How to Use Colour Codes on Your Minecraft Server

If you’ve played on other Minecraft servers before, the chances are that you’ll have seen them use colours in different places. You might see them in the Message of the Day, for example, or in books or signs.

But how can you do that on your server? Don’t worry - it’s really easy! Just check out this really handy guide on using colour codes on your server.

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#Where can you Use Colour Codes on your Server?

Colour codes can be used in a variety of settings, and slightly vary from game version to game version.

In Bedrock Edition, they can be used on world names and on items, as well as on signs and (most importantly) in chat.

However, there is a slightly more limited usage on Java Edition, where colour codes are used only in the Server Properties file and the world and server names. That said, there are lots of addons that can be used to expand the usage of these colour codes to other areas of the game - but more on that later!

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#Using Colour Codes

To use colour codes, you’ll need access to a special sign called the Section Sign. It looks a little like this: §. To get this symbol on your PC, you can either copy and paste it directly from this Knowledgebase article or follow these steps:

1. Turn on NumLock. You should have a button somewhere on your keyboard that says “NumLk” (or similar) - press this to enable the NumLock feature.

2. Press and hold the ALT key.

3. Type the number “21” on the keypad and immediately release the ALT key.

4. The § should appear.

Once you have typed the symbol, you’ll need to type a series of numbers after it to select the colour. So if I wanted to type a message that is dark blue, I would enter §1Hello World. Here are the various colour code options:

#Colour Code Compatible Plugins

If you’re playing on Java Edition in particular, you will notice that there is a fairly limited set of uses for these colour codes. Here are a couple of Bukkit plugins that will expand these uses to other areas of your game:

1. Colored Signs

2. EssentialsX

That's it! You now know how to use colour codes on your Minecraft server.