Text and Placeholders

MiniMessage formatting, gradients, hex colours, and PlaceholderAPI in voucher text.

Every piece of text in ProVouchers (display names, lore, messages, broadcasts, titles, action bars) is rendered with MiniMessage, and PlaceholderAPI is resolved first when it is installed. One text renderer handles all of it, so the behaviour is consistent everywhere.

MiniMessage basics

MiniMessage uses XML-like tags instead of legacy & codes:

display-name: "<gold>Crate Key"
lore:
  - "<gray>Right-click to open"
  - "<red>Limited time only"

Common tags:

Tag	Effect
`<gold>`, `<red>`, `<gray>`	Named colours
`<#FF8800>`	Any hex colour
`<bold>`, `<italic>`, `<underlined>`	Decorations
`<gradient:#FFD700:#FF4500>text</gradient>`	A colour gradient
`<rainbow>text</rainbow>`	A rainbow
`<hover:show_text:'...'>text</hover>`	Hover tooltip
`<click:run_command:'/spawn'>text</click>`	Clickable text

display-name: "<gradient:#FFD700:#FF7F50:#FF4500>Stratosphere</gradient>"
lore:
  - "<gray>A pair of <#FFD700>golden</#FFD700> wings"
  - "<italic><dark_gray>Season 1</dark_gray></italic>"

For the full tag list, see the MiniMessage format reference.

Lore tips

An empty string is a blank line:

lore:
  - "<gray>First line"
  - ""
  - "<dark_gray>Footer"

Names and lore are shown without the default purple italic styling, so what you write is what players see.

PlaceholderAPI

When PlaceholderAPI is installed, its placeholders are resolved in any ProVouchers text, rendered for the redeeming or viewing player:

lore:
  - "<gray>Balance: <gold>%vault_eco_balance%"
rewards:
  - "message: <green>Welcome back, %player_displayname%!"

Resolution order matters

PlaceholderAPI placeholders are resolved first, then the result is parsed as MiniMessage. This order is fixed and deliberate: doing it the other way around would let a placeholder's output be reinterpreted as formatting tags. In practice, write your MiniMessage as normal and drop %placeholders% in wherever you need dynamic values.

ProVouchers placeholders vs PlaceholderAPI

ProVouchers also substitutes a few placeholders (%player%, %arg%, %random:min-max%, and the named %random:min-max:name%) before MiniMessage. These are always available, even without PlaceholderAPI, and resolve everywhere text is rendered, including a voucher's display name and lore, not only rewards and messages. %arg% only has a value when redeeming a code with an argument, so it is blank in voucher names and lore. A voucher's display name and lore also accept %expiry%, which renders its expiry as in 30d, on 2026-12-31, or never.

The older curly-brace forms ({player}, {arg}, {random:min-max}) still work but are deprecated; /voucher reload warns when a voucher or code file uses them.

When there is no resource pack

Colours, gradients, and decorations are all part of the chat protocol and need no resource pack. Only custom-model-data and custom provider item models require a pack (see Items).