How to display name from nickname plugins

Content

• Tablist
• Nametag
• Proper compatibility with plugins that change profile name
• Tips & Tricks
  • Tip 1 - Nickname prefix
  • Tip 2 - Sorting nicked players with the lowest priority

Tablist

This one is straightforward. The tablist format of players is one text split into 3 parts in the plugin for convenience (tabprefix, customtabname, tabsuffix). Using customtabname you can configure name part into any placeholder you want, including one from your nickname plugin. All you need is a working PlaceholderAPI placeholder from your nickname plugin. Example:
groups.yml

_DEFAULT_:
  customtabname: '%essentials_nickname%'

or using in-game command /tab group _DEFAULT_ customtabname %essentials_nickname%.

This example uses %essentials_nickname% placeholder from Essentials. Giving it to _DEFAULT_ group keyword makes it a default value for all groups that do not override this property.

Caution

Do NOT put nickname placeholder into tabprefix! You will end up with double names! Put the nickname placeholder into customtabname instead.

Nametag

TLDR: TAB does not offer this functionality.

With that out of the way, let's learn more about this issue.
Unlike with tablist name formatting, which is a single component containing everything (and therefore fully customizable), nametags are different. They consist of prefix and suffix components (coming from scoreboard teams) and name itself. This name is contained in player info packet (coincidentally the same one that controls tablist format), along with player's skin and other things. This name is limited to 16 characters (since Minecraft doesn't allow longer names) and since it's not a component, naturally it does not support RGB colors. Strangely enough, legacy codes using § work, but they further limit the length of the rest of the name.

There are really only 2 ways to achieve this solution:

• Change the profile name - This requires sending player info packet that removes the old player and adds a new one with the same name. Then respawn the player. Additionally, it requires a lot of packets to be sent to the affected player, since you cannot just remove & add self, as well as a lot of other packets to restore previously sent data. These packets have been changing a lot with various MC versions. A lot of them cannot even be sent from a proxy server. As such, TAB does not offer this functionality, since it would be very limited anyway (see above) and require a lot of adapting for proper functionality.
  If you decide to use a plugin with this functionality, keep in mind it breaks all name-bound features, such as scoreboard teams, belowname or playerlist objective. See below for compatibility information.
  Example third party plugins that offer this: None?
• Use an armor stand / text display to show any text - TAB no longer offers this functionality (here's why), so you will need to look into other plugins.
  If you decide to use a plugin with this functionality, just remember to make the vanilla nametag invisible, so you don't see both vanilla nametag and the entity (invisible-nametags: true).
  Example third party plugins that offer this: UnlimitedNameTags, DisplayNameTags, NotJustNamePlates, CustomNameplates

Proper compatibility with plugins that change profile name

If using a nickname plugin that changes player's profile name to change it in the name tag, this has lots of side effects. Most notably, it breaks all name-bound features, especially nametags and sorting. For that reason, TAB must detect name change. This is done automatically on Bukkit, BungeeCord and modded platforms. This detection is not available on Velocity.

Warning

If you have TAB installed on backend server and a proxy plugin changes nickname, TAB is not able to detect this change, since the modified packets never actually go through the backend server where TAB is installed.

Tip

If automatic detection is not working for you (either you use TAB on Velocity, or use proxy plugin for changing names while TAB is on backend), you can use this API method to let TAB know player's name changed.

In order for TAB to properly detect name change, player UUID must remain the same, otherwise it's a random entry with a random uuid and random name, which TAB isn't able to match with actual players. Make sure your nickname plugin is not changing UUID of players. If UUID changes, the plugin won't be able to properly format names even in the tablist, since entries there are bound to UUIDs and by changing it, it will break.
Identifying whether name change detection is working properly or not can be checked by setting debug: true in config and checking console on name change. It should say Processing name change of player <player name> to <new nickname>. If it doesn't, something went wrong, most likely UUID not matching.

Tips & Tricks

Tip 1 - Nickname prefix

By default, Essentials prefixes nicknames of players in chat using ~ symbol for nicked players. We can very easily replicate that with Conditional placeholders. First, create a new condition:

conditions:
  nick:
    conditions:
    - '%essentials_nickname%=%player%'
    true: "%player%"              # If nickname = player name -> player is not nicked
    false: "~%essentials_nickname%" # If nickname != player name -> player is nicked

Then, use %condition:nick% in your customtabname instead of the placeholder directly.

Tip 2 - Sorting nicked players with the lowest priority

Let's say your sorting list looks like this:

  sorting-types:
    - "GROUPS:owner,admin,mod,helper,builder,vip,default"
    - "PLACEHOLDER_A_TO_Z:%player%"

Let's also assume that you want every nicked player to be sorted as default. This can be achieved using sorting by placeholder and creating a condition that will return output based on nick status. First, let's create the condition:

conditions:
  group:
    conditions:
    - '%haonick_isNicked%=true'
    true: "default"
    false: "%group%"

When the condition is met, meaning player is nicked, it will return the group we want nicked players to be sorted as, in this case default. Otherwise, return player's actual group.
The condition check may differ with different nickname plugins. You will need to check documentation of your nickname plugin to see what kind of placeholders it offers and what they return (you can also use /tab parse to see what exactly did a placeholder return).
In this case, we are using placeholder %haonick_isNicked%, which returns true for nicked players.
If using Essentials, the line would look like this: %essentials_nickname%!=%player%, because Essentials is made to return player's actual name when not nicked, meaning when it's not equal, player is nicked.

Finally, use the conditional placeholder in sorting:

  sorting-types:
  - PLACEHOLDER:%condition:group%:owner,admin,mod,helper,builder,vip,default"
  - PLACEHOLDER_A_TO_Z:%player%

This will result in nicked players being sorted as default.
If you want to achieve something more complicated, such as not only sorted as default, but another rank, you will need to dig deeper into your problem, analyzing available placeholders and functions that will help you achieve your result.