTD?

This Minecraft MOTD generator builds the message of the day that players see under your server's name in the multiplayer server list. MOTD stands for "message of the day", but on a Minecraft server it is really a two-line description: it tells people what the server is before they join, and it is the only place you can style text before a player connects. Type your two lines above, pick colors and formats, watch the preview, and copy the result in the format your server software reads.

The MOTD comes from the server, not the client. When a player's client refreshes the server list, it sends a status request, and the server answers with its MOTD, the online and maximum player counts, the version, and the server icon. Each player sees the same text, drawn in Minecraft's font on the dark server list background.

On a plain Java Edition server the MOTD lives in server.properties under the motd key. Proxies such as Velocity and BungeeCord have their own MOTD settings, and plugins can replace the text entirely. The sections below cover each of those.

How to use the MOTD generator

Type each line into its own field, then style it with the color and format buttons:

• Select text and click a color or format. The tool puts the code before the selection and brings back the previous style after it, so the rest of the line keeps its color. Selecting "world" in &aHello world and clicking red gives &aHello &cworld.
• Click with nothing selected to insert the code and a closing code, with the cursor between them. Type the styled text there.
• Use the keyboard. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U add bold, italic and underline (Cmd on a Mac). Ctrl+Shift+X adds strikethrough and Ctrl+Shift+K obfuscated text. Enter in the first line moves to the second.
• Add a gradient. Pick a start and an end color and click "Apply to selection". With nothing selected, the gradient covers the whole line.
• Clear formatting removes the codes from the selection, or from the whole line when nothing is selected.

Pick the output format your server reads, then press C to copy the result or Ctrl+S (Cmd+S) to download it. The tool keeps your lines when you reload the page, and "Share link" copies a link that opens the same MOTD.

Minecraft color codes

Minecraft Java Edition styles text with formatting codes: a section sign (§) followed by one character. §a switches to green, §l turns on bold, and §r resets everything. Plugins and most config files use & instead of §, because § is hard to type and awkward to store, and they translate &a to §a before sending the text. The tool accepts & codes in the input for the same reason.

These are the 16 standard colors. The hex values are the colors the Java Edition client draws for each code.

Text with no color code in the server list is gray (§7), which is why an unstyled MOTD looks muted next to styled ones.

Formatting codes

Six more codes change the style of the text rather than its color:

Formats stack: &l&n gives bold underlined text. The order matters when you combine them with colors, because in Java Edition a color code switches off every format that came before it. &l&aServer is green but not bold, since &a cleared the &l. Write the color first and the formats after it: &a&lServer. The color buttons in the tool do this for you: clicking a color on bold text carries the bold over. The preview follows the same rule, so if bold disappears in the preview, check the order of your codes.

Obfuscated text (&k) cycles through random characters. It is sometimes used for a short sparkle on either side of a name, such as &k||&r &6Server &k||. Keep it short: a whole obfuscated line is unreadable, and some players find the flicker distracting.

Hex colors and gradients

Minecraft 1.16 added full RGB colors to chat components. Legacy text, which is what the MOTD string in server.properties is, has no official hex code, but Spigot and Paper read a long form: §x followed by the six hex digits, each with its own §. #FF5555 becomes §x§F§F§5§5§5§5. Many plugins accept a shorter &#FF5555 in their configs and convert it. In this tool you can type &#RRGGBB or use the hex color field, and the output converts it to the right form.

A gradient is a separate hex color on every character. The Gradient preset shows how that looks, and the Gradient control colors any part of a line: select the text, pick two colors and click "Apply to selection". It needs a lot of codes (14 characters for each letter), which is fine for a MOTD but makes the raw text hard to edit by hand, so it is easier to regenerate it here than to change it in the file.

How to set the MOTD in server.properties (Vanilla, Spigot, Paper)

Every Java Edition server reads the MOTD from server.properties in the server's root folder. Choose "server.properties (motd=)" as the output format and you get a single line like this:

motd=\u00A76\u00A7lSKY\u00A7e\u00A7lBLOCK \u00A78| \u00A7aSurvival\n\u00A77Join the community

To install it:

1. Stop the server. A running server keeps the settings it loaded and can write them back to server.properties, which would undo an edit made while it runs.
2. Open server.properties and find the line that starts with motd=.
3. Replace that whole line with the generated one. Keep a single motd= line in the file.
4. Save the file and start the server, then refresh the server list in your client.

Two details in that line are deliberate. \u00A7 is the escape for §. Java reads \u00A7 as the section sign no matter which encoding the file was saved in, while a literal § can turn into § or a question mark if the file is saved in one encoding and read in another. And \n is the line break between the first and second line. A properties value must stay on one line in the file, so the break is written as an escape.

If you are building the rest of the file, the server.properties generator covers every other setting, and the optimal server.properties settings post explains which values to change first.

How to set the MOTD on Velocity

A Velocity proxy answers the server list ping itself, so the MOTD of the backend servers never reaches players. Set it in velocity.toml with the motd key. Velocity 3 reads that value as MiniMessage, a tag format, rather than & codes:

motd = "<gold><bold>SKYBLOCK</bold></gold> <dark_gray>|</dark_gray> <green>Survival\n<gray>Join the community"

The standard colors map to MiniMessage tags by name: &a is <green>, &6 is <gold>, &8 is <dark_gray>, &d is <light_purple>. Formats become <bold>, <italic>, <underlined>, <strikethrough> and <obfuscated>, and a hex color is written as <#FF5555>. Use this tool to plan the design and colors in the preview, then write the tags by hand.

Velocity also has a ping-passthrough option. Set it to description and Velocity shows the MOTD of the first server in your try list instead of its own. That is useful when a single backend server sits behind the proxy. The Velocity config builder generates the full velocity.toml, including the motd and ping-passthrough lines.

How to set the MOTD on BungeeCord and Waterfall

BungeeCord and Waterfall keep the MOTD in config.yml, under the listeners section, and they read & codes. Choose "& codes (plugins)" as the output format. In YAML, wrap the value in double quotes so \n becomes the line break:

listeners:
  - host: 0.0.0.0:25577
    motd: "&6&lSKYBLOCK &8| &aSurvival\n&7Join the community"

Single quotes in YAML do not process \n, which is a common reason a two-line MOTD shows up as one line with a literal backslash in it.

MOTD plugins

Plugins can take over the server list response and replace the MOTD from server.properties. They are useful when you want a different message per player, a random MOTD from a list, or a player count that shows something other than the real number. Most of them read & codes, which is the "& codes (plugins)" output. Some newer plugins, such as MiniMOTD, use MiniMessage tags like Velocity. Check the plugin's config comments before you paste: if the example values contain < tags, it expects MiniMessage.

If a plugin manages the MOTD, changes to server.properties have no effect, since the plugin replaces the text before it is sent.

How long can a MOTD be?

The server list shows two lines. There is no fixed character limit, but each line is only as wide as the server list entry, and the client cuts off what does not fit. With regular letters that is roughly 45 characters per line. Bold letters are wider, so a bold line fits fewer. The tool shows the visible character count for each line and the preview cuts long lines the same way, so you can see where yours ends.

The codes do not count toward the width, only the visible characters do. A gradient line can be hundreds of characters long in the file and still show 14 letters.

Writing a MOTD that gets clicks

The MOTD is the only text a player reads before deciding to join, and they read it in a list next to other servers. A few things help:

• Put the server name or game mode on the first line, where the eye lands first.
• Use the second line for what is new or why to join: a new season, an event, the version you support.
• Keep to two or three colors. A line in five colors reads as noise, and every color in the list is competing with the entries around it.
• Use gray (&7) or dark gray (&8) for separators and secondary words, so the important words stand out.
• Test it in the preview with the real text before you restart the server.

The Minimal, Colorful and Gradient presets are starting points for those three levels of styling.

Common mistakes

The MOTD shows § or odd characters. The file was saved in a different encoding than the server read it with. Use the server.properties output, which writes § as \u00A7, and the problem goes away.

Only one line shows, with \n in it. In YAML configs, the value is in single quotes or has no quotes. Use double quotes. In server.properties, make sure the line was not split across two lines by an editor.

Bold or underline disappears after a color. A color code clears formats. Put &l after the color code, not before it.

The changes do not show. Restart the server after editing, and refresh the list in the client. If a proxy sits in front of the server, change the proxy's MOTD instead. If a plugin manages the MOTD, change it in the plugin's config.

Hex colors show wrong on vanilla. Vanilla does not read the §x form. Switch to Spigot or Paper, or use the 16 standard colors.

The file has two motd= lines. Java keeps the last one it reads. Delete the old line when you paste the new one.

Related tools

The MOTD is one line of the server's setup. The server.properties generator writes the rest of that file, the Velocity config builder handles the proxy's MOTD and forwarding, and the JVM arguments generator gives you start flags for the server. To reuse MOTD colors in plugin messages or MiniMessage configs, the color code translator converts between & codes, § codes, hex and MiniMessage tags. For choosing between Spigot, Paper and the other server jars, see Paper vs Spigot vs Fabric vs Forge.