Holograms on Your Minecraft Server: Floating Text, Icons and Clicks with DecentHolograms

What you need

A Paper server (or Spigot, Purpur): the holograms in this guide are plugins and don't work on Fabric, Forge or NeoForge. On NapNodes, Minecraft servers are delivered with Paper.

Being an operator (op) or having the dh.admin permission: all DecentHolograms commands are op-only by default. To see them you need nothing: everyone sees them.

Holograms aren't blocks or entities in the world: the plugin sends them to each player. They can't be broken, pushed or stolen, and a world reset doesn't touch them (they're saved in the plugin's folder, not in world).

Installing DecentHolograms

1. Make a backup

   In the panel, «Backups»: installing a plugin doesn't touch the world, but this way you can roll back in a minute if something doesn't fit.

2. Find it in the panel

   Inside your server, «Mods & plugins» → search for «DecentHolograms» → «Install». Only the versions that work for your Minecraft version show up. If it isn't there, download it from its page on Modrinth or SpigotMC and upload it to the plugins folder from «Files».

3. Restart

   Plugins load at startup. In «Files» the plugins/DecentHolograms folder appears, with config.yml (settings) and holograms (one .yml per hologram).

4. Check it's there

   Join the server and type /dh help. If it says the command doesn't exist, look in «Console» for an error when the plugin loaded (almost always, a version that doesn't match).

Your first hologram

Holograms are created from the game, because they appear where you are. Stand on the exact spot (the bottom of the hologram sits at your feet) and type the commands in chat. The name is for you, without spaces: welcome, rules, shop.

1. Create it with its first line

   /dh create welcome &d&lWelcome to MyServer. What comes after the name is the text of the first line; the & codes are the usual colours (&d pink, &l bold, &7 grey).

2. Add more lines

   /dh line add welcome 1 &7Type &f/spawn &7to come back here. The 1 is the page (a hologram can have several, see below); each line add puts the line under the others.

3. Fix a line

   /dh line set welcome 1 2 &7Read the rules before building changes line 2 on page 1. Lines are counted from 1, top to bottom.

4. Insert or remove lines

   /dh line insert welcome 1 2 &8------ inserts a line at position 2 and moves the rest down; /dh line remove welcome 1 2 removes it.

5. Move it

   /dh movehere welcome brings it to where you are; /dh center welcome centres it on the block. For exact coordinates: /dh move welcome 100 70 -50.

Colours, gradients and animations

Besides the 16 & colours (and &l bold, &o italic, &n underline), DecentHolograms understands hex colours: &#5b4ae8Text, or <#5b4ae8>Text. A gradient is written with the start colour in front and the end colour behind: <#ff5555>Welcome to MyServer</#5555ff>. If you want the text already coloured letter by letter in &# format, our gradient text generator does it.

Built-in animations: <#ANIM:colors>Text</#ANIM> (changes colour), and also typewriter (types itself letter by letter), wave, burn and scroll, written the same way. Use them sparingly: an animated hologram in every corner of the spawn is tiring and harder to read.

In the text, {player} is replaced by the name of whoever is looking: &eHello, {player} greets each one by name.

Icons, heads and mobs

A line can be an item that floats and spins instead of text: /dh line add shop 1 #ICON: DIAMOND. The name is the item's English name in capitals, as in the game (EMERALD, NETHERITE_SWORD, ENCHANTED_GOLDEN_APPLE); with !ENCHANTED after it, it glows as if enchanted.

Player heads: #HEAD: PLAYER_HEAD (Notch) puts Notch's big head and #SMALLHEAD: the small one. With #HEAD: PLAYER_HEAD ({player}) everyone sees their own head.

Mobs: #ENTITY: ZOMBIE puts a still zombie. For characters that talk, move or take you places, an NPC plugin like Citizens or FancyNpcs is better.

Icons and heads take up more height than a line of text: if they overlap, separate them with a blank line or adjust the height with /dh line height shop 1 2 0.6.

Holograms that do something when clicked

Each page can have actions per click: LEFT, RIGHT, SHIFT_LEFT or SHIFT_RIGHT. They're added with /dh page addaction <hologram> <page> <click> <action>.

1. Run a command

   /dh page addaction shop 1 RIGHT COMMAND:/warp shop. It's run by the player who clicks, so they need permission for that command (if you use EssentialsX, essentials.warp).

2. Send a message

   /dh page addaction rules 1 RIGHT MESSAGE:&aThanks for reading them, {player}. Only the person who clicks sees it.

3. Change page

   Add a second page with /dh page add rules &eRules (2/2) and set /dh page addaction rules 1 LEFT NEXT_PAGE and /dh page addaction rules 2 LEFT PREV_PAGE. That way long rules fit without a 20-line hologram. In the text, {page} and {pages} are replaced by the page being shown and the total.

4. Careful: CONSOLE

   CONSOLE:give {player} diamond 1 runs the command as the console, with every permission, and every time someone clicks. Don't use it to hand out items: anyone can click a thousand times. For rewards, a kit with a cooldown is better.

Live data with PlaceholderAPI

With the PlaceholderAPI plugin installed, holograms can show data that changes: players online, the money of whoever is looking, their rank. DecentHolograms detects it on its own. Install it from «Mods & plugins» or, if it isn't there, from its page (Hangar or SpigotMC) by uploading it to plugins in «Files», and restart (more in the PlaceholderAPI guide (in Spanish)).

Each piece of data comes from an «expansion» downloaded from the console: for players online, papi ecloud download Server and then papi reload. Then: /dh line add welcome 1 &7Online: &f%server_online%.

The text updates on its own every second (update-interval: 20 ticks in config.yml). Inside animations the data isn't replaced unless you turn on allow-placeholders-inside-animations, which the plugin itself advises against because it uses more CPU.

Listing, deleting and editing by hand

/dh list shows every hologram (from the game), /dh near 10 the ones within 10 blocks and /dh tp welcome takes you to one. /dh delete welcome deletes it for good: it doesn't ask for confirmation.

Each hologram is a file in plugins/DecentHolograms/holograms (welcome.yml). For long changes (ten lines of rules) it's easier to edit it in «Files», save and type dh reload in «Console». Copy the file first: a formatting mistake in the .yml stops that hologram from loading.

If you move the spawn or reset the world, holograms stay at their coordinates: move them with /dh movehere.

What about FancyHolograms?

FancyHolograms is the modern alternative: it uses Minecraft's text display entities (since 1.19.4), so the text can be scaled, rotated, have a coloured background or be seen through blocks, things DecentHolograms doesn't do. In exchange, it only works on Paper (not Spigot) and needs Paper 1.21.4 or newer, which is what we deliver.

You create one with /hologram create text welcome (the type can be text, item or block) and edit it with /hologram edit welcome setLine 1 <text>, addLine <text>, removeLine, scale 2 or background. The text uses MiniMessage format: <light_purple><bold>Welcome</bold>, and gradients with <gradient:#ff5555:#5555ff>Text</gradient>.

Pick one of the two and don't install both for the same job. If you already have a server with holograms made in another plugin (HolographicDisplays, for example), DecentHolograms converts them with /dh convert.

Frequently asked questions