ArcMenu

Build the interface your Minecraft server deserves.

简体中文 · Visual Editor · Application API · MIT License

ArcMenu is an Advanced Menu Plugin that lets you add custom html-like menus, animations and screens to your Minecraft server — no client mods required. Everything ships through the resource pack (or even without resourcepack with limited functions) and runs server-side.

It uses new features that mojang had added to minecraft since 1.19.2, and it covers a larger variety of functions.

Want to create some different menus and animations that make you server unique among other’s? Then it’s the right place for you :)

ArcMenu is not only a menu plugin, but an open-source, server-driven UI framework for Minecraft. It combines player-private display entities, a fixed screen plane, resource-pack graphics, animation timelines, tooltips and a public application API to create interfaces that feel like part of the server itself.The long-term idea is simple: a server should be able to grow an ecosystem of applications without every plugin inventing another disconnected inventory GUI. ArcMenu supplies the screen, input, navigation and lifecycle; integrations keep ownership of accounts, music, guilds, shops, quests and every other domain behind the interface.

Development preview: the source is open for development and review. The configuration format, API and editor protocol may still change before the first stable release. Automated tests do not replace in-game visual and coordinate acceptance.

See what the canvas can our menu become

These concept interfaces show the kind of experience third-party plugins can build with ArcMenu. The login, music, dungeon and social systems pictured here are demonstrations of the API's potential; they are not bundled applications.

Music plugin	Account flows with a server identity
Story and dungeon interaction	A complete social workspace

The same foundation can host sign-in rewards, mail, auctions, skill trees, server settings, character selection, quest journals, matchmaking and systems that have not been designed yet. ArcMenu's job is to make those ideas share a coherent surface instead of forcing each integration to rebuild the camera, pointer, entity ownership and navigation stack.

What already works

• Server-rendered scenes: text, images, items, blocks, rectangles, frames, lines and nested frontend groups are composed from YAML and shown only to the target player.
• Two interaction modes: touch mode and mouse mode share the same logical canvas, backend hit regions, tooltip rules, navigation and cleanup. Both currently use right click for their primary action.
• Stable screen navigation: menus and third-party applications reuse the first screen plane, so changing a route does not move the interface with the player's view.
• Animation timelines: menu enter, switch and exit transitions sit beside reusable node tracks for position, rotation, scale, text content and text opacity.
• Resource workflows: PNG images, custom tooltip skins, vanilla items and blocks, plus CraftEngine item models and pack composition.
• Easy configuration: If you've used classical menu plugins like trmenu or deluxemenus before, then you are probably able to use our plugin.
• Application sessions: addons receive a per-player surface, pointer events, optional mouse-mode hotbar scrolling, navigation, scheduling, private entity ownership and deterministic cleanup.
• Internationalization: the plugin and editor include English and Simplified Chinese, with additional server locale files supported.

A live visual editor

The optional ArcMenu Editor is an administrator-side Fabric mod. It surrounds a real 16:9 game viewport with tools, an element tree, reusable templates and property controls, while the authoritative menu continues to be rendered by the server.

Frontend composition and backend interaction regions live on separate tabs. Administrators can select, resize, reorder, group, reparent, duplicate, template, undo, save and apply without making ordinary players install anything.

The application layer

ArcMenu is designed to sit beneath feature plugins rather than absorb their business logic. An addon registers a namespaced application and gets a managed session:

ArcMenuApi arcMenu = Bukkit.getServicesManager().load(ArcMenuApi.class);

ArcMenuApplicationHandle handle = arcMenu.registerApplication(
    this,
    "myplugin:shop",
    ArcMenuApplicationOptions.builder()
        .permission("myplugin.shop")
        .captureMouseScroll(true)
        .build(),
    context -> new ShopSession(context)
);

Applications can be opened from Java or through the single canonical YAML action:

actions:
  right:
    - 'open-app: myplugin:shop featured'

See the Java addon example.

Build from source

ArcMenu is a Maven multi-module project. The default build targets Paper 1.21.1 and Java 21:

git clone https://github.com/FENTAIIII/ArcMenu.git
cd ArcMenu
mvn clean verify

The shaded server plugin is written to paper/target/ArcMenu-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar. Install it with ProtocolLib on Paper. PlaceholderAPI, Vault, PlayerPoints and CraftEngine are optional integrations; CraftEngine is the supported custom-content integration.

The target range is Paper / Minecraft Java 1.21.1–26.2. The automated compile and test matrix covers 1.21.1, 1.21.4, 1.21.6, 1.21.11, 26.1.2 and 26.2; runtime rendering must still be accepted separately on each server version. The current editor targets Minecraft 26.1.2 with Fabric and requires Java 25.

Project map

Module	Responsibility
core	YAML model, validation, geometry, behavior and animation logic
api	Stable types exposed to third-party Paper plugins
paper	Runtime sessions, rendering, input, resources and editor bridge
protocol	Dependency-free wire contract shared with ArcMenu Editor
benchmarks	Repeatable performance baselines

Detailed design and validation notes live in docs. The source is available under the MIT License; third-party acknowledgements are recorded in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.