PocketMap

A minimap without a client mod. For Paper 1.21+ and 26.x.

Every player gets their own vanilla map, kept centred on them and placed in the offhand — where the client draws it as a HUD all by itself. No packets, no NMS, no external dependency: one jar in plugins/, and /pocketmap turns it on.

• Nothing to install for players. It is a normal vanilla map, so it works on the plain client, on Bedrock via Geyser, and on any launcher.
• No dependencies. Not PacketEvents, not ProtocolLib, not a database library. One jar.
• Your offhand item is safe. Whatever was in that slot is stored with all its data and handed back when the minimap goes off, on quit, on death, and when the plugin is disabled. The store survives a restart and is never overwritten.
• It refuses to cost you a life. A Totem of Undying in the offhand does not save you while something else occupies the slot, so PocketMap will not turn on over a totem. That is a configurable refusal, not a silent one.
• One map id per player, reused forever. Creating a map burns a permanent id in the world data; a plugin that made a new one every session would fill your world with dead map ids.
• The map item cannot be dropped, moved or swapped into the main hand while it is in use.

Commands: /pocketmap [on|off|status|reload] (alias /pmap) · Permissions: pocketmap.use (everyone), pocketmap.admin (reload, op)

Honest limits

The offhand is a real slot, and PocketMap takes it. If your players need the offhand for shields or totems, this is the wrong plugin for them — turn it off with /pocketmap off and the slot comes straight back. The map is a vanilla map, so it shows terrain, not players or mobs; a packet-based minimap can draw things this one cannot.

Tested on

Paper 1.21.11, 26.2 and 26.3 — runtime-tested, not just "it loads". 29 assertions run against the shipped dev.pocketmap.Hud through the plugin's own classloader, so the test cannot drift from a copy: the follow-the-player threshold on both axes and across zero, telling our map apart from a player's own map (including after a round trip through a chest), the config fallbacks, and every path that could lose a stored offhand item — corrupt bytes, empty bytes, null. 29/29 green on both versions, plus 19 further assertions on the map API itself. Loaded together with the other 13 plugins of the portfolio on both servers, 0 errors.

Niche

The established plugin for this (VanillaMinimaps, ~60,000 downloads) shipped its last version in July 2024 and no longer starts on either current Minecraft version — it crashes on org.bukkit.craftbukkit.v1_21_R1.CraftServer on 1.21.11 and on net.minecraft.world.level.World on 26.2. It died of exactly the NMS coupling this plugin does not have. There is one active alternative; it works, but needs a mandatory dependency hand-downloaded from GitHub. Numbers and evidence: LISTING.md.

Install

Drop the jar in plugins/, start, /pocketmap. Defaults: closest zoom, re-centre every 8 blocks, player marker on, offhand item protected.

AI disclosure

Human-led development: Arvid Grün directs the work, sets the requirements, tests and approves every release. Code and documentation are written with AI assistance (Claude). No AI-generated images are used; the icon is drawn geometrically in code.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Human-led development: a human maintainer directs, tests and takes responsibility for every release; AI is used as a development tool (disclosed per Modrinth policy). The icon is hand-made geometric artwork, not AI-generated.