Minecraft Gradient Text Generator
Create smooth RGB gradient text for Minecraft chat, signs, MOTDs and plugins. Pick your colors, type your text, and copy the output in the format you need.
<gradient:#FF5555:#5555FF>Astroworld</gradient>
How to build gradient text for Minecraft
Type the message
The length of the text decides the gradient, because every character takes its own colour and a short word steps in bigger jumps.
Set the colour stops
Two stops give a straight blend. Add Color inserts another one so the ramp bends through a hue instead of running past it.
Pick the output
MiniMessage for Paper and other Adventure plugins, legacy section x for anything vanilla shaped, and the ampersand hash form for EssentialsX.
Watch the length
Legacy output writes fourteen characters for every visible one, which is what pushes a long gradient past the 256 character chat limit.
How It Works
Create smooth RGB gradients for chat, signs and MOTDs.
Colours interpolated in your browser, nothing looked upPage updated
How Gradient Text Works in Minecraft
Modern Minecraft servers support RGB hex colors through plugins like EssentialsX, CMI, TAB, and LuckPerms. Unlike the classic 16 color codes, hex colors give you access to over 16 million shades, making smooth gradients possible across any piece of text. Those 16 million shades only reach a player in a format the server understands, and the list of Minecraft color codes shows all 16 classics with their hex values, alongside a builder that writes CMI and EssentialsX. A gradient on the server list is a MOTD, two lines with limits of their own that the MOTD generator handles, and inside a command the same colours become text components in the JSON text generator.
A gradient assigns a unique color to every character in your message, smoothly transitioning from one color to the next. This tool interpolates between your chosen color stops in the RGB color space, calculating the exact hex value for each character position.
Supported Formats
- MiniMessage -- Used by Paper, Velocity, and plugins that support the Adventure library. Wraps your text in a single gradient tag with color stop parameters.
- Legacy section codes -- The traditional format using the section symbol. Each character gets a full hex color prefix in the form of six individual code pairs.
- Hex ampersand -- A common shorthand used by EssentialsX and similar plugins, where each character is prefixed with an ampersand-hash hex code.
Tips for Great Gradients
- Longer text produces smoother transitions because more characters are available for intermediate colors.
- Add intermediate color stops to create multi-color rainbow effects or to guide the gradient through specific hues.
- Keep contrast in mind. Very dark gradients may be hard to read on the dark Minecraft chat background.
- Test your gradient in-game, because monitor calibration and Minecraft's font rendering can shift how colors appear.
How each format writes a gradient
| MiniMessage | One tag wraps the whole line, so the length of the output barely grows with the length of the text. Paper, Velocity and most modern plugins read it. |
|---|---|
| Legacy hex | Every single character gets its own section x code: the section sign, an x, and six colour pairs. That is 14 characters of code for one visible character. |
| What that means | A 20 character gradient in legacy form is around 280 characters of raw text, which is already past the 256 character chat limit. |
| EssentialsX | Ampersand followed by a hash and six hex digits per colour change. |
| CMI | Curly braces around a hash and six hex digits per colour change. |
| Interpolation | Each of the red, green and blue channels is stepped separately from the start colour to the end colour, one step per character. |
A gradient is not looked up anywhere. Each character takes its colour from a straight interpolation between your stops through the red, green and blue channels, and the character count you see is the length of the string this page has just built.
What a gradient costs in characters
Every format writes the same visible text and two of the three pay for it per character. These are the raw lengths of the output this tool hands you.
MiniMessage = 10 for the opening tag + 7 per colour stop + 1 per separator + 1 + the text + 11 for the closing taglegacy section codes = 14 characters of codes per visible character, so 15 in totalEssentialsX hex = 8 characters of codes per visible character, so 9 in totalMiniMessage pays once and legacy pays per character, so the two lines cross almost immediately. Adding a third colour stop costs 8 characters in MiniMessage and nothing at all in the other two, because they were already spelling out a colour for every single character.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about gradients
Why does my gradient get cut off in game?
Because the legacy form spends 14 characters on every visible character. The text looks short and the string is not, so it runs into the 256 character chat limit or into a plugin field with its own cap. MiniMessage avoids this entirely.
MiniMessage or legacy codes?
MiniMessage where the platform understands it, which today means Paper, Velocity and the plugins built on them. Legacy is the fallback for anything that only speaks section signs, and it is the one that pays the character cost.
Why does a short word look banded instead of smooth?
A gradient gets one step per character. Four characters give four colours, so the jump between them is large. Longer text has more steps to spread the same colour distance over.
Do gradients work on old versions?
Hex colour arrived in Java 1.16. Older clients do not understand the codes and drop them, so on those the line falls back to whatever the nearest of the 16 classic colours is, or to no colour at all.
Embed This Tool
Put the gradient text generator on your own site or server wiki.
<iframe src="https://tools.astroworldmc.com/embed/gradient-generator" width="700" height="700" frameborder="0" style="border:none;border-radius:12px;" loading="lazy" title="Gradient Text Generator"></iframe>
