UnwaxSigns

Bring back the "wax off" - let players unwax signs with an axe, on your terms.
Report Bug · Request Feature

📌 About

Minecraft's wax mechanic locks a sign for good - with no vanilla way back, short of breaking and replacing it. UnwaxSigns fixes that: right-click a waxed sign with an axe (or whatever tool you configure) and the wax comes right off, editable again, complete with sound and particle feedback.

It's built to disappear into your server: works out of the box with zero configuration, but every rule - which tools count, what it costs, who can bypass what, how it sounds and looks - is yours to tune.

✨ Key Features

• 🪓 Flexible tool detection - item tags (#axes), an explicit material list, or both combined, with exclusions (e.g. no wooden_axe, to stay out of WorldEdit's way).
• 🏷️ Custom tool requirements - require a specific display name and/or enchantment before a tool works.
• 💰 Vault economy - charge per unwax, with a dedicated bypass permission for VIPs.
• 🛡️ Protection-plugin aware - respects WorldGuard, GriefPrevention, and similar plugins with no hard dependency.
• 🎵 Immersive feedback - fully configurable sounds and particles for success and failure, world- or player-only.
• ⏱️ Smart cooldowns - independent per-player and per-block cooldowns, auto-cleaned in the background.
• 🌍 Localization - MiniMessage-formatted translations; English and Czech included, more just a YAML file away.
• 🧩 Built for other plugins - five custom events let other developers extend or restrict the unwax flow.
• 📦 Zero-config start - sensible defaults mean it just works the moment you drop it in.

📥 Where to Download

For your server's safety, only download UnwaxSigns from official channels:

• Hangar - official PaperMC platform
• Modrinth
• GitHub Releases - source and dev builds

Listings go live shortly after the first release - until then, build from source (see below).

🛠️ Installation

1. Download UnwaxSigns.jar from one of the platforms above.
2. Drop it into your server's plugins/ folder.
3. Start or restart the server - config.yml, effects.yml, and translations/ are generated automatically.
4. Tweak the config to your liking, then apply changes with /unwaxsigns reload.

⚠️ Don't use /reload or /paper reload to apply UnwaxSigns config changes - always use /unwaxsigns reload instead, to make sure everything (config, effects, translations) reloads cleanly.

🤝 Compatibility

UnwaxSigns doesn't hook into any specific permission or protection plugin's API - instead it builds on the standard Bukkit mechanics almost every plugin in those categories already respects. That means it works out of the box with your existing setup, whatever it is, with nothing to configure per-plugin:

• Permission plugins - permissions are checked with the standard sender.hasPermission(...) call, so unwaxsigns.use and the unwaxsigns.bypass.* nodes work with any permission plugin (LuckPerms, PermissionsEx, GroupManager, or plain ops.json/permissions.yml) exactly the way you'd expect - per-world, per-group, per-track, however your plugin of choice supports it.
• Region/claim-protection plugins - before unwaxing, UnwaxSigns fires a synthetic BlockBreakEvent for the sign; if a protection plugin cancels that event, the unwax is denied. This covers WorldGuard, GriefPrevention, Lands, Towny, and any other plugin that listens for and cancels block-break events in protected areas - without a hard dependency on any of them. If this synthetic event ever conflicts with another listener (e.g. a stats or quest plugin reacting to block breaks), it can be turned off with region-protection-check: false.
• Vault (soft-dependency) - the one exception, since charging players requires talking to an actual economy provider. If Vault and a registered economy plugin are present, cost-per-unwax is charged per use and formatted through the Vault API. Without Vault, unwaxing is simply free.

💻 Commands & Permissions

⚙️ Configuration

Full configuration lives in two well-commented files, generated on first start and always up to date in the repo itself:

• config.yml - permissions, notifications, cooldowns, drops, world restrictions, economy cost, tool detection, and tool requirements.
• effects.yml - sounds and particles for successful and failed unwax attempts.

A few of the most-tweaked options, to give you a feel for it:

Tool detection modes

Items under excluded-items are always removed, regardless of mode.

Translations

Language files live in translations/ and use MiniMessage formatting. English and Czech are bundled. To add one: copy messages_en.yml to messages_<code>.yml, translate it, set settings.language accordingly, and run /unwaxsigns reload.

🧩 Developer API

UnwaxSigns fires its own Bukkit events so other plugins can hook into the unwax flow:

@EventHandler
public void onUnwax(PlayerPostUnwaxSignEvent event) {
    Player player = event.getPlayer();
    Block sign = event.getBlock();
    // your logic here
}

For now, depend on the plugin jar directly and add UnwaxSigns as a depend/softdepend in your own plugin.yml; a standalone API artifact is planned.

📊 Metrics (bStats)

UnwaxSigns reports anonymous usage stats via bStats - unwax counts, denial reasons, and similar aggregate data - to help guide development. Disable anytime in plugins/bStats/config.yml.

📄 License & Credits

Distributed under the MIT License - see LICENSE for the full text.

Built on the excellent PaperMC and Kyori Adventure APIs.