🚀 NeoTab 1.4.0

1.4.0 is NeoTab's first stable cross-platform release.

The goal of this release was not to add a large number of new features, but to make NeoTab more compatible, more reliable, and easier to run across different Bukkit-based server platforms.

The plugin now uses a single shared JAR for Paper, Spigot, and CraftBukkit, while keeping Minecraft 1.20.6+ as the minimum supported version. Existing configurations remain compatible and do not require migration.

✨ Cross-platform support

NeoTab now compiles against the Spigot 1.20.6 API instead of relying on Paper as the common compile target.

Paper-specific implementations were replaced with shared Bukkit/Spigot alternatives where possible, allowing the same plugin JAR to work across all supported server platforms.

Adventure, MiniMessage, Gson and bStats are now embedded and relocated into NeoTab's own namespace to avoid dependency conflicts while preserving the existing formatting and rendering pipeline.

CraftBukkit ActionBar support is handled through a dedicated runtime bridge with a vanilla command fallback if required.

⚙️ Rendering and performance

A large part of this release focuses on rendering correctness and runtime performance.

Animation updates and statistics refreshes now use separate schedules, allowing animated headers, footers and scoreboards to remain smooth without constantly recalculating player statistics.

This release also includes improvements for:

• Tablist rendering
• Scoreboard rendering
• ActionBar handling
• Region processing
• PlaceholderAPI usage
• LuckPerms caching
• GUI lifecycle management
• Unicode, RGB gradients and emoji support

Several internal caches and lifecycle handlers were rewritten to reduce unnecessary work while keeping behaviour consistent across all supported platforms.

🔧 Stability improvements

Reload handling has been hardened to better coordinate asynchronous configuration writes and plugin lifecycle events.

Scoreboard ownership detection has been improved to better coexist with other plugins that manage scoreboards or teams.

Many smaller rendering, scheduling and lifecycle edge cases discovered during cross-platform testing have also been addressed.

📊 Anonymous metrics

NeoTab now supports optional anonymous bStats metrics.

The implementation only reports aggregated plugin information and does not collect player names, UUIDs, chat messages, server names, IP addresses or other personal server information.

Metrics can be disabled at any time inside the NeoTab configuration.

🧪 Validation

NeoTab 1.4.0 was validated using:

• 46 automated regression tests across 7 test suites
• Java 21 build verification
• Dependency relocation validation
• A compatibility matrix covering Paper, Spigot and CraftBukkit
• Minecraft 1.20.6, 1.21.11 and 26.2

In addition to the automated regression suite, this release also completed a dedicated 2-hour diagnostic stress test.

The scenario simulated 20 active players with continuous movement, jumping, sprinting, world switching and reconnect churn.

During the run NeoTab successfully handled:

• 24,450 reconnects
• 24,470 matching joins and leaves
• 240 valid Paper/JVM checkpoints
• Stable ~20 TPS
• Zero NeoTab exceptions
• Zero protocol or driver errors
• Zero unexpected disconnects

Memory usage stabilised after the initial warm-up period and the diagnostics showed no clear indication of a memory leak or long-term TPS degradation.

The reconnect scenario averaged approximately 3.4 reconnects per second, meaning it intentionally is not presented as a validated 5 reconnects/sec benchmark. The diagnostic results are included as additional evidence of NeoTab's runtime stability rather than as a formal performance certification.

❤️ Thank you

Thank you to everyone who tested the 1.4.0 beta and provided feedback throughout the development of this release.

As always, bug reports and suggestions are greatly appreciated and help make NeoTab better with every update.