Tab Player Hider

TabPlayerHider

Hides specific players from the tab list without removing them from the game world. Useful for servers running bots: names listed in hidden-players disappear from the tab list but stay fully present in game, with normal collision, visibility and behaviour.

Features

• Removes configured players from every client's tab list on join, using a 1 tick delayed packet
• Hide and show players instantly via command, no relog required
• Bot names are stored in the config and persist across restarts
• Tab completion for /tabh hide lists online players, /tabh show lists currently hidden names

Configuration

# config.yml
hidden-players:
  - "BotName1"
  - "BotName2"

Names are case-sensitive and must match the exact Minecraft username.

Permissions

Permission	Description	Default
tabplayerhider.admin	Access to all /tabh commands	op

Commands

Main command: /tabplayerhide, alias: /tph

Command	Description
/tph on	Enable hiding, hidden players disappear from the tab list
/tph off	Disable hiding, all players are visible in the tab list again
/tph status	Show current state, hidden player count and who is online
/tph hide <player>	Hide a player from the tab list and save it to the config
/tph show <player>	Show a player in the tab list again
/tph list	List all currently hidden player names
/tph reload	Reload the config and re-apply hiding

Requirements

Server	Paper 1.21.x
Java	21+

How it works

On every player join the plugin sends a ClientboundPlayerInfoRemovePacket for each hidden player directly to the joining client, one tick after join so it lands after the server's own player-info broadcast. Only the tab list packet is touched, not entity tracking or the scoreboard, so hidden players stay fully visible in the world.