BetterVanilla ✨ SMP All-in-One

A lightweight, drop-in plugin built for cozy SMP servers with friends. BetterVanilla adds modern quality-of-life upgrades to a vanilla Paper server - no client mods or loaders required.

👑 Core Feature: Configure every player and server toggle through the in-game /settings menu and jump straight to the full settings guide when you need the details.

Tested on Paper 26.3 and newer.

Table of Contents

• Why BetterVanilla?
• Highlights
• Installation
• Commands
• Settings
• Permissions
• Contributing

Why BetterVanilla?

Your SMP deserves more than plain vanilla. BetterVanilla keeps the familiar Minecraft feel while adding carefully scoped tools that reduce admin busywork and smooth out day-to-day play. Everything ships in one polished plugin you can drop in and go.

Highlights

Player-Focused Features

• 🧭 Waypoints - Add, share, and filter public or private waypoints with visibility cycling, GUI navigation, optional particle trails, direct cancellation, coordinate updates, plus auto-cancel and reach-radius controls.
• 🎒 Backpacks - Carry expandable storage with configurable rows and pages. Right-click outside an open backpack to sort its current page with your preferred sort mode; open backpacks are saved safely when you die.
• ⛏️ Vein Miner & Tree Chopper - Sneak-break to harvest entire ore veins or tree trunks instantly, including support for copper tools and stripped logs.
• 💀 Death Points & Chests - Track every death, teleport back, and safely reclaim your belongings from a chest placed in the nearest safe air or fluid block without overwriting terrain.
• 🧠 Heads Explorer - Browse decorative heads by category, search a category or the entire catalog instantly, and preview icons in the GUI.
• ✨ Chest Sorting - Right-click outside inventories to auto-organize loot with selectable sort modes.
• 🔁 Item Restock Automation - Automatically refill empty hotbar slots with matching items using global and per-player toggles.
• 🏷️ Player Tags - Set a custom name tag from the settings menu, including color selection.
• 🧰 Settings Menu - Toggle personal QoL options and select English or German in an in-game UI.
• 🎨 Colored Chat & Mentions - Use & color codes and ping friends with @name.
• 📬 Private Messages - Chat directly with /msg and reply quickly using /r.
• 🪧 Sign Colors - Decorate signs with vibrant color codes.
• 👀 Inventory Viewer - Peek inside another player’s inventory when permitted.
• ⏱️ Timer - Global stopwatch with resume, pause, reset, and set commands.
• 🕒 Playtime - View detailed play history, current AFK duration, and last-seen information for yourself or other players.
• 📶 Ping - Check personal or remote player latency.
• 📍 Here/Coords Broadcast - Share your current location with /here (alias /coords); recipients can click the message to start waypoint navigation.
• 📊 Dynamic Tab List - Live header/footer shows day/time, moon phase, weather, online counts, personal playtime, ping, TPS, and MSPT, while nameplates add AFK tags, death totals, and respect vanish.
• 📍 Action-Bar Location - Display live XYZ coordinates in your HUD.
• 🧭 Bossbar Compass - Minimal directional overlay in the boss bar.
• 🪑 Sittable Stairs - Sit on stairs with an empty hand.
• 🪑 Sit Anywhere - Use /sit to plop down on any solid block and stand with Shift.
• 🌧️ Sleep to Clear Weather - Skip rain and fast-forward the day by sleeping.
• 🧚 Navigation Particles - Follow a beam and optional trail during waypoint navigation.
• 🌾 Crop Protection - Prevent farmland trampling.
• 🌱 Right-Click Harvest - Harvest and replant crops with a single interaction, controlled by global and per-player toggles.
• 🚪 Double Door Sync - Sync state across connected double doors.
• 📖 Help - Built-in /help overview of every command.

Admin & Server Tools

• 🛠️ Admin Settings Menu - Configure every feature live from the GUI, including the default English or German server language.
• 🗝️ Permissions System - Manage groups and users with hot-reload via /permissions.
• 💤 AFK Protection - Shield idle players from damage, movement, and collisions.
• 🧭 Waypoint Management - Review and edit public/private waypoints with dedicated staff tools.
• 🫥 Vanish Mode - Hide from players, tab lists, join/leave messages, the server list, and AFK timers with /vanish.
• ⚰️ Deathchest Toggle - Switch global deathchests on or off without leaving the GUI.
• 🔨 Moderation Toolkit - Kick, ban, mute, unmute, and unban directly in-game.
• 🧩 Crafting Recipe Manager - Manage predefined crafting recipes.
• 🧠 Heads Explorer Controls - Enable/disable the explorer, set the API key, and refresh cached data.
• 🧑‍🌾 Villager Trade Cycling - Let players reroll untraded novice villager offers by right-clicking outside the trading inventory.
• 🛡️ Mob Protection Settings - Manage creeper block/entity damage and enderman block stealing from one submenu.
• 🖼️ GUI Row Settings - Configure the visible size of the playtime and waypoint menus.
• 📣 Server MOTD - Edit the server list message from the admin menu.
• 🧭 Locator Bar Gamerule - Flip the /gamerule locatorBar setting across every world without leaving the GUI.
• 🛌 Sleeping Percentage - Set the playersSleepingPercentage gamerule from the admin menu.
• 🚧 Maintenance Mode - Toggle server access with custom messaging and bypass support.
• 🧾 Recipe Sync Toggle - Control whether custom recipes are synced to players.
• 🧰 Remote Settings Access - Admins can open player settings menus for other online players.
• 🎨 Custom Themes - Customize the plugin name, font and symbol colors, and GUI footer glass panes; reset the theme at any time. Plugin GUIs also hide unnecessary vanilla item details for a cleaner view.

Custom Crafting Recipes

💡 Invisible Light Source

Craft an invisible light block that emits light at level 15.

🧾 Default Recipe

🖼️ Invisible Item Frame

Craft an invisible item frame that becomes invisible once an item is placed inside.

🧾 Default Recipe

Installation

1. Download the latest BetterVanilla release jar.
2. Drop it into your server's plugins/ folder.
3. Restart the server and you are ready to go!

Translations

On its first start, BetterVanilla creates plugins/bettervanilla/translations/ and copies every bundled translation file into it. Edit these YAML files to customize player-facing text; changes are applied after the next plugin/server restart. Existing translation files are preserved when the plugin updates.

Commands

Core Command

• /settings - Open your personal settings dashboard. Admins can enter the full server control panel from here, making it the fastest way to tweak any BetterVanilla feature. See everything it unlocks.

Player Utilities

• /settings - Open the settings GUI for players.
• /waypoints - Open the waypoint GUI. Use player <name> or coords <x> <y> <z> for direct navigation, or cancel to stop navigating.
• /backpack - Open your personal backpack storage.
• /deathpoints - Manage recent death locations and teleport back via GUI.
• /heads - Open the heads explorer GUI.
• /playtime [player] - Show detailed playtime (AFK included) for you or another player.
• /ping [player] - Check network latency for yourself or another player.
• /sit - Sit on any solid block; sneak to stand up.
• /msg <player> <message> - Send a private message. Alias: /message.
• /r <message> - Reply to the last private message.
• /here - Broadcast your current location; recipients can click it to begin waypoint navigation. Aliases: /coords, /h.
• /help - View all available commands pulled directly from plugin.yml.

Admin & Moderation

• /adminhelp - List key staff commands.
• /settings - Open the settings GUI for players and admins.
• /invsee <player> - Inspect another player’s inventory.
• /timer <resume|pause|reset|set> - Control the global timer.
• /vanish - Toggle vanish mode with movement safeguards.
• /kick, /ban, /unban, /mute, /unmute - Moderation toolset with duration parsing (e.g. 1d2h30m).
• /permissions - Manage groups and assignments:
  • group addperm <group> <permission>
  • group removeperm <group> <permission>
  • group delete <group>
  • user addperm <player> <permission>
  • user removeperm <player> <permission>
  • user setgroup <player> <group>
  • default <group> - Sets the default group for all players
  • assignments - Show current group and user mapping
  • list - Display built-in permission nodes
  • reload - Reload configuration and refresh online players

Settings

Player Settings

• 📍 Action-bar location HUD
• 🧭 Bossbar compass overlay
• 🏷️ Player tag (name tag color + text)
• 🌐 UI language (English or German)
• ⏲️ Action-bar timer overlay toggle
• ✨ Navigation particles
• 🧭 Navigation auto-cancel
• 📏 Navigation reach radius
• 🧹 Chest sorting toggle
• 🎒 Backpack sorting toggle and sort mode
• 🧺 Inventory sort mode
• 👁️ Waypoint visibility filter
• 🔁 Item restock automation toggle
• 🚪 Double Door Sync
• ⛏️ Vein miner toggle with per-player limits
• 🪓 Vein chopper toggle with per-player limits
• 🌱 Right-click crop harvesting toggle

Admin Settings

• 🚧 Maintenance mode and custom message
• 🛡️ Mob protections for creeper block/entity damage and enderman block stealing
• 🔭 End travel toggle
• 🔥 Nether travel toggle
• 🌧️ Sleeping rain skip
• 🛌 Players sleeping percentage gamerule
• 📣 Server MOTD editor
• 🌐 Default server language (English or German)
• 🎨 Theme colors, footer glass panes, and plugin branding
• 🧭 Locator bar gamerule toggle
• 💤 AFK protection toggle and AFK timeout
• 🏷️ Player tags global toggle
• ⚰️ Deathchest toggle
• 🔁 Item restock automation defaults and global toggle
• 🌾 Crop protection
• 🌱 Right-click harvest global default
• 🧑‍🌾 Villager trade cycling
• 🖼️ Playtime and waypoint GUI row counts
• 🎒 Backpack availability, page count, and row count
• ⛏️ Vein miner global options (limits, tools, blocks, sound)
• 🪓 Vein chopper global options
• 🧠 Heads explorer (enable, API key, refresh)
• 🧾 Recipe sync toggle

Minecraft Heads Explorer

This plugin now features a built-in Minecraft Heads Explorer, powered by Minecraft-Heads.

Permissions

Built-in Groups

• player - default fallback that grants all player-facing QoL features such as /settings, waypoints, backpacks, and automation toggles.
• moderator - inherits the player group and adds moderation, vanish, inventory viewing, and timer controls.
• admin - includes every BetterVanilla permission, covering server maintenance, admin settings, and permission management.
• Use /permissions default <group> (e.g. /permissions default player) to choose which group new players fall back to. Switching the default moves existing players that still belonged to the previous default.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome! If you find a bug or have an idea, open an issue with reproduction steps, logs, or screenshots so we can help quickly.