Holograms

Visibility and attaching

Who sees a hologram: view distance, permission, per-player copies, and lists of chosen players. Holograms that ride a player or a mob.

Several things decide whether a player sees a hologram, and all of them must agree:

it is enabled and its world is loaded;
the player is within view-distance (default 48 blocks);
the player has its permission, when it has one;
the player passes its visibility list;
if it is attached to an entity, that entity is in the world.

On top of those, each line can have its own <range>, <perm> or <if>.

Changing a permission or a list is read by the next visibility check: nothing is redrawn and nobody sees it flicker.

Distance, permission and per-player

Setting	Command
View distance	`/holo <name> viewdistance <blocks>`	Above 0.
Permission	`/holo <name> permission [node]`	Only players with it see the hologram. No node clears it.
Per-player	`/holo <name> perplayer <true\|false>`	Every viewer gets their own copy. Costs one set of packets per viewer.
Refresh	`/holo <name> refresh <ticks>`	Ticks between placeholder refreshes, 1+ (default 20).
Auto-update	`/holo <name> autoupdate <true\|false>`	Whether the lines refresh on their own (default `true`).

You rarely need per-player: a hologram with a placeholder in any line is already drawn per viewer. Turn it on only for lines without a placeholder that must still differ.

The VISIBILITY window in the editor holds all of these plus the page interval and the player lists.

Chosen players

visibility.mode picks how the player list is read:

Mode	Who sees it	List used
`all` (default)	Everyone except the players listed.	`hidden-from`
`manual`	Only the players listed.	`shown-to`

/holo nametag visibility manual
/holo nametag show Notch
/holo nametag show @a
/holo nametag hide Notch
/holo nametag viewers
/holo nametag viewers clear

show and hide work in both modes: in all they take a player off or put them on hidden-from; in manual they put them on or take them off shown-to. @a means every player online. A player is named by name or UUID and must have joined the server before. viewers lists the list the mode reads; viewers clear empties it, so in all everyone sees it again and in manual nobody does.

Only the exceptions are written, as UUIDs, so a renamed player keeps their place and a hologram everybody sees costs two empty lists:

visibility:
  mode: manual
  shown-to: ['069a79f4-44e9-4726-a5be-fca90e38aaf5']
  hidden-from: []

Right-clicking VISIBILITY in the editor switches between the two modes.

Attaching to a player or a mob

A hologram can ride an entity instead of standing at its location.

/holo nametag attach Notch           # a player, by name or UUID
/holo nametag attach <uuid>          # any entity by UUID
/holo nametag attach nearest         # the entity nearest to you, within 16 blocks
/holo nametag attachoffset 0.8       # blocks above the entity, -16 to 16 (default 0.5)
/holo nametag detach

What it rides	Saved	Behaviour
A player	Yes, `attach.entity`	Rides them whenever they are online, joining, respawning and changing worlds included. Hidden while they are away.
A mob saved with its chunk	Yes	Rides it whenever its chunk is loaded. Hidden while it is not.
A mob that is not saved (not persistent)	No	Ridden until it is gone or the server restarts, without being written down. The command says so.

A player who is offline when you attach can still be named, as long as they joined before. Range is measured from the ridden entity, and a viewer who comes into range later sees it mounted.

attach:
  entity: '069a79f4-44e9-4726-a5be-fca90e38aaf5'
  offset: 0.5

An unreadable entity (a typo in the file) is treated as no attachment. location is kept while attached and used again after detach.

Something missing on this page? Tell us on Discord