How to make a Minecraft server icon
The icon is the first thing anyone sees next to your name in their server list, and it is a 64 pixel square, so most of them are unreadable. Here are the rules and the design decisions that make yours work.
The rules the game enforces
Three requirements, all strict:
- The file must be a PNG.
- It must be exactly 64 by 64 pixels.
- It must be named
server-icon.pngand sit in the same folder asserver.properties.
Restart the server after adding it. Nothing in server.properties points at the file, so there is no setting to change and no way to use a different name or size.
Designing for 64 pixels
At this size you have room for one idea. A single letter, a single object, or a two colour shape. Full logos with text become mush.
What works: heavy shapes, strong contrast, and a background that is not the same colour as the server list panel. What fails: thin outlines, gradients, drop shadows, more than three colours, and any word longer than about four characters.
Transparency is supported and often looks better than a white box, but test it against both a light and dark list background before you commit.
Making one without design software
If you already have a logo, any image editor can resize it: set the canvas to 64 by 64 and export as PNG. Turn off smoothing when scaling pixel art, or the edges blur into grey.
Made from scratch, a pixel editor is easier than a photo editor because you are literally placing 4,096 pixels. Draw it at 64 by 64 from the start rather than shrinking something large, and you keep control of every edge.
Why your icon is not showing
In order of how often it happens: the file is not exactly 64 by 64, the name has a typo or a double extension like server-icon.png.png, the file is in the wrong folder on a multi world or proxy setup, or the server was not restarted.
One more that catches people: behind a proxy, the icon players see comes from the proxy configuration, not from the backend server. If you run Velocity or BungeeCord, set it there.
Clients also cache the icon per address. If yours updated and you still see the old one, remove and readd the server entry in your client.
Where your icon shows up beyond the game
Server lists read the icon straight out of your status response, so a good one earns clicks in more places than the in game list. On this site the icon comes from our own ping rather than from anything you upload: the first successful check saves the copy your server sent and shows it on your listing.
That means updating your icon updates it here automatically within a cycle or two. It also means a server serving no icon shows a placeholder, which costs clicks. Pair it with a 468 by 60 banner and the row starts looking like somewhere people want to play.
Check what your server is currently sending with our status checker, which shows the icon exactly as we receive it. Then read how the rest of a listing earns clicks.