Multi Chat

MultiChat

A complete rebuild of Minecraft's chat. Unlimited panels, unlimited custom tabs with nested sub-tabs, per-tab filtering, keyword highlighting, full-text search, note-taking, quick actions, sound pings, chat themes, and a rich API for other mods to plug into. It's all client-side, so no server install is needed.

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Why MultiChat

Vanilla chat is one scrolling feed. Every system message, every player, every plugin broadcast lands in the same place, and once it scrolls past it's effectively gone. MultiChat replaces that feed with a panel system: split your chat into as many tabs as you need, route messages into them automatically with whitelist/blacklist rules, highlight the words you care about, search across everything instantly, and keep permanent notes without them ever mixing into game chat.

It's built for anyone who wants a better chat — works great for RP servers, guild/faction servers, SMPs with heavy plugin messaging, and server/mod developers who want a first-class place to put their own mod's output instead of spamming vanilla chat.

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Feature Overview

Unlimited panels

• Add as many panels as you want — not capped at two
• Default setup: left panel always on; right panel optional, toggle it on in Settings
• Each panel is fully configurable independently: anchor to left/right/custom position, custom width/height (in lines), custom scale, background/text opacity, whether it shows only while focused, Always Focused (full opacity and height all the time), whether its active tab drives the outgoing chat context
• Pop Out: right-click a tab → Pop Out turns it into its own floating panel
• Panel Layout GUI (/multichat layout) — drag panels to reposition with grid-snap and wall-snap (docks within 24px of screen edges), drag edges to resize, drag the unfocused-height line separately, one-click "To Wall" docking

Unlimited custom tabs, 7 types

Type	What it does
ALL	Every message, unfiltered, always present, non-deletable
VANILLA	Straight passthrough of the default Minecraft chat feed
FILTERED	Your own whitelist/blacklist rules decide what lands here
SEARCH	Temporary, session-only — the live result of a search
NOTES	A private scratchpad tab that never receives chat, only what you put in it
INFO	Built-in in-game guide/help tab
API	Owned and populated by other mods through the MultiChat API

Multi-Tab: any filtered tab can have its own sub-tabs. Each sub-tab only sees what its parent already let through, then applies its own rules on top. Every multi-tab includes a built-in All sub-tab.

Powerful filtering

Each FILTERED tab runs a whitelist or blacklist of rules. Rule types: contains, starts with, ends with, exact match, whole word, fuzzy, and full regex (including regex-start/regex-end). Rules can also target message kind — player chat, system message, "not secure" flagged, modified, or chat error — not just text content.

Style Rules filter by how text actually renders: bold/italic/underline/etc., any named or hex color, or interaction (click events, hover text, run/suggest command, open URL). You can target a specific word, a word index, the start/end of the message, or anywhere.

For advanced setups, Difference Mode lets a tab sit at a priority layer in the routing pipeline, with exception/inclusion flags, so you can build layered "catch what nothing else caught" or "catch what X also caught" tabs.

Highlight Words

Add keywords and any matching message is redrawn in a two-color scheme (fully configurable — default yellow bold keyword, red rest). Hover to see which keyword matched, click to undo. Exceptions stop false matches (e.g. urban stops ban from firing), with an optional sound on match and a cooldown. Tabs can Force Highlight Matches to let highlighted messages through even if they fail the tab's filter.

Instant search

Ctrl+F opens Advanced Search: live-updating results, case sensitivity toggle, five match modes (contains/starts-with/word/fuzzy/regex), relative-time bounds ("only messages from the last 10m"), and the option to scope a search to one specific tab instead of everything. Results land in a disposable SEARCH tab you can close whenever.

Notes that never get lost in chat

Right-click any message → Add to Notes, or type /multichat note add <text>. Notes live in their own tab, are never touched by chat routing, and persist independently — a running log, a to-do list, coordinates, whatever you'd otherwise be scrolling back through chat history to re-find.

Quick Actions

Select text in chat, hit Ctrl+Q (or right-click → Quick Actions), and fire a pre-built command template against it — /tell {selected} Hello, /report {selected}, anything with a {selected} placeholder. Configurable to run instantly or paste into the chat box for a final edit first.

Full message interaction

• Click-drag to select text; double-click a word, or double-click a player's name inside <Name> brackets to select just the name
• Right-click a message: Copy, Copy with Timestamp, Copy Selected, Search for this, Quick Actions, Add to Notes, Jump to All, Delete, Delete from All
• Right-click a tab: clear, edit, rename, toggle badge/timestamps/collapse, scroll to top/bottom, export all messages to clipboard, reorder, set as active note tab, toggle context, pop out, close (search tabs)
• Repeated identical messages auto-collapse into a single line with a (x3)-style counter (fully customizable format)
• Draggable scrollbar that glows when your mouse is near it

Sound pings, done properly

Global default ping sound/volume/pitch, or override per tab entirely. Trigger conditions combine with OR/AND logic: always, only when the tab is inactive, only when the game window is unfocused, only while AFK, gated behind a "require silence" window with its own threshold — plus a cooldown so you're never spammed. Built-in sound browser to pick from every registered game sound.

Context-aware chat input

Set any tab as the active context and MultiChat prepends a prefix to everything you type — as a plain chat prefix or as a full /command — with a status line above the chat bar showing exactly what's active (▶ Tab: Alerts [msg Fred]). Perfect for private-message threads, faction chat, or any command-prefixed chat channel.

Deep customization

Chat Themes (Vanilla, Simple Dark, Bold, Pink, Mint, Lavender), timestamp format (your own DateTimeFormatter pattern with color codes), per-tab and per-panel background/text opacity, tab colors, message caps per tab, cursor-shape feedback on hover, arrow-key tab switching with optional flash feedback, text-selection freeze-while-selecting, and more — every screen is built on Cloth Config, so it's a native, familiar settings experience with full ModMenu integration.

Built for big histories

Large tab rebuilds and refilters run on a background thread with an animated loading skeleton instead of freezing the game. A configurable Global Message Cap (default 100,000) and batched trimming keep memory in check.

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Commands

Command	Description
/multichat	Open Tab List screen
/multichat tab add [name]	Add a new filtered tab
/multichat tab remove	Remove the active tab on the focused panel
/multichat tab edit <name>	Open the tab editor
/multichat panels [name]	Open Panel List / edit a panel
/multichat layout	Open the drag-and-drop panel layout GUI
/multichat settings	Open settings
/multichat highlight	Open Highlight Words settings
/multichat highlight add|remove <word>	Add/remove a highlight keyword
/multichat highlight exception add|remove <word>	Add/remove a highlight exception
/multichat quickactions	Open quick actions overlay
/multichat context [tab]	Set/clear the outgoing chat context prefix
/multichat note add <text>	Append a line to the active note tab
/multichat info show / hide	Show/hide the built-in Info tab
/multichat help	Open the in-game help screen

(Full command list in README.md.)

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Chat Heads Compatibility

MultiChat works automatically with Chat Heads — nothing to configure. Heads render in every tab (Before Name and Before Line), stay selectable and clickable, and line up with selection, hover and link clicks. Supports chat_heads 1.3.x (MC 1.21.9+ and 26.x) and 0.15.x (MC 1.21 – 1.21.6).

Other mods that add invisible characters or components to chat messages may still interfere with text selection, filtering and searching. If something behaves oddly, try disabling them and let me know.

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Plans

This isn't going to be the final version of the mod of course. I'm going to add support for versions 1.20.x, and I'll likely keep expanding the API.

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Built for mod developers

MultiChat ships a full client-side API (net.mobilelize.multichat.api) so other mods can register their own named tabs, push messages into them (with or without pings), silently manage tab content, drive the outgoing-chat context, add highlight keywords and exceptions, register custom chat themes, and hook six Fabric events (message received, message added to tab, tab changed, message sent, panel focus, tab-action clicks). No network code, no server dependency — see README.md for the full integration guide and API reference.

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Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21 – 26.x (Fabric)
• Fabric Loader + Fabric API
• Cloth Config (required)
• ModMenu (optional, for in-game config access)
• Client-side only — no server installation needed, works on any server including vanilla

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License

GPL-3.0-or-later