Custom Splash

A mod that replaces or extends the yellow splash text on the Minecraft title screen. Configure it with a JSON file or from code, add colours, gradients, ✨s, placeholders and conditions — all without touching the game files.

• Fabric, Forge and NeoForge, no other mods required.
• Fabric: Minecraft 1.14 through 26.3 — every stable release, 48 versions.
• Forge: Minecraft 1.16.1 through 1.20.6 — every release with a Forge build, 20 versions.
• NeoForge: Minecraft 1.20.5 through 26.3 — 18 versions, including the 26.x line.

Minecraft 1.16.0 and 1.17.0 have no Forge build and stay Fabric-only; 1.20.5 is Fabric + NeoForge (Forge never shipped for it).

Client-side only; nothing changes in multiplayer.

Installation

Drop the JAR for your Minecraft version into mods/. On first launch the mod creates config/custom-splash.json. Until you edit it the title screen shows Check your custom splash config file to customize!.

Forge downloads use the jars with -forge- in the filename, NeoForge downloads the -neoforge- jars and Fabric downloads use the plain custom-splash-<mc>-… jars.

Configuration

{
  "splashes": [
    { "text": "Check your custom splash config file to customize!" },
    { "text": "Hello, {player}!", "weight": 5, "color": "#FFAA00" },
    { "text": "✨ time", "color": "✨:25" },
    { "text": "Enjoy the weekend!", "conditions": { "weekend": true } },
    { "text": "Late night coding", "conditions": { "time": "night", "chance": 0.5 } },
    { "text": "You run Fabric!", "conditions": { "mods": ["fabric"] } }
  ]
}

• text — the splash text. Placeholders are replaced when the splash is drawn; unknown tokens are left untouched.
• weight — relative chance, default 1. Higher shows more often.
• color — a solid colour, a gradient or a ✨, see below.
• conditions — every listed condition must match:
  • time: day or night
  • date: MM-DD or MM-DD..MM-DD (ranges may wrap across new year)
  • weekend: true / false
  • player: list of usernames
  • mods: list of required mod ids
  • chance: 0.0 – 1.0 random chance

Entries from the config file, from enabled resource packs and from SplashRegistry.add(...) are all combined. When nothing matches, the vanilla splash is used.

Placeholders

Placeholder	Expands to
{player}, {username}	your username, or player when unknown
{date}	today as yyyy-MM-dd
{time}	the current time as HH:mm
{mc_version}, {mc}, {version}	the running Minecraft version
{mods}, {mods_count}	the number of loaded mods

Placeholders are expanded once, when the splash is picked, so {time} is the moment the title screen renders rather than a live clock. Placeholders that cannot be resolved stay literal instead of showing a blank space.

Colours

Value	Meaning
#RRGGBB	a single colour for the whole text
#RRGGBB,#RRGGBB	a gradient spread across the characters
#RRGGBB,#RRGGBB,…	a gradient with more than two stops
gradient:#RRGGBB,…	the same, spelled explicitly
✨	a hue cycle, 15° per character
✨:45	a hue cycle with a custom degrees-per-character

Anything that does not parse is ignored and falls back to the vanilla yellow. A gradient is sampled per character, so each character gets its own interpolated value and the first and last characters always match the stops exactly.

{
  "splashes": [
    { "text": "Solid!", "color": "#FFAA00" },
    { "text": "Gradient!", "color": "#FF0000,#00FF00" },
    { "text": "✨!", "color": "✨:25" }
  ]
}

On versions before 1.20, where the splash is a plain string that cannot carry per-character styling, a gradient is approximated by prefixing each character with the nearest legacy § code, and a solid #RRGGBB becomes a single § code.

Resource packs

A resource pack can add splash texts by providing assets/custom-splash/splashes.txt. Each non-empty line becomes a splash text and lines starting with # are ignored. Enabled packs are re-read automatically, and SplashRegistry.reload() forces an immediate refresh.

For mod developers

Call SplashRegistry.add(String) during mod initialization (or any time before the title screen renders):

import dev.arrbrants.customsplash.SplashRegistry;

public class MyMod implements ModInitializer {
    @Override
    public void onInitialize() {
        SplashRegistry.add("Hello! Fabric!");
        SplashRegistry.add("Powered by Mixin", 3); // weight 3
    }
}

The API also exposes remove(String), clear(), list(), count(), and reload() (re-reads the config file and enabled resource packs). pick() returns the chosen text and pickEntry() returns it together with its colour.

For Forge mods, register splashes during mod construction:

import dev.arrbrants.customsplash.SplashRegistry;

@Mod("mymod")
public class MyMod {
    public MyMod() {
        SplashRegistry.add("Hello! Forge!");
    }
}

NeoForge mods use the injected mod event bus:

import dev.arrbrants.customsplash.SplashRegistry;
import net.neoforged.bus.api.IEventBus;
import net.neoforged.fml.common.Mod;

@Mod("mymod")
public class MyMod {
    public MyMod(IEventBus modEventBus) {
        SplashRegistry.add("Hello! NeoForge!");
    }
}

The SplashRegistry API is identical on all loaders.