Minecraft MOTD Generator

The MOTD is the motd= line in server.properties. It is one value: \n marks the line break and § codes set the colors. Edit it while the server is stopped, then start it again.

motd=§6§lPhoenix Network\n§7Survival §8| §7Skyblock

In server.properties every & becomes §. Plugins and proxies usually take the & form directly.

Hex colors arrived in Minecraft 1.16, but only for text sent as JSON or MiniMessage. Vanilla server.properties still only knows the 16 legacy colors, so the server.properties output picks the nearest one for each hex color. Tick "16 colors only" under the preview to see the result. To keep a real gradient, use a proxy such as Velocity or a MOTD plugin, and copy the MiniMessage or & code output. For gradient text elsewhere, try the Gradient Text Generator.

Each MOTD line has about 270 pixels in the server list. Most letters are 6 pixels wide, narrow ones like i, l and . are 2 or 3, a space is 4 and bold adds 1 to every character. A line that is too wide wraps, which pushes your second line out of view. The Center button adds leading spaces from these widths; in server.properties the first space is written as because Java drops leading spaces otherwise.

Behind a proxy, the server list shows the proxy's MOTD. BungeeCord reads motd under listeners in config.yml with & codes. Velocity reads motd in velocity.toml as MiniMessage, with <newline> between the lines. The same colors work in titles, too: the Title Generator builds the command.

Stop the server, open server.properties in the server folder, replace the motd= line with the one this tool gives you, save and start the server again. Two lines are written as one value with \n between them.

Vanilla server.properties reads § color codes, like §a for green or §l for bold. The & codes most plugins use don't work there. Type & codes in the editor and copy the server.properties output: it converts them to § and writes § as \u00A7 so the file can't garble it.

No. Vanilla server.properties only understands the 16 legacy colors, so this tool turns hex into the nearest of them. For hex colors and gradients use a MOTD plugin or a proxy such as Velocity, whose velocity.toml takes MiniMessage. Players need Minecraft 1.16 or newer to see hex colors.

Minecraft has no center option, so a centered MOTD is padded with spaces at the start. The font isn't monospaced, which makes counting spaces by hand unreliable; the Center button measures each line in the game's font widths and adds the right number of spaces. Custom resource pack fonts can shift it slightly.

The § sign was saved in a different text encoding than the server read it with, so it turns into § or a question mark. Writing it as \u00A7, as this tool does, avoids the problem in every encoding.

The server list shows two lines of about 270 pixels each, roughly 45 normal characters, fewer when bold. A longer line wraps onto the next row and anything past the second row is not shown. The width counter under each line warns you before that happens.

A 64×64 pixel PNG named server-icon.png, placed in the server folder next to server.properties. Restart the server to load it. Other sizes are ignored.

Players see the proxy's MOTD, not the backend servers'. On BungeeCord set motd under listeners in config.yml, using & codes. On Velocity set motd in velocity.toml, which uses MiniMessage, so copy the MiniMessage output.