Minecraft
Colour Code Formatter
Colour codes stay simple until the same line of text has to go into three places that each expect a different encoding. This previews how the text will look and then gives you all three versions.
Type & and then a code, or click a colour swatch to drop one in where your cursor is.
Colours
Styles
Preview
My Server | Welcome back
Any colour code wipes the styles that came before it — so &c&lRed Bold is bold and &l&cRed Bold is not. The preview obeys the same rule.
Section-sign form
The form most plugin configs and in-game commands expect.
§6§lMy Server §r§7| §aWelcome back
Escaped form for server.properties
Some versions do not read server.properties as UTF-8, and a pasted § turns into mojibake there. The escaped form works everywhere.
\u00A76\u00A7lMy Server \u00A7r\u00A77| \u00A7aWelcome back
MiniMessage
Recent Paper plugins want this tag syntax rather than colour codes.
<gold><bold>My Server <reset><gray>| <green>Welcome back
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How it works
Each code is the section sign plus one character: 0-9 and a-f choose a colour, l-o choose a style, and r resets everything. What people get wrong is ordering — a colour code wipes every style that came before it, so &c&lRed Bold comes out red and bold, but &l&cRed Bold is just red. The preview copies what the game actually does instead of treating each code as an independent toggle.
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Common mistakes
The escaped version exists because not every version reads server.properties as UTF-8, so a section sign pasted straight in can turn into mojibake. The escape comes through either way. MiniMessage, the third version, cannot be swapped for the other two: recent Paper plugins expect its tag syntax and will print colour codes as literal text if that is what you hand them.