How to add boss bars in Minecraft

Minecraft players who have battled foes like the Ender Dragon or the Wither have likely noticed the large boss health bars they possess at the top of the screen. While the vanilla build of the game reserves the bars for these two bosses, it's also possible to use in-game commands to create customized boss bars of your own design if you don't mind a little bit of a learning curve.

The command structure for creating Minecraft boss bars can be a little complex when it comes to getting into the finer details. However, fans can create basic boss bars and make them display on screen in just a few keystrokes.

How to Create a Custom Boss Bar in Minecraft

If Minecraft fans are curious about creating their own boss bars, they can do so with a few separate command syntaxes. It goes without saying that before using these inputs, players will need to enable cheats first. Furthermore, these aren't present within the Bedrock engine, so players won't be able to use them outside of Java Edition.

The /bossbar command makes creating custom boss bars in Minecraft much easier (Image via Mojang)

How to Make a Custom Boss Bar in Minecraft: Java Edition

To begin, enter the command "/bossbar add" followed by an ID and a name. The ID can be whatever you wish, but it's best to make it memorable so you don't forget it in other commands. The name is the text that will appear at the top of the boss bar. As an example, you could enter /bossbar add custom "example" and then press enter to create a boss bar named custom with the word "example" above the bar.
Once the bar has been created, you can alter its color by entering "/bossbar set <ID> color <color>." The ID tag will be the boss bar ID you created earlier, and the colors should pop up in the command's autofill. Be sure not to include the actual brackets "<>" in the command syntax and instead, just type out the ID's name.
To change the number of notched sections in the boss bar, you can enter "/bossbar set <ID> style <style>." The available options for the style tag should appear in the autofill, each with its own numbered segments and the "progress" option.
To set the maximum value of the bar, you can enter the Minecraft command "/bossbar set <ID> max <max>" where the <max> in the command syntax is a number.
To set the current value of the boss bar, use the command "/bossbar set <ID> value <value>" where the <value> tag is replaced by a number.
Lastly, to show which players can see the boss bar, enter "/bossbar set <ID> players <targets>" where the <targets> are either target selectors like @a, @p, @s, @r, etc. or a specific player's name. Once this command is run, the boss bar should appear to the selected player(s).
If you'd like to remove your boss bar, enter "/bossbar remove <ID>" where the <ID> is the named ID you gave the bar in Step 1.

A custom Minecraft boss bar that has set progress that is lower than its maximum as well as a pink color scheme (Image via Mojang)

The command syntaxes above are the basic structures of creating a custom boss bar in Java Edition. Additional commands exist to tie the boss bar to a mob, player, or event, but the commands become excessively more complex and require much more knowledge surrounding the game's in-game scripts and entity tags.

For Minecraft beginners who want to get started before using the boss bars in various different capacities, the steps listed above should provide the basic foundational knowledge required before diving into the much more complicated aspects of developing custom boss bars.