Server icon and MOTD: making your server look good in the list

The Minecraft server list is the first thing your players see: a small icon, the server’s name (which each player chooses themselves), and two lines of text you control called the MOTD — message of the day. A custom icon and a clear MOTD make a server instantly recognisable among the others in someone’s list.

The server icon

The icon is a file called exactly server-icon.png in the server’s main folder — the same folder as server.properties. It must be:

• A PNG image.
• Exactly 64 × 64 pixels. Any other size is ignored.
• Named in lower case, server-icon.png, with no extra .png hidden on the end.

Upload it from the file manager and restart the server. Players see it after refreshing their server list. If the icon does not appear, check the size first — an image that looks square at 512 × 512 still will not work. Any image editor can resize it; keep the design bold and simple, because it is shown very small.

The MOTD

The MOTD is the motd line in server.properties. On Cobbly you can edit it from the server page directly (the pencil next to the message), or in the Properties tab. The default is “A Minecraft Server”, which tells nobody anything.

You get two lines. Put \n where the second line should start. Each line fits roughly 45 characters before it is cut off, depending on the letters used.

A good MOTD answers what someone glancing at the list wants to know: what kind of server it is, and anything special about it right now. For example: “Survival with friends — season 3” on the first line and “New: the nether hub is open” on the second.

Colours and formatting

Formatting uses the section sign § followed by a code. Colours:

• §0 black, §1 dark blue, §2 dark green, §3 dark aqua, §4 dark red, §5 dark purple, §6 gold, §7 grey.
• §8 dark grey, §9 blue, §a green, §b aqua, §c red, §d light purple, §e yellow, §f white.

Styles:

• §l bold, §o italic, §n underline, §m strikethrough, §k scrambled (animated random characters).
• §r resets everything back to plain.

Order matters: a colour code resets any style before it, so put the colour first and the style after — §a§lWelcome is bold green, §l§aWelcome is just green.

Example: motd=§6§lFriendsCraft §7— survival\n§aSeason 3 is live!

When the § sign breaks

If the MOTD shows strange characters like § instead of colours, the file was saved in a different text encoding than the server expects. Write each § as \u00A7 instead — \u00A76 is gold — which works on every version and every editor.

Gradients and hex colours

The Vanilla MOTD only supports the 16 colours above. Plugins such as MiniMOTD on Paper add gradients, any hex colour, and a different MOTD at random each refresh. They also replace the icon and player count display if you want.

What a sleeping server shows

On Cobbly, while your server is asleep, starting or queued, the list shows that state instead of your MOTD, so players know joining will wake it. Your own MOTD returns as soon as it is running. How to connect to your server explains each state.