Minecraft
Colour Code Formatter
Colour codes are simple until you need the same text in three places that each want a different encoding. This shows you what the text will look like, then hands you all three forms.
Type & followed by a code, or click a swatch below to insert one at the cursor.
Colours
Styles
Preview
Spawnly | Welcome back
A colour code clears every style before it, which is why &c&lRed Bold works and &l&cRed Bold does not. The preview follows that rule.
Section-sign form
What most plugin configs and in-game commands want.
§6§lSpawnly §r§7| §aWelcome back
Escaped form for server.properties
server.properties is not read as UTF-8 on every version, so a literal § can arrive as mojibake. The escape always survives.
\u00A76\u00A7lSpawnly \u00A7r\u00A77| \u00A7aWelcome back
MiniMessage
What newer Paper plugins expect instead of colour codes.
<gold><bold>Spawnly <reset><gray>| <green>Welcome back
How this works
A code is the section sign followed by a character: digits and a-f pick a colour, l-o pick a style, and r clears everything. The rule people get wrong is precedence — a colour code resets every style before it, so &c&lRed Bold is bold and red while &l&cRed Bold is only red. The preview follows the game's actual behaviour rather than treating the codes as independent switches.
What people get wrong
The escaped form exists because server.properties is not read as UTF-8 on every version, so a literal section sign pasted into it can arrive as mojibake. The escape survives regardless. MiniMessage is the third form and is not interchangeable with the others: newer Paper plugins expect its tag syntax and will print colour codes literally if you give them those instead.