Chat Tabs

Ever lose a whisper in the wall of text on a server? Chat Tabs brings the private-message tabs from old-school MMORPGs like Tibia into Minecraft. Every player you whisper with gets their own tab, so DMs stop getting buried under public chat, deaths, and spam.

Built for 6b6t.org, but fully configurable for any server.

Features

Core chat tabs

• Automatic private-message tabs — incoming and outgoing whispers are detected and grouped into a per-player conversation tab.
• Main tab — all messages (public, system, and a copy of every whisper) still flow into Main, so nothing is hidden, just organized.
• Unread indicators — each tab shows an unread count; unread tab labels are highlighted. A small ✉ badge on the HUD shows your total unread whispers even when chat is closed.
• Click-to-expand unread badge — click the ✉ badge to expand a list of unread conversations and jump straight to one.
• Scrollable tab bar — tabs overflow into a horizontally scrollable strip (mouse wheel over the bar) with ‹ / › indicators. The selected tab auto-scrolls into view.
• Click to switch, click × to close — hover a tab to reveal its close button.
• Drag to reorder — click and drag conversation tabs to rearrange them.
• Reply from a tab — while a whisper tab is open, pressing Enter automatically sends your message as a whisper to that player (using your configured whisper command). No need to type /w <name> yourself.
• Slash commands still work — commands starting with / (e.g. /tpa) are sent normally even when a private tab is selected.
• Whisper cooldown — optional delay (0–60 s, default 3 s) between private sends to reduce accidental spam.
• Smart de-duplication — outgoing whispers and the server’s own echo are matched so messages don’t appear twice.

Appearance & HUD

• Color themes — cycle through 24 built-in themes (Ocean, Midnight, Slate, Forest, Ember, Crimson, Purple, Neon, Abyss, High Contrast, and more).
• Custom transparency — independent opacity for the bar and tabs.
• Scalable tab bar — resize the whole tab strip (and its text) with a scale slider.
• Reposition & resize HUD — drag the tab bar, unread badge, and settings button; drag the blue edge of the tab bar to change its width.
• Settings button on the tab bar — a ⚙ button on the right of the tab strip for quick access while chat is open.
• Sound notifications — configurable sound on incoming whispers (Pling, Bell, Chime, Xylophone, Cow Bell, Bit, Amethyst, XP Orb, Level Up, Challenge) with volume control.

Configuration

• In-game settings GUI — open via the ⚙ button, Mod Menu, or a configurable keybind. Organized into Appearance, Persistence, and Private tabs.
• User-friendly Message Detection — no regex needed. Toggle timestamps, heads/prefixes, and use simple formats with {player} and {message}. Defaults work great on 6b6t (including timestamps and heads).
• Persistent sent messages — optional. Keep chat input history (Up/Down arrows) across disconnects, relogs, and restarts (1–1000 lines, default 100).
• Persistent chat log — optional. Restore Main tab history after relog/restart with player heads & formatting preserved (10–100000 messages, default 1000).
• Persistent tabs — optional. Keep private conversation tabs and their messages across restarts (same size limit as the chat log).
• Config file — everything is stored in config/tibia_chat_tabs.json and is created automatically on first run.

Compatible with Chat Patches and the Better Chat module from Meteor Client.

Requirements

• Fabric Loader
• Fabric API
• Mod Menu (optional)

Client-side only — no server installation needed.

Supported versions: 1.21.1, 1.21.3–1.21.6, 1.21.8, 1.21.9, 1.21.11, 26.1, 26.2, 26.3

Why

Chat in classic MMORPGs like Tibia kept private conversations in their own tabs next to the main channel. This mod recreates that experience for Minecraft, aimed at high-traffic anarchy servers where whispers get lost fast.

Issues & Source

Source code, bug reports, and feature requests:
https://github.com/Fractal420/Chat-Tabs-Mod