Minecraft Server List Appearance: MOTD, Server Icon and Player Count

Set your Minecraft server's MOTD with colour codes and two lines, add a 64x64 server-icon.png, and control the player count shown in the multiplayer list.

Updated August 19, 2026

Minecraft

Before anyone joins your server, they see one row in the multiplayer list: an icon, a line of text, and a player count. That row is the entire first impression, and almost all of it is controlled by three things — the motd line in server.properties, a single 64×64 PNG, and max-players. This guide covers exactly what the client draws, what each setting does, and what your server looks like while it is starting, hidden or offline.

Checked against Java Edition 26.2. For Bedrock, see Setting up your Bedrock Minecraft server.

What the Multiplayer List Actually Shows

A saved server entry in Java Edition has four parts:

Part	Where it comes from
Server name (first line, bold)	The player typed it when they added the server. You cannot set it
Server icon (left)	`server-icon.png` in your server's root folder
Description (second line)	The `motd` value in `server.properties`
Player count and ping bars (right)	`max-players`, the live player count, and the client's round-trip time

You do not control the name shown in a player's server list

That first bold line is a local label the player chose in the Add Server dialog, saved on their machine. Server lists, Discord posts and word of mouth are what set expectations about your server's name — the only text your server actually sends is the MOTD. Design the MOTD accordingly, since it is the one line you own.

The MOTD

The MOTD ("message of the day") is a single key:

motd=A Minecraft Server

server.properties

It is read at startup only, and the server rewrites server.properties itself while it runs, so an edit made to a running server gets overwritten. Stop the server, edit, then start.

Colour and formatting codes

The MOTD supports Minecraft's legacy formatting codes: the section sign § followed by one character.

Code	Effect
`§0`–`§9`, `§a`–`§f`	The 16 colours
`§k`	Obfuscated — characters scramble every frame
`§l`	Bold
`§m`	Strikethrough
`§n`	Underline
`§o`	Italic
`§r`	Reset colour and formatting

One rule catches everyone out: in Java Edition a colour code clears any active formatting. §lBold §aGreen renders the green half without bold, because §a reset it. Always put the colour first and re-apply the format after each colour change: §a§lGreen and bold.

The & prefix you see in plugin configs is a Bukkit convention, not a vanilla one. server.properties only understands §, so &a is printed as the literal characters &a.

Use \u00A7 if your editor or FTP client mangles the § character

server.properties is parsed by Java's standard properties reader, which decodes \uXXXX escapes. That makes \u00A7a an exact, ASCII-safe stand-in for §a, and it survives tools that would otherwise corrupt a non-ASCII byte on save. Both forms produce identical output. Our free Minecraft MOTD generator will build the line either way and show you a live preview of how the client renders it.

Two lines

The server list gives the MOTD two lines. Separate them with a literal \n in the file — the properties reader turns that escape into a real line break:

motd=§b§lSKYBLOCK SEASON 4\n§7Now open · §evote for keys

server.properties

That is one physical line in the file with a two-character \n in the middle, not two lines in the file.

Length

Keep each line short. The client wraps the description to the width of the server entry and then draws at most two lines — anything past the second line is not drawn at all, and there is no ellipsis to tell the player something was cut. Formatting codes count toward the raw length even though they take up no visible width. The Minecraft Wiki notes that an MOTD over 59 characters can make the server list report a communication error, which is a good reason to treat that as a ceiling for the whole value rather than a target.

The Server Icon

The icon is not a server.properties key. It is a file:

Name: server-icon.png — exact, lowercase
Format: PNG
Size: exactly 64×64 pixels
Location: the server's root folder, next to server.properties and the server jar — not in the world folder

Upload it through the panel's File Manager and restart. There is no command to reload it.

Any other size is rejected outright and the server tells you so in the console:

[Server thread/ERROR]: Couldn't load server icon
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid world icon size [32, 32], but expected [64, 64]

Console output

When the icon is missing or rejected, the client falls back to a greyscale version of the default pack image — the grey blocks you see next to most entries. Because the icon is scaled down hard in the list, plain shapes and a single strong colour read far better than a detailed logo or any text.

The Player Count

The count on the right is online/max, and max is max-players:

max-players=20

server.properties

This is the number displayed and the number enforced. Operators with the bypassesPlayerLimit permission can still join a full server. Setting it far above what your plan's memory can actually hold does not buy you anything except a queue of players who connect and then suffer.

Hovering the count shows a short list of who is online. Two things about that list are worth knowing:

It is capped at 12 names regardless of how many people are on.
hide-online-players=true empties it. The count itself is still sent — hide-online-players hides the names, not the number.

hide-online-players=false

server.properties

Turn it on if you do not want your player list scraped, or if you would rather not advertise who is on. It changes nothing in-game.

Starting, Hidden and Offline

All three of these look the same to a player, which is why "my server does not show up" tickets are ambiguous. The list shows a "can't connect" indicator whenever the client gets no status reply at all.

While the server is starting, it is not yet listening, so the entry stays greyed out until boot finishes. On a large modded pack that can be a minute or more, and there is nothing you can configure to show a friendly "starting up" message from vanilla — the server has to be running to send anything.

When the server is deliberately hidden, that is enable-status:

enable-status=true

server.properties

Set it to false and the server accepts the connection but sends no status reply, so it appears offline in everyone's list. Players who know the address can still connect and play normally. It is a way to run a private server without it answering pings, not a security control.

When the version does not match, the client shows your server's version on the entry and refuses to connect from the list. Your server broadcasts its version name and protocol number in the same status reply that carries the MOTD, which is how the client knows before connecting. A 26.2 server answers with version name 26.2 and protocol 776.

The ping bars are purely the client's own round-trip time to you, and nothing on the server changes them:

Bars	Round trip
5	Under 150 ms
4	150–300 ms
3	300–600 ms
2	600–1000 ms
1	Over 1000 ms
Greyed out with an X	No reply — starting, offline, blocked, or `enable-status=false`

Bedrock Edition

Bedrock's list works differently and offers far less. The Bedrock Dedicated Server has a server-name key rather than an MOTD:

server-name=Dedicated Server

server.properties (Bedrock)

It cannot contain a colon, and there is no server icon and no separate description line for a plain external server. See Setting up your Bedrock Minecraft server and the Bedrock server.properties reference.

Common Issues

MOTD shows &a as literal text: & codes are plugin syntax and vanilla ignores them. Convert them to §. If a literal §a shows in-game instead of a colour, the section sign survived but something after it is wrong — and if you see a ? or a mangled character where § should be, your editor corrupted the byte on save; write \u00A7a instead.
MOTD change did not take effect: server.properties is read at startup only, and a running server rewrites the file. Stop, edit, start.
The second line never appears: You pressed Enter in the editor instead of typing the two characters \n. A real line break in the file ends the property, so everything after it is read as a separate (meaningless) key rather than as part of the MOTD. Only the escape gives you a line break where you want one.
Icon does not show: Wrong size (must be exactly 64×64), wrong filename, or it is in the world folder rather than the server root. Check the console for Couldn't load server icon.
Icon shows for you but not others: Your client cached the old entry. Removing and re-adding the server in the multiplayer list refreshes it.
Server shows as offline but you can connect: enable-status=false. Set it back to true.
Player count is wrong or the hover list is short: The hover list is capped at 12 names by design, and hide-online-players=true blanks it entirely.
Players see the server but cannot join: That is a different problem — see Minecraft Players Can't Connect.