Scoreboard and TAB list on your Minecraft server: sidebar, health and header

What you can show and where

Minecraft has three places to show data: the sidebar (the classic “scoreboard” on the right of the screen, 15 lines at most), the player list (what you see when you press TAB: a value next to each name, plus a header above and a footer below) and below each player's name (below_name, for example their hearts).

With Minecraft's own commands, each of those places shows one score (an “objective”): deaths, health, kills, diamonds mined or the points you hand out. It's free and installs nothing, but the sidebar only lists players with their number, not free text. For a board with the server name, ping, rank or the time, and for a header on the list, you need a plugin: the most used one is TAB.

With Minecraft commands, no plugins

They work on any server (Paper, Fabric, Forge or NeoForge). Type them in the panel's “Console” without the slash, or in game with / if you're an operator. Scores are saved with the world: they survive restarts.

1. Create the objective

   scoreboard objectives add deaths deathCount "Deaths". The first name is the internal one (no spaces), deathCount is what it counts and the part in quotes is what players see. Other common ones: playerKillCount (player kills), health and the statistics, such as minecraft.mined:minecraft.diamond_ore (diamond ore mined).

2. Put it on the sidebar

   scoreboard objectives setdisplay sidebar deaths. To remove it: scoreboard objectives setdisplay sidebar, with nothing after it.

3. Health in the list and below the name

   scoreboard objectives add health health "Health", then scoreboard objectives setdisplay list health (when pressing TAB) and scoreboard objectives setdisplay below_name health. With scoreboard objectives modify health rendertype hearts, the list shows hearts instead of a number.

4. Manual points for events

   scoreboard objectives add points dummy "Points" creates one that counts nothing on its own; then scoreboard players add PlayerName points 5, scoreboard players set PlayerName points 0 or scoreboard players reset PlayerName points. Handy for tournaments, treasure hunts or races.

5. Hide the numbers or delete it

   scoreboard objectives modify deaths numberformat blank removes the red numbers from the sidebar. scoreboard objectives remove deaths deletes the objective and its scores.

With the TAB plugin: text on the board, a header and ranks

TAB is free, runs on Paper and Fabric (you install it on the server; players install nothing) and needs no other plugins. On a NapNodes server you install it from “Mods & plugins”: search for TAB (on Modrinth it's listed as “TAB”) and press install; if it doesn't show up for your version, download the .jar from its Modrinth page and upload it to the plugins folder from “Files”. Make a backup in “Backups” first and restart the server.

On startup it creates the plugins/TAB folder with config.yml, groups.yml and users.yml. The player list part is already on, with sample text (that's why, right after installing it, pressing TAB shows “Server name” and “Online players”): change it to yours. The sidebar comes switched off.

scoreboard:
  enabled: true
  toggle-command: /sb
  scoreboards:
    main:
      title: "&5&lMY SERVER"
      lines:
        - "&7%date%"
        - ""
        - "&eOnline&7:||&f%online%"
        - "&eRank&7:||&f%group%"
        - "&ePing&7:||&f%ping%&8ms"
        - ""
        - "&dmyserver.play.napnodes.com"

1. Open config.yml

   In “Files”, plugins/TAB/config.yml, and edit it right there. It's YAML: keep the spaces at the start of each line (never tabs) and the quotes.

2. List header and footer

   In the header-footer section, under designs → default, change the header and footer lines. You can use color codes (&6, &l…), #RRGGBB colors and values that fill themselves in: %online% (players online), %player% (the name of whoever is looking), %ping% and %date%.

3. Turn on the sidebar

   In the scoreboard section, set enabled: true. Under scoreboards there are two samples, and the first one only shows under conditions (game version, not Bedrock): the simplest thing is to delete both and leave one of your own without a display-condition, like the example below, with your title and your lines (15 at most).

4. The value on the right of each line

   On the Minecraft version played today, &eOnline&7:||%online% puts the text on the left and the number on the right, without the usual red numbers. An empty line ("") works as a spacer.

5. Apply the changes

   Type tab reload in the “Console” (or /tab reload in game as an operator). No server restart needed. Each player can hide the board with /sb if you give them the tab.scoreboard.toggle permission.

Colored ranks in the list, with LuckPerms

TAB puts each group's prefix in front of the player's name. If you use LuckPerms, the easiest way is to let TAB copy the prefixes from there: in plugins/TAB/groups.yml keep only the _DEFAULT_ group with tabprefix: "%luckperms-prefix%" and tabsuffix: "%luckperms-suffix%", and change prefixes with LuckPerms as usual (lp group admin meta setprefix 100 "&c[Admin] "; how it works in the LuckPerms guide). %group% on the board shows each player's primary group.

For gradient colors, TAB understands &#RRGGBB and, on Paper, the MiniMessage format (<#5b4ae8>text</#e84a9a>). There's still a limit: long lines get cut, and on the board the player's screen has the last word; test with a small game window.

If it doesn't show or looks wrong

The board doesn't show: check that you set enabled: true inside scoreboard (not another section), that you ran tab reload and that it has no display-condition you don't meet (the first of the samples only shows to certain game versions and never on Bedrock). If the console says the file has a YAML error, it's almost always indentation or unclosed quotes.

Odd text shows up, like %player_health%: values with an underscore belong to PlaceholderAPI, another plugin, and besides installing it you have to download its “expansion” (the PlaceholderAPI guide). TAB's own values (%online%, %ping%, %player%, %group%, %world%, %date%, %memory-used%…) need nothing else.

Two boards overlap: a Minecraft /scoreboard … setdisplay sidebar and TAB's board fight for the same spot. Use only one of them for the sidebar.

Players joining from Bedrock (with Geyser, “Mods & plugins” → “Bedrock”) may not see the sidebar: TAB's own documentation puts it down to Geyser, and it affects any scoreboard plugin, not just TAB.

Frequently asked questions