TAB — Minecraft Java Edition 1.7.10 – 1.21.11+

The default player list (the TAB menu) in Minecraft displays only users' heads and nicknames in a simple alphabetical order. The vanilla client does not support customizing the list's header or footer, creating dynamic side panels (Scoreboard) or progress bars (BossBar) without using complex chains of command blocks that burden the game tick. In addition, the standard tools do not allow sorting players by their in-game ranks or access rights, which complicates administration. The TAB plugin solves these tasks by providing an asynchronous tool for a complete rebuild of the information display interface. Thanks to its modular architecture, any inactive feature is completely disabled in the code and does not consume the server's computing resources.

Priority sorting of players in the TAB list

One of the plugin's key features is the ability to distribute players in the list according to a certain hierarchy. TAB manages sorting using scoreboard teams. The plugin automatically creates hidden teams in the game and adds players to them to force the Minecraft client to render them in the desired order.

To determine priority, the sorting-types parameter in the configuration is used. The plugin evaluates the conditions from top to bottom: if two players have the same priority by the first criterion, the queue moves on to the next one.

Supported sorting types

Configuring the plugin's configuration files

After the first launch, a structure of configuration files is created in the plugins/TAB/ folder:

·        config.yml — the main file (see screenshot). It controls the activation of individual modules (for example, scoreboard-teams for prefixes and sorting above the head, tablist-name-formatting for colors in the list, header-footer for captions). Global side panels and bossbars are also configured here.

·        animations.yml — intended for describing cyclic text effects. Animations are defined by a frame-update time interval in milliseconds and a list of text strings. The created animation can be output in any other config via the %animation:name% placeholder.

·        groups.yml — stores the display formats for prefixes and suffixes for LuckPerms groups or personal nicknames.

·        advanced-config.yml — contains settings for the update intervals of PlaceholderAPI placeholders (to prevent excessive queries to the database), RedisBungee compatibility parameters, and debug flags.

Example of creating an animation in the animations.yml file:

Management commands and access rights

All administration operations are performed via the server terminal or directly in the game by players with the corresponding rights:

·        /tab reload — reloads all configuration files from disk without restarting the server.

·        /tab dump — creates a report on the state of the configuration, the platform version, the installed placeholders, and active errors, providing a link to the web panel for diagnostics. This command has replaced the old /tab debug tool.

·        /tab cpu — displays detailed statistics on the processor load. It shows the percentage ratio of packet-processing time for each module of the plugin, helping to localize the sources of lag.

·        /tab parse <player> <placeholder> — performs a check of the output of a specific PlaceholderAPI variable for the specified user, allowing you to verify that the integrations are configured correctly.

·        /tab scoreboard [on/off] — forcibly turns the display of the statistics side panel on or off for a player.

·        /btab — the version of the command for Velocity or BungeeCord proxy servers (used for global management of tabs across all connected servers of the network).

Architectural features and optimization in version 6.0.2

The plugin is oriented toward high performance under heavy load. In version 6.0.2, important optimizations were introduced:

·        Team packet filtering (Scoreboard Teams): Previously, team updates were sent to all connected players without exception, which created a quadratic dependency of the traffic volume on the number of users. Now updates are sent exclusively to those players who directly see the target player in their tab list. On large servers, this reduces the load on the name-processing thread by 80%.

·        Split into Vanilla and Modded versions: Due to Fabric and NeoForge transitioning to Java 25, a compatibility problem arose. The plugin remapper in Paper for versions 1.20.5 - 1.21.4 supports code only up to Java 23. To resolve this conflict, the plugin is supplied in two variants:

·        TAB v6.0.2 - Fabric, NeoForge.jar (the full build for mods and modern servers on Java 25).

·        TAB v6.0.2 - Vanilla.jar (a special build without mod dependencies, compatible with Paper 1.20.5 - 1.21.4).

·        Compatibility with Folia: TAB fully supports Folia's multithreaded regional architecture, using asynchronous schedulers to gather information and update the %tps% and %mspt% placeholders without breaking region synchronization.

Conclusion

TAB (tab-was-taken) is the industry standard for designing the interface of Minecraft servers. It replaces several separate plugins for side panels, bossbars, and prefixes, combining them into one optimized asynchronous service. The main limitation is conflicts with other plugins that try to create their own scoreboard teams (for example, some plugins for custom nicknames above the head or chat plugins), which can break the sorting. Also, in Minecraft version 26.1 there is a Mojang bug due to which the belowname text becomes visible on all entities (armor stands, mobs), which makes this particular feature problematic to use. TAB is recommended for any type of server — from local vanilla projects to large BungeeCord/Velocity networks.