withfriends is a lightweight and fully configurable quality-of-life plugin designed for small and community-focused Minecraft servers. It enhances Minecraft with useful social features, clear player information, a flexible sleep system, and many other convenient additions.

Every module can be enabled or disabled independently in the config.yml. All text is fully translatable and ships with English and German out of the box - switch with a single setting.

Features

Player Information

• Clean and customizable join and leave messages

• Personal join summary showing:

  • currently online players
  • the current in-game day and time
  • your death count

• Player health displayed above name tags

• World prefixes in the player list

• Death counts in the player list, scoreboard, or both

• Persistent tracking of playtime, deaths, and player activity

Communication and Coordinates

• Private messages via /msg, shown identically to both sides as [world] [sender -> recipient] "message"
• View your own or another player's playtime with /playtime
• Check when a player was last online with /seen
• Broadcast your coordinates or send them privately
• Display the distance to another player in the same dimension
• Optional chat formatting with world prefixes
• Hover information for deaths and playtime
• Clickable coordinates in death messages with clipboard support
• One consistent, colored world tag (e.g. a green "[Overworld]") used everywhere a world is shown: tab list, chat, /coords, /msg, and death messages

AFK System

AFK players are automatically detected and can be:

• marked in the player list
• excluded from sleep votes
• protected from damage
• protected from knockback
• protected from being pushed around by mob or player collision

Flexible Sleep System

• Sleep voting based on a percentage or fixed player count
• Automatic exclusion of AFK players
• Thunderstorm skipping
• Phantom timer reset
• Particle and sound effects when the night is skipped

Death Chests

• Dropped items are placed in a chest instead of scattering on death
• Configurable trigger: always create a chest, or only when lava is nearby
• Configurable persistence: permanent chests, or timed chests that expire with an advance warning
• Optional owner-only access so only the player who died (and admins) can open it
• Automatic double chests when an inventory doesn't fit into a single chest
• Chests are removed automatically once emptied

Additional Quality-of-Life Features

• Sit on slabs and stairs with an empty hand
• Open your own Ender Chest with /enderchest or /ec, or peek into another player's - always read-only for anyone but the owner
• Configure your own Ender Chest as read-only or editable
• Fully customizable text formatting using MiniMessage

Commands

Command	Description
/withfriends reload	Reloads the plugin configuration
/withfriends status	Shows the online player count and active sleep mode
/playtime [player]	Shows your own or another player's playtime
/seen <player>	Shows when a player was last online
/coords [player]	Broadcasts coordinates or sends them privately
/distance <player>	Shows the distance to a player in the same dimension
/msg <player> <message>	Sends a formatted private message
/enderchest [player]	Opens your own or another player's Ender Chest (read-only for others)
/ec [player]	Shortcut for /enderchest

The /withfriends reload and /withfriends status commands require the withfriends.admin permission, which is granted to server operators by default.

Configuration

All features can be configured independently. The generated config.yml contains detailed comments and examples. All display text lives separately in plugins/withfriends/lang/en.yml and lang/de.yml.

Available settings include:

• general.language: en or de - all text, both bundled languages fully translated
• enabling or disabling individual modules
• death count display location
• death message visibility
• death chest trigger (always / lava-only) and persistence (permanent / timed)
• the shared, colored world tags used everywhere a world is shown
• Ender Chest editing permissions (your own chest only - viewing others is always read-only)
• percentage-based or fixed sleep voting
• AFK protection, including collision immunity
• chat and player-list formatting

After making changes, reload the configuration with /withfriends reload.

Installation

1. Download the latest JAR file.
2. Place it inside your server's plugins directory.
3. Start or restart the server.
4. Adjust plugins/withfriends/config.yml if needed.
5. Run /withfriends reload or restart the server again.

Requirements

• Minecraft: Java Edition 26.2
• Server software: Paper
• Java: 25

Player Data

Death counts, playtime, last join times, and last-seen timestamps are stored by UUID.

The data is saved in:

plugins/withfriends/players.json

The human-readable JSON format keeps player data correctly assigned even when a player changes their username.

Active death chests (location, owner, and expiry time) are stored the same way in:

plugins/withfriends/deathchests.json

so timed expiry and owner-only locks survive a server restart.

Compatibility

Other plugins may already provide commands such as /msg or /ec. If a conflict occurs, use the namespaced command instead:

/withfriends:msg
/withfriends:ec

Feature Requests

New ideas and feature requests are always very welcome! If you have a suggestion for improving withfriends, feel free to open an issue and share it.

Links

• Source code on GitHub
• Report an issue or suggest a feature

License

withfriends is free and open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.