Recently, I have seen item names on servers and on this very website with odd characters preceding them. I was thinking "well, this changes everything!".

Can you make item name act like JSON text using this method? (i.e. any colour, bold, italic, obfuscated?)

Please list methods/preceders below.

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Edit

What I am looking for is the colour of the item names, not sign block data or written books with coloured text. For example, when you go on a server, you often see items with coloured or obfuscated names.

2

4 Answers

You can use a sign to run a command containing the section symbol (disguised as unicode \u00A7 because the actual "§" character cannot be typed in a command block), which formats the item's display name as desired. The following provides the player with a sign that, when right-clicked, provides the player with a stone that has an obfuscated name:

/give @p minecraft:sign 1 0 {BlockEntityTag:{Text1:"{\"text\":\"\",\"clickEvent\":{\"action\":\"run_command\",\"value\":\"/give @p minecraft:stone 1 0 {display:{Name:\\\"\u00A7r\u00A7kThis text is obfuscated.\\\"}}\"}}"}}

The formatting is reset first since it would otherwise be italic by default.

2

It is currently not possible (as of version 1.11) to colour the names of items using colour/formatting codes without the use of mods.

You can, however, use the formatting codes in conjunction with the § character to colour the text in books and quills.

A reference of all the colour/formatting codes can be found below:

+-------+------------------+
| Code | Effect |
+-------+------------------+
| §0 | Black |
| §1 | Dark Blue |
| §2 | Dark Green |
| §3 | Dark Aqua |
| §4 | Dark Red |
| §5 | Dark Purple |
| §6 | Gold |
| §7 | Gray |
| §8 | Dark Gray |
| §9 | Blue |
| §a | Green |
| §b | Aqua |
| §c | Red |
| §d | Light Purple |
| §e | Yellow |
| §f | White |
+-------+------------------+
| §k | Obfuscated |
| §l | Bold |
| §m | Strikethrough |
| §n | Underline |
| §o | Italic |
| §r | Reset formatting |
+-------+------------------+

Codes sourced from Minecraft Wiki

1

@FungusKing I would recommend using link as it will automatically generate signs, tellraws, books, etc. All you have to do is fill out the required fields.

1

There is a way to /give colored items in 1.12.2 (at least in spigot)

If you're a server administrator, you can spawn colored title items by using the § character in the console. You are able to write, or copy-paste this into the console. The windows alt-code is Alt-0167 (not sure about apple, sorry).

E.g. (from console)give @p diamondsword 1 0 {display:{Name:"§cThis sword's name is light red!"}}