Icon, message and description

Open a server, then Settings → Appearance. The preview on the right shows how the server looks in Minecraft’s multiplayer list and in the dashboard, with your changes before you save them.

The icon

The icon is the 64 × 64 picture players see next to the server in the game’s list. CraftPanel writes it as server-icon.png into the server folder; you never have to resize anything yourself.

• From a picture. Choose a file or drop one on the preview (PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF or SVG, up to 16 MB). Drag the picture to move it, use the zoom slider or the arrow keys, and pick Fill the icon (crops the longer side) or Whole picture (shows all of it, on a transparent, dark, light or green backdrop). Turn Smooth scaling off for pixel art so the edges stay sharp. The picture is cropped and scaled in your browser; only the finished 64 × 64 PNG is sent.
• Generate one. Pick lettering (an initial or an emoji, up to three characters; it starts with your server’s initials), one of eight colours, a pattern and rounded or square corners.

Use this icon saves it. Download gives you the current file, Remove icon deletes it again (Minecraft then shows its default picture). Minecraft reads the icon when the server starts, so a change shows after the next start; the dashboard marks the server as needing a restart while it runs.

The icon also appears in the dashboard: in the server’s header, on its card on the home page and in the server list. A server without one shows its first letter instead.

The message of the day

The message is the two lines under the server name in the game’s list. The editor is one block: a toolbar with the sixteen colours as in the game’s chat colour chart, the styles (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough or obfuscated) and Clear; the text; and the message as the game draws it. Select some text and click a colour or a style; the buttons write the § codes for you, and Clear removes them from the selection. Under the editor, three tabs hold the rest: Colour effects, Symbols and Examples.

Colour effects

The Colour effects tab spreads a gradient over the selected text, or over the whole message when nothing is selected: Rainbow, Sunset, Ocean, Forest, Fire, Candy, Gold and Frost, or Your own with a start and an end colour. Every letter gets its own colour from the gradient; bold, italic and the other styles you set are kept, and spaces cost no extra code.

Two modes decide how the colours are written:

• Smooth colours use any colour (the game’s hex colours). Paper and Purpur servers show them in full. Vanilla, Fabric and NeoForge servers don’t: the game shows them in wrong colours, so the panel warns you when you choose smooth colours for such a server. Each coloured letter takes 14 characters.
• 16 classic colours replace every colour of the gradient by the nearest of the game’s sixteen, which every server and every player shows. Gradients come out coarser, but they work everywhere. The panel starts in the mode that fits your server’s software.

Symbols

The Symbols tab puts stars, hearts, arrows, check marks, swords, skulls, shapes and divider lines into the message at the cursor (or in place of the selection). The buttons show each symbol as a small pixel picture in the style of the game’s items, so you can tell them apart; what goes into the message is the character, which the game draws with its own font, so every player sees it. A few of the rarer ones may show as boxes on very old versions.

Examples

The Examples tab shows ready-made messages with your server’s name already in them, each as the game would draw it: classic and golden ones, and banners in rainbow, sunset, frost, fire and forest colours. Click one to replace the message with it, then change whatever you like.

Good to know

• A message has at most two lines and 2048 characters; a colour or style costs two characters, a smooth colour fourteen. Roughly 50 characters fit on a line before the game cuts them off.
• A colour clears the styles before it, as in the game; Clear or a second colour returns to the default.
• Obfuscated text shuffles in the game and in the preview (it stands still if your system asks for reduced motion).
• The game draws the message once and keeps it until the list is refreshed; it can’t animate by itself. For a message that changes, see rotating messages below.
• Minecraft reads the message at start-up, so restart the server after saving.
• A Velocity proxy takes its message from velocity.toml (Files tab); the icon and description work for it too.

Note

The message is the motd line of server.properties, written with the line break as an escape so the file stays valid. You can still edit it under Server properties or in the raw file.

Rotating messages

On Paper and Purpur servers the server list can show several messages one after the other. Design a message in the editor, click Add the message above, and repeat up to eight times; each one can be changed in its own box, moved up or down or removed, and Use editor text replaces it with what the editor holds. Change every sets how long a message stays (2 to 30 seconds), and the preview on the right plays the rotation.

How it works: CraftPanel writes the messages to plugins/CraftPanelInfo/motd.txt and installs its small info plugin (the same one that adds /craftpanel), which answers the game’s server list request with the message that is due. Minecraft asks for the message each time the list is opened or refreshed, so a player sees one message and then another after a refresh; the text doesn’t move on its own while it is on screen.

• Edits apply within seconds, with no restart. The first time, restart the server so the plugin loads; the dashboard marks the server as needing a restart if the plugin was added while it ran.
• While rotating messages are set, they replace the single message above; remove them all to bring it back.
• Switching off the in-game info command keeps the plugin for the messages but hides /craftpanel.
• Vanilla, Fabric and NeoForge servers can’t run the plugin and keep the single message. Smooth colours work in rotating messages as they do in the single one.

The description

A free note of up to 280 characters, shown on the server’s card, in the lists and under its name in the header. Use it for what the server is for or what to remember before changing it. Players never see it; it is not part of the game.

Who can change it

Everyone with access to a server sees its Appearance tab; changing the icon, message and description needs the permission to configure the server (the Administrator and Owner roles).