Raw Message JSON

Raw message JSON is used to customize the look of text. With raw JSON code, you can change the appearance of text in places like chat messages (tellraw), titles (titleraw), books, signs, item names, entity names, world names, scoreboard displays, and text that is displayed through script APIs.

Rawtext

This is a simple raw text message:

{"rawtext":[{"text":"Hello World"}]}

The combination of square and curly brackets makes more sense with the JSON code indented like this:

{
  "rawtext":
   [
    {
    "text":"Hello, World!"
    }
   ]
}

With it formatted this way, you can see how {"text":"..."} is a content tag or "node". Other content tags include translate, with, score, and scoreboard, which will be covered later.

In Minecraft, all raw text is entered on one line. This is how to put that message into the /tellraw command using the "all players" selector:

/tellraw @a {"rawtext":[{"text":"Hello World"}]}

Text

In Bedrock Edition, you can change the formatting of text by placing a § symbol (sometimes called a "section symbol" or "silcrow") along with the formatting code directly before the text you want to format. Instead of the section symbol code, you can use the unicode escape sequence (also known as MOTD code).

For example, placing §c or \u00A7c will color the text that comes after it red.

If you want to use the section symbol, some possible ways to enter it with a keyboard are to hold the alt key and enter 21 or 0167 using the numpad keys on your keyboard.

Perhaps easiest way to get the symbol is to copy and paste it from another page, like this one:

§

This is a text node that will display Hello World! with the word "World!" in red:

{"text":"Hello §cWorld!"}

Here is how that same line goes into the rawtext code segment:

{"rawtext":[{"text":"Hello §cWorld!"}]}

And this is how it would fit into the tellraw command, using the "all players" selector:

/tellraw @a {"rawtext":[{"text":"Hello §cWorld!"}]}

If you want to reset the formatting, use §r. This will remove the red formatting from the exclamation point:

{"rawtext":[{"text":"Hello §cWorld§r!"}]}

Formatting Codes

Format code	Unicode escape sequence	Color or Effect
§0	\u00a70	black
§1	\u00a71	dark blue
§2	\u00a72	dark green
§3	\u00a73	dark aqua
§4	\u00a74	dark red
§5	\u00a75	dark purple
§6	\u00a76	orange
§7	\u00a77	gray
§8	\u00a78	dark gray
§9	\u00a79	blue
§a	\u00a7a	green
§b	\u00a7b	light blue
§c	\u00a7c	red
§d	\u00a7d	pink
§e	\u00a7e	yellow
§f	\u00a7f	white
§g	\u00a7g	gold
§h	\u00a7h	warm light gray
§i	\u00a7i	cool light gray
§j	\u00a7j	dark brown
§k	\u00a7k	obfuscated text
§l	\u00a7l	bold
§m	\u00a7m	dark red
§n	\u00a7n	brown
§o	\u00a7o	italic
§p	\u00a7p	gold
§q	\u00a7q	dark green
§r	\u00a7r	reset
§s	\u00a7s	aqua
§t	\u00a7t	dark teal
§u	\u00a7u	purple
§v	\u00a7v	no effect
§w	\u00a7w	no effect
§x	\u00a7x	no effect
§y	\u00a7y	no effect
§z	\u00a7z	no effect

Commonly Used Escape Characters

Format code	Unicode escape sequence	Color or Effect
\n	\u000a	new line
\"	\u0022	double quote
\'	\u0027	single quote

Translate

translate content tags are used to look up translated text in the player's designated language using text keys, just like how it's done in lang files from resource packs or other assets.

Example:

"{\"rawtext\":[ {\"translate\":\"custom.book.page.1\"}]}", "{\"rawtext\":[ {\"translate\":\"custom.book.page.2\"}]}"

With

Translations can contain slots for text that is not known ahead of time, such as player names. These slots are defined in the translation text itself, not in the JSON text component, and generally take the form %%1 to designate the index of the value being substituted.

%%1displays the first argument. %%2 would be the second.

If no argument is provided for a slot, the slot is not displayed.

This string chat.type.announcement=[%s] %s needs two more strings to fill in the %s parts - with can be followed by an array or a rawtext object.

Example 1: "rawtext":[{"translate": "chat.type.announcement", "with": [ "value1", "value2" ]}] Example 2: "rawtext":[{"translate": "chat.type.announcement", "with":{"rawtext":[{"text": "value1"}, {"text": "value2"}]}}]

Selector

You can use a selector node,{"selector": ...}, to insert a name that has been selected , "@s", into your raw text message.

/tellraw @a {"rawtext": [{"text": "Hello, my name is "}, {"selector": "@s"}]}

Here is that same command, reformatted for clarity:

{
  "rawtext":
   [
    {
      "text": "Hello, my name is "
    },
    {
      "selector": "@s"
    }
   ]
}

selector can also display the entity names found with the selector:

"rawtext":[{"selector": "@e"}]

There is more information about target selectors here.

Score

score will display a value from the scoreboard:

"rawtext":[{"score": {"name": "my_name", "objective": "my_objective"}}]

Example:

/tellraw @s {"rawtext": [{"text": "Your score is "}, {"score":{"name": "@s","objective": "objective_name"}}]}

You can find more information about scoreboards in the Scoreboard Introduction.

Scoreboard objective player name color

If you want to change the color of a player name, when you add their name to the scoreboard objective, put a formatting code like this:

/scoreboard players add §bBlueName objective 7