How to change your Minecraft server icon and MOTD

• Square and exactly 64 by 64 pixels. Scale a bigger picture down first; any image editor can, including Paint on Windows and Preview on Mac.
• Saved as PNG. The upload in the panel takes files up to 256 KB, which is far more than an icon of this size needs.
• Simple shapes and strong colours read best this small. Fine detail and small text disappear.

1. Find a view that says something about your server, such as your spawn or a build, and press F2 in Java to take a screenshot. It lands in the screenshots folder of your game.
2. Open it in an image editor, such as Paint on Windows, Preview on Mac, or a free editor like GIMP or Photopea in the browser.
3. Cut out a square part. A close view works better than a wide landscape.
4. Scale the square to 64 by 64 pixels and save it as PNG with the name server-icon.png.

Want a logo instead? One big letter or a single block in your server colours, on a plain background, reads better at this size than any detailed drawing.

1. Open Settings and find Server icon under Server identity.
2. Click Upload PNG and choose your file.
3. Restart the server. The icon appears after the next restart.

By hand it works too: upload the file in Files to the top folder of the server, next to server.properties, name it server-icon.png in small letters, and restart.

The MOTD is the text under your server's name in the multiplayer list. Plain text is easiest in Settings under Server settings: search for Server description, type your text and check it in the MOTD preview. Save, then restart the server.

Say what makes your server worth joining, in the words players look for: the kind of server, the version, and what is special about it. A line like "Survival SMP on 26.1, land claims, weekly events" tells more than a slogan.

Keep it short. The list has room for two short lines and cuts off what does not fit.

Each one names the game mode and the version and gives one reason to click. Put the most important words first: on a narrow screen the end of a line is what gets cut.

For colours and a second line, edit server.properties in Files and write the codes into the motd= line. Each code is \u00A7, the section sign written the safe way, followed by one character:

Put \n where the second line should start. For example:

motd=\u00A7a\u00A7lMaple SMP \u00A77Survival on 26.1\n\u00A7eLand claims, shops and weekly events

That shows Maple SMP in bold green, the rest of the first line in gray, and a yellow second line. A colour code also ends bold and the other styles, so put the style after the colour. Save the file and restart the server.

Write \u00A7 rather than typing the § sign itself. It works in every version, while a typed § can turn into strange characters depending on how the file is saved.

Other colours than these sixteen, gradients and centred text need a plugin on Paper or Purpur.

• In server.properties only the section sign works, written as \u00A7. Codes with &, which many plugin guides use, show up there as plain text.
• Plugins such as EssentialsX, and the maintenance message of the panel, do use & codes, for example &a for green.
• The colours and styles in the table above are the same everywhere; only the sign in front changes.

For more than the sixteen colours, use a MOTD plugin such as MiniMOTD on Paper or Purpur. It writes colours as tags, so gradients and any hex colour are possible:

<gradient:#ffd700:#ff8c00>Maple SMP</gradient> <gray>Survival on 26.2</gray>

MiniMOTD can also rotate between several messages and icons, so the list shows something new now and then. Its settings are in its own folder under plugins after the first start, and from then on its message replaces the one in server.properties. The steps to add it are in install plugins on your server.

Maintenance mode in Settings closes the server to everyone except whitelisted players and operators, and shows your maintenance message in the server list instead of the MOTD. Turning it off puts your whitelist and message back exactly as they were.

• The server has not restarted. The icon and the MOTD are read when the server starts.
• The list is old. Click Refresh in the multiplayer list.
• The file name is wrong. It must be exactly server-icon.png. Windows can hide extensions, so a file that looks right may really be called server-icon.png.png.
• The picture is not 64 by 64 pixels. Scale it and upload again.
• There is a network in front. On a server network, players see the message of the network, set on its card in Settings, not the MOTD of each server behind it.

Next to the MOTD, the list shows how many players are online and the maximum, which is max-players. Hovering over the count shows some of the names. Two lines in server.properties change this:

• hide-online-players=true keeps the names to yourself: the list no longer shows who is on.
• enable-status=false makes the server look offline in every list, while players who know the address can still join. It hides the icon and the MOTD as well, so use it only for a server that should stay out of sight.

Bedrock shows no icon for servers added by hand, so the icon is a Java thing. On a Bedrock server, the line under the name in the list comes from server-name in its own server.properties.

On a crossplay server, Geyser passes the Java MOTD on to Bedrock players, so one message serves both. That is the passthrough-motd option in the Geyser config, which is on by default.