Nick Hider

Client-side privacy masking for Minecraft player names, skins, and capes.

Download

• Download on Modrinth
• Download on CurseForge
• Download from GitHub Releases

What This Mod Does

Nick Hider masks player identity details in common vanilla client rendering and text paths.

• Local player: replace your shown name, skin, and cape.
• Other players: replace names with a template and swap skins/capes from configured source accounts.
• FTB heads: when FTB Library-based UIs are present (including FTB Teams/Chunks), player heads follow Nick Hider skin masking rules.
• UUID masking: masked identities use deterministic Minecraft-style UUIDs derived from the final displayed name (OfflinePlayer:<name>).
• Global switch: instantly enable or disable all masking behavior.

Quick Start Tutorial

1. Download the jar for your exact Minecraft + loader combination from Releases.
2. Put the jar in your Minecraft mods folder.
3. Launch the game and open settings from Mod Menu (Fabric + Mod Menu), Mod List (Forge/NeoForge), keybind Open Nick Hider Settings (default unbound), or command /nickhider.
4. First-time setup suggestion: enable Hide Local Name, Hide Local Skin, and Hide Local Cape, then set Local Replacement Name to a neutral alias.
5. Join a world/server and verify your own name and skin/cape are masked; enable Hide Other Names/Skins/Capes if you also want to mask other players.
6. After config save/reload, Nick Hider automatically refreshes skin/cape sources in the background.

Features At A Glance

Area	Behavior
Local name	Replaces your local displayed name
Local skin	Replaces your local rendered skin
Local cape	Replaces your local cape and cape-based elytra texture
Other names	Template-based replacement with [ID] token support
Other skins/capes	Shared configured source usernames
UUID masking	Deterministic UUID generated from final displayed name
FTB player heads	FaceIcon-based heads respect local/other skin toggles
External fallback	Optional mineskin.eu + api.capes.dev (default: off)
Runtime toggle	Global Enable Nick Hider on/off switch
Open config	Keybind + /nickhider command
Refresh behavior	Automatic source refresh (no manual refresh button)
Diagnostics	NH-* runtime codes with throttled warnings

Compatibility

• Supported Minecraft versions: 1.20.1 and 1.21.1
• Loader support policy:
  • 1.20.1: Fabric, Forge
  • 1.21.1: Fabric, NeoForge
• Artifacts declare exact Minecraft version compatibility (1.20.1 or 1.21.1), not open-ended ranges.
• On Forge/NeoForge, Nick Hider declares an optional ftblibrary dependency with ordering="BEFORE" to initialize head masking hooks as early as possible when FTB Library is installed.

Short matrix:

• 1.20.1: Fabric, Forge
• 1.21.1: Fabric, NeoForge

For exact jar availability per release, use GitHub Releases.

Configuration

Toggle Controls

• Hide local: name, skin, cape
• Hide others: names, skins, capes
• Global master toggle: Enable Nick Hider
• Optional switch: Enable External Skin/Cape Fallbacks (default: off)

Replacement Inputs

• Local replacement name
• Local skin source username
• Local cape source username
• Other players name template
• Other players skin source username
• Other players cape source username

Validation and Fallbacks

• Replacement usernames must be empty or match [A-Za-z0-9_]{3,16}.
• Local replacement name must match [A-Za-z0-9_]{3,16}.
• UUID masking uses UUID.nameUUIDFromBytes("OfflinePlayer:<final_displayed_name>") and does not query Mojang APIs.
• UUID masking follows name toggles (Hide Local Name, Hide Other Names).
• UUID masking also covers shortened UUID prefixes commonly shown by some mods (for example only the first 8 hex chars).
• FTB head masking follows skin toggles (Hide Local Skin, Hide Other Skins) when FaceIcon-based UIs are present.
• FTB FaceIcon head textures are enforced on getFace(...), after FTB async skin callbacks, and right before FaceIcon.draw(...), so later async updates do not restore original heads while masking is enabled.
• When FTB provides a GameProfile without a usable player name, Nick Hider resolves the name by UUID and still masks the head profile.
• If cape masking is enabled but no valid cape source resolves, cape rendering is hidden instead of showing the original cape.
• External fallbacks are queried only after official skin/cape lookups fail.
• Saving or reloading config clears runtime cache and starts an automatic source prefetch.

Diagnostics Logs

• Skin/cape runtime diagnostics use stable NH-* codes (for example NH-SKIN-FETCH, NH-SKIN-RECOVERED, NH-HOOK-FAIL).
• Repeated identical failures are throttled per source user to avoid console spam.
• Hook failures log the first incident as warning, and subsequent repeats as debug.

Known Limits

Nick Hider is aggressive on vanilla client paths, but masking is still best-effort. Third-party mods or custom render/UI pipelines can display unmasked data outside covered paths.

FTB integration is implemented through optional FaceIcon hooks. If a mod does not use FaceIcon for player heads, Nick Hider cannot enforce head masking there.

For Developers

Requirements:

• Java 21
• Git

Build:

./gradlew clean build

Run tests:

./gradlew test

License

Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3).
See LICENSE.

Maintainer and Links

• Author: przxmus
• Source: GitHub Repository
• Issues: GitHub Issues