PlaceholderAPI

What it does

Placeholders are bits of text like %player_name% or %vault_eco_balance% that get swapped for live values. PlaceholderAPI is the plugin that does the swapping, so a tab list, scoreboard, hologram or chat plugin can show information from any other plugin.

You'll need it for most plugins that display things: TAB, DecentHolograms, scoreboards and chat formatters.

Install

1. Put the PlaceholderAPI jar in plugins and restart.
2. Download the expansions for the placeholders you want. Each plugin's placeholders come in an expansion. From the Console tab:

papi ecloud download Player
papi ecloud download Server
papi ecloud download Vault
papi reload

Some plugins include their own placeholders and don't need an expansion download. Their pages say so.

Test a placeholder

papi parse me %player_name%

Run that in game (with / in front) and you'll see the value. From the console, put a player's name instead of me.

Common problems

Placeholders show as raw text, like %player_ping%: the expansion isn't installed or loaded. Download it with papi ecloud download, then papi reload. Check with papi list.

ecloud download doesn't work: the eCloud can be turned off in plugins/PlaceholderAPI/config.yml (cloud_enabled). You can also download expansion jars from the PlaceholderAPI eCloud website and put them in plugins/PlaceholderAPI/expansions.

A placeholder shows nothing: the plugin behind it isn't installed, or the placeholder is spelled differently. Each expansion's page lists its exact placeholders.

Performance

PlaceholderAPI itself is light. Plugins that refresh lots of placeholders every tick for every player (scoreboards updating many lines) cost more. Raise their update interval if the server struggles.