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Frequently Asked Questions

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NEZNAMY edited this page Dec 16, 2025 · 123 revisions

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#1 - Why are NPCs showing up in the tablist?

See Citizens FAQ.

#2 - How to make TAB work with LuckPerms?

  • If you want to take prefixes/suffixes, check this guide and use %luckperms-prefix% & %luckperms-suffix%.
  • Sorting: First, configure weights correctly in LuckPerms. Then, you have 2 options:
    • Configure sorting by groups (recommended).
    • Sorting by weights directly: PLACEHOLDER_HIGH_TO_LOW:%luckperms_highest_group_weight%.

#3 - I enabled MySQL, and my prefix is now gone!

When enabling MySQL, it will be used as a data storage and groups.yml / users.yml files will no longer be used.
If you want to upload your configuration to MySQL (or download it back to files), use MySQL conversion commands - /tab mysql upload and /tab mysql download, respectively.
After you are done, run /tab reload for the changes to take effect.

#4 - Why is player sorting not working?

See Common mistakes section on sorting page.

#5 - How to add players to the %staffonline% placeholder?

Give them the tab.staff permission.

#6 - How to make player heads visible in tablist?

Players who did not buy the game will never be able to see heads. The client displays Player heads when connection to the server is an online connection authenticated through Mojang. It cannot be directly controlled by plugins. The intended way to reach this is by setting online-mode=true in server.properties.
If you want to allow pirates on your server, you can still display heads for players who bought the game by changing their connections to online connections. Most commonly used plugins for this are FastLogin and JPremium, which change connections of premium players who enabled it to online connections.
The same goes for disabling heads - you cannot disable them if you have online mode enabled.

Minecraft 1.21.9 has added object components, which allow you to display player heads. You can put for example <head:name:%player%> at the beginning of tabprefix to simulate this.

#7 - Where can i find current default config files?

You can do any of the following:

  • Check the source code.
  • Delete or rename a file, and the plugin will regenerate it.
  • Open the plugin jar as a zip file and take files from there.

#8 - How can I split players into multiple columns?

The client puts players into columns, it is not managed by the server. The only way is to get more players. They automatically split into more columns at 21, 41 and 61 players (due to limit of 20 entries per column). If you don't mind getting all 80 slots filled with fake player slots, check out the Layout feature.

#9 - How to use spaces in prefix/suffix command?

Use "", for example /tab group owner tabprefix "&2&lOwner&r "

#10 - Can I change/remove the green connection bar in tablist?

The connection bar is client sided and cannot be re-textured or removed by TAB. You will need a custom minecraft client or a resource pack.

#11 - Placeholder is not working

Most common reasons for a placeholder to not work include:

  • Using % symbol by itself, which breaks placeholder starts and ends and therefore breaks all placeholders after it (use %% to display the symbol)
  • Trying to use a PlaceholderAPI placeholder without downloading its expansion or not having PlaceholderAPI installed at all
  • Trying to use TAB's internal backend-only placeholders on a proxy
  • Trying to use PlaceholderAPI placeholders on proxy without installing bridge plugin

The full list of reasons can be found on the Placeholders page.

#12 - How can I display images from resource pack plugin?

Images work by mapping a chosen character to an image in a resource pack. When the game receives this character, it displays the image instead of the character. What you need to do is send this character to the client.
Although resource pack plugins are not all the same, they all have things in common. The first main functionality is offering placeholders. You can use their PlaceholderAPI placeholders in TAB and they will return the symbol, which then the client displays as an image. The second main functionality is creating internal placeholders, which are different per plugin. The plugin then listens to outgoing packets and replaces the internal placeholder with the symbol. This can, however, fail. Here are possible reasons why:

  • You have TAB on proxy, so backend plugin cannot modify packets sent by the proxy
  • TAB also listens to packets and modifies them to make sure no other plugin is overriding it. This mostly applies to Tablist name formatting. TAB then ends up having the last shot, overriding the resource pack plugin.

In order to make sure images display properly, use PlaceholderAPI placeholders instead of internal placeholders of your resource pack plugins. Here is some extra information for each resource pack plugin you might find useful:

  • ItemsAdder:
    • The PlaceholderAPI placeholders are formatted as %img_<name>%, internal placeholders (:something:) may not always work (see above).
    • If you are unable to change the placeholder references from internal placeholders to PlaceholderAPI placeholders (for example, because they are defined in permission plugin and used elsewhere as well, where PlaceholderAPI isn't supported), you can use PlaceholderAPI's imgfix expansion that replaces format of given placeholders into the correct format.
      Example: %luckperms_prefix% -> %imgfix_{luckperms_prefix}%
  • Nexo:
    • Here is a collection of tips from Nexo discord:
      image

#13 - How can I use UTF characters in configuration?

Option 1: Save the file in UTF-8 encoding and use your desired symbol directly.

Option 2: Find hex code of your symbol (4 hexadecimal numbers) and use \uxxxx format, where xxxx is hex code of the symbol.
Make sure to also wrap the text into "" for the text to properly take \ as an escape symbol. Using '' will result in the text being display literally, not as a code.

Note: Minecraft does not support every single UTF symbol and displays unsupported symbols as a box. You can try sending your symbol into chat and see if it works or not. If not, it's not supported by MC.

#14 - Is there a way to remove all players from tablist?

In Minecraft, for a player to be visible in-game, they also need to appear in the tablist. Remember the issue with NPCs showing up in the tablist? It's the same underlying mechanic.

If you're okay with players not being visible in the world, you can use a plugin that hides all players completely.

Since Minecraft 1.19.3, this limitation has been lifted — it's now possible to have entities in the game without showing them in the tablist. However, the TAB plugin does not support removing all players from the tablist in any version of Minecraft.

An alternative solution using TAB is putting a lot of empty lines into header, which will push all players out of the screen.

#15 - How to add images to tablist?

You can check out this reddit post. When using the symbol in configuration using \u format, remember to use "" in config instead of ''.

#16 - Is MiniMessage supported?

Yes, however, it must be included in your server software (it is only in Paper / Velocity). Read more about MiniMessage hook here.

#17 - Is it possible to show the number of players in a specific group, similar to staffonline placeholder?

The plugin's internal placeholders are limited, and this kind of functionality is not included. However, you can achieve this using PlaceholderAPI's PlayerList expansion and following this example.

#18 - Why is the plugin flagged as a virus by Windows defender?

First, this is a false positive. Here's a spigot thread confirming it.

After experimenting with VirusTotal, it turns out the antivirus software available on the website used flags bStats library as malicious. Its purpose is to collect anonymous data about servers and submitting it to bStats.org, where plugin authors can see how many servers use their plugins (if they don't disable it). It also checks for CPU and OS types, which could be the reason for the false positive. Here is one of TAB's pages as an example.

Windows defender could be flagging it for the same reason.

#19 - How can I show amount of online players on the entire network?

If you have TAB installed on the proxy, use %online% placeholder.
If you have TAB installed on the backend servers, use %bungee_total% from PlaceholderAPI. This placeholder has an internal cooldown, which can be configured in plugins/PlaceholderAPI/config.yml under expansions -> bungee -> check_interval, default value is 30 (seconds).

#20 - Why is LuckPerms prefix/suffix not updating on a network?

In order for LuckPerms instances to pick up the changes to player data in real time, it needs to communicate the changes between proxy <-> backend.
If you notice changes not taking effect in TAB, try running /lpb user <player> info (or /lpv on velocity). If running the command updates it in TAB, that's the problem - LuckPerms instances not communicating in real time.

This is controlled by a LuckPerms setting called messaging-service. Set it to pluginmsg to make changes update immediately.
Additionally, make sure auto-push-updates is still true (it is by default already).

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