FAQ & Troubleshooting

The gradient shows as a few basic colors, not a smooth gradient. That’s hex being downsampled to the 16 legacy colors somewhere. dNicks renders its own surfaces with true hex, so check that the message you’re looking at is dNicks’ — a different chat/scoreboard plugin reading %dnicks_name% will get faithful §-hex, but a plugin that strips hex will flatten it. For dNicks’ built-in chat/tab list this is already correct. Above the head, make sure your nametag plugin renders the name as custom text (TAB unlimited nametags) — the vanilla name slot is single-color and will flatten any nick.

The nick doesn’t show in the tab list. You have surfaces.tablist: false but no TAB plugin to render it. Set tablist: true (the default) and /dnicks reload. If you do run TAB, keep false and use customtabname: "%dnicks_name%". See Integrations.

Chat shows the plain name / another plugin’s format. Another chat plugin is winning. dNicks runs at HIGHEST; if something also sits at HIGHEST and loads after dNicks, set surfaces.chat: false and feed that plugin %dnicks_name% instead.

The name above the head isn’t the nick / isn’t a gradient. dNicks doesn’t render the nametag — your nametag plugin does, from %dnicks_name%. Check: PlaceholderAPI installed; TAB customtagname: "%dnicks_name%" with unlimited nametags enabled; role prefix in tagprefix. See The Nametag Above the Head.

Two names / a floating text entity above heads after updating. Leftovers from an older dNicks that spawned a TextDisplay. Run /kill @e[type=text_display] once and restart. The current version spawns no entity.

A player can’t use a color or gradient. Colors are permission-gated. Grant dnicks.gradient, dnicks.color.*, dnicks.color.hex, dnicks.format as needed. See Commands & Permissions.

<click> / <hover> in a nick is rejected. By design — those tags are blocked so a player can’t make their name run commands or show fake tooltips. See Gradient & Color Nicks.

Do players need a mod or resource pack? No. Everything uses vanilla hex colors. Any 1.21 client works.

/nick &7Name doesn’t color. dNicks uses MiniMessage, not legacy & codes. Use /nick <gray>Name instead.

Does it work on Spigot? No — dNicks needs Paper (the async chat renderer is a Paper API).