CustomHotbar

CustomHotbar is a Forge client-side mod that lets you decorate the vanilla Minecraft hotbar with custom underlay and overlay textures.

It supports bundled textures, configurable texture paths, KubeJS asset loading, and an in-game reload command for quickly testing config or texture changes.

Features

• Custom hotbar underlay texture
• Custom hotbar overlay texture
• Configurable X/Y positioning
• Configurable texture dimensions
• Configurable texture resource paths
• Bundled fallback textures
• KubeJS asset support
• Client-side reload command
• Forge GUI overlay ordering support

Screenshots

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1
• Forge 47.x
• KubeJS for Forge 1.20.1

Installation

Place the mod jar into your Minecraft mods folder:

{instance}/mods/customhotbar-1.0.*.jar

Since this mod depends on KubeJS, KubeJS must also be installed:

{instance}/mods/kubejs-forge-*.jar

Default Assets

The mod includes textures inside the jar, although these are transparent by default:

assets/customhotbar/textures/gui/underlay.png
assets/customhotbar/textures/gui/overlay.png

These are used automatically when no custom texture paths are configured, or when the configured texture cannot be found.

KubeJS Asset Support

You can provide custom textures through KubeJS assets.

Example folder structure:

{instance}/
  kubejs/
    assets/
      ce/
        textures/
          image/
            hotbar/
              underlay.png
              overlay.png

Example resource locations:

ce:textures/image/hotbar/underlay.png
ce:textures/image/hotbar/overlay.png

Configuration

After launching the game once, the client config file will be generated:

{instance}/config/customhotbar-client.toml

Example config:

[hotbar]
enabled = true

# Horizontal offset from centered hotbar position.
x_offset = 0

# Vertical offset from vanilla hotbar position.
y_offset = 0

# Overlay texture width.
width = 256

# Overlay texture height.
height = 55

# Leave blank to use the bundled default underlay.
underlay_path = ""

# Leave blank to use the bundled default overlay.
overlay_path = ""

Example using KubeJS textures:

[hotbar]
enabled = true
x_offset = 0
y_offset = 0
width = 256
height = 55
underlay_path = "ce:textures/image/hotbar/underlay.png"
overlay_path = "ce:textures/image/hotbar/overlay.png"

Reloading

Use the in-game command:

/customhotbar reload

Overlay Layering

CustomHotbar renders in two parts:

underlay -> vanilla hotbar/items -> overlay

The underlay is registered using Forge's lowest overlay ordering so it renders as far behind the hotbar as possible.

The overlay renders above the vanilla hotbar, but below items and other UI elements.

This allows textures like frames, borders, highlights, or decorations to appear above the hotbar while the background stays behind items and other normal GUI elements.