More Color API
If you have ever tried to make a Minecraft server or mod feel truly yours, you already know that color is everything. Vanilla chat gives you a handful of legacy color codes, and that is about it. More Color API blows that limitation wide open. It is a lightweight add-on for Text Placeholder API that lets you define, manage, and reuse custom color tags through a simple configurable interface. Whether you run a busy survival server or tinker with your own mod, this API handles the heavy lifting of turning your strings into fully formatted text components.
What More Color API Actually Does
At its core, More Color API is an add-on mod for Text Placeholder API. It was originally forked out of AfkPlus as a stand-alone API, alongside Core Lib, so that other projects could benefit from its color-handling logic without dragging in a whole mod's worth of dependencies. The idea is straightforward: instead of hardcoding hex values and formatting codes everywhere, you register named color tags once and reference them anywhere Text Placeholder API is supported.
Under the hood, the mod exposes a TextUtils instance that other developers can call directly. If you are building your own mod, you can fully utilize Text Placeholder API without much effort, and More Color API will handle the rest for your String-to-Text and String-to-Component formatting needs. That means consistent colors across chat messages, action bars, titles, and any other place your mod sends text.
Configurable Color Tags
You are not locked into a fixed palette. Everything lives in config/more-color-api.json, which you can edit by hand or manage in-game. The config stores the color tags that are available to the rest of your setup, so you can rename them, adjust their values, or add entirely new ones to match your server's branding.
Managing Colors In-Game
Editing JSON is fine, but sometimes you just want to tweak a shade without leaving the game. That is where the /morecolors command comes in. It lets you manipulate the color tags that are available on the fly, which is handy when you are testing how a particular gradient looks against your chat format or scoreboard.
- Add or adjust color tags without restarting your client or server.
- Reference tags consistently across every Text Placeholder API integration.
- Keep your palette centralized so multiple mods share the same definitions.
- Extend the system from your own code using the exposed TextUtils instance.
For developers, the project is also published to Maven under the com.sakuraryoko.more-color-api group, following the familiar more_colors_version-mcminecraft_version format. Practical usage examples can be found in the AfkPlus source code, which makes it easy to see how the API is wired into a real mod.
Supported Versions and Loaders
More Color API targets modern Minecraft releases on the Fabric loader, with builds published for the 1.21.x line and later snapshots as they stabilize. Because it depends on Text Placeholder API, you will want to match your loader version to the one that dependency supports. If you play on a different Minecraft version, check the project's file list before assuming compatibility, since the underlying text component format has changed more than once over the years.
How to Install More Color API
Getting started is quick, and the process mirrors most Fabric mods. If you are wondering how to install it, follow these steps:
- Install the Fabric loader for your Minecraft version.
- Drop Text Placeholder API and Core Lib into your
modsfolder first, since More Color API builds on them. - Add the More Color API jar alongside them.
- Launch the game once to generate
config/more-color-api.json, then edit it or use/morecolorsto customize your tags.
When you download More Color API, double-check that the file name matches your Minecraft version string. Mixing a build for one game version with another is the most common cause of a mod failing to load, and it usually shows up as a dependency error rather than anything obvious in the log.
If you would rather skip the manual juggling of jars and dependencies, the foxygame.net launcher offers a tidy alternative: it keeps a curated add-on catalog where More Color API and its required libraries are listed together, so a single click installs the whole set and auto-updates keep every version in sync with your chosen Minecraft release.
Why It Belongs In Your Setup
More Color API for Minecraft is one of those quiet utilities that pays off the moment you start customizing. It removes the guesswork from color formatting, keeps your palette in one editable place, and gives mod authors a clean interface for producing polished text. If your server messages, AFK notices, or custom mod output currently rely on a scattered mess of hardcoded hex codes, centralizing them through this API is a genuine quality-of-life upgrade.
The takeaway is simple: install the dependencies, configure your tags once, and let the API handle the formatting from that point forward. It is a small addition that makes a visible difference in how your Minecraft world reads and feels.
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