HealthBars NameTag Fix

HealthBars NameTag Fix

A tiny client-side compatibility patch for HealthBars that restores permanent name tags for any entity that’s supposed to always show its name — for example MineColonies citizens and visitors.

The Problem

HealthBars lets you hide its health bar / name overlay for certain entities via no_health_bar_mobs, hide_at_full_health, or by disabling its rendering entirely. When it steps back for an entity like that, it does not hand rendering back to vanilla the way you’d expect — entities that rely on a persistent nametag (Entity#isCustomNameVisible(), e.g. MineColonies citizens with the alwaysRenderNameTag server option, or mobs with a name tag item that forces the name to always show) lose their permanent name tag and only show their name while directly aimed at.

The Fix

This mod hooks into the entity render loop client-side and manually draws the vanilla name tag for any entity with a persistent nametag flag — but only in the exact cases where HealthBars itself isn’t already rendering something for that entity (rendering disabled, entity excluded via no_health_bar_mobs, or hidden via hide_at_full_health). It never draws on top of HealthBars’ own overlay and never double-renders when you’re aiming directly at the entity, so there’s zero visual conflict. It’s not tied to any specific mod — it works for MineColonies, or any other mod/entity that sets a permanent nametag.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• NeoForge
• HealthBars 21.1.0+
• PuzzlesLib 21.1.19+

Client-side only. Safe to leave out of the server pack.

Known Limitations

• Reads a few small public fields/methods from HealthBars’ client config via reflection (not part of any official API), so a future HealthBars update could in theory change or remove them. If that happens the mod will simply stop having an effect rather than crash your game.

License

MIT — do whatever you want with it.