How do I change the MOTD of my Minecraft server?

The MOTD (message of the day) is the text players see next to your server in their multiplayer list. It is the first impression of your server: a name, a slogan, an event announcement. It can be two lines long, in colour and with formatting, and is set in server.properties.

Changing the MOTD

1. Go to the game panel and click your server.
2. Open the Properties page and edit MOTD, or edit the line motd=A Minecraft Server in server.properties through File Manager.
3. Save and restart the server.
4. Refresh the server list in Minecraft to see the result.

Colours and formatting

Colour codes use the section sign § followed by a character. In server.properties the sign must be written as the escape \u00A7, because the file only accepts plain characters:

motd=\u00A76\u00A7lMyServer \u00A7r\u00A77| Survival 26.2

That gives a bold gold name, then grey text. The most used codes: 0 black, 1 dark blue, 2 dark green, 4 dark red, 6 gold, 7 grey, a light green, b aqua, c red, e yellow, f white; l bold, o italic, n underline, k obfuscated and r reset. Online MOTD generators produce the escaped string for you, which saves counting.

Two lines

A line break is \n: motd=\u00A7aWelcome to MyServer\n\u00A77Season 3 has started!. The list shows at most two lines of about 45 characters each; longer text is cut off.

Special characters

Symbols such as ★ or ➤ work, but must be escaped in the same way: \u2605 for ★, \u27A4 for ➤. Pasting the symbol itself into server.properties often ends up as a question mark. Emoji from phones are not supported by the Minecraft font.

Hex colours and gradients

server.properties only understands the classic 16 colours. For hex colours, gradients and centred text you need a plugin such as MiniMOTD or MOTDPlugin on Paper, which also lets you rotate several MOTDs and show a different message when the server is in maintenance.

The MOTD does not change

• The server was not restarted; server.properties is only read at start-up.
• The Minecraft client shows a cached version; click Refresh in the multiplayer screen.
• A plugin overrides the MOTD. Check your plugins folder for a MOTD or serverlist plugin.
• A proxy such as Velocity or BungeeCord sits in front of the server: the MOTD is then set in the proxy's configuration, not on the backend server.

Complete the picture with an icon

Next to the MOTD, the list shows a 64×64 icon; how to add one is in adding a server icon. Together they decide whether players click your server; our blog article on MOTD and server icon has examples that stand out.

Stuck? Open a ticket and paste your MOTD line.