Staff Vanish (Veritévoiler)

Veritévoiler is Verité's staff vanish. It lets a staff member become invisible to ordinary players so they can watch a situation quietly, then reappear when they are done. Vanish is more than hiding a body: it also silences the small giveaways that would otherwise reveal a hidden staffer, such as footsteps, particles, chat, server list presence, and join or leave messages.

The component is enabled by default. A staff member turns it on with the vanish command. For the command itself and who can run it, see the Commands reference. For every permission node named on this page, see the Permissions reference. For the exact config keys and their defaults, see the vanish section described under Feature toggles.

Turning vanish on and off

A staff member runs the vanish command to hide themselves, and runs it again to reappear. Someone with the right permission can also hide or reveal another player by naming them. Vanish state is remembered: a hidden staffer who disconnects, or the server restarts, comes back still hidden.

While hidden, a staffer is removed from view for every player who is not allowed to see them. Players who are allowed to see hidden staff continue to see the staffer normally.

Vanish levels

Vanish is tiered, so senior staff can hide even from junior staff. Each staff member has a vanish tier, taken from the highest verite.vanish.level.<n> permission they hold (for example verite.vanish.level.3). A viewer can only see a hidden staffer when they hold the verite.vanish.see permission and their own tier is at least as high as the hidden staffer's tier.

This means a higher-tier staffer stays invisible to a lower-tier one, while equal or higher tiers can see each other. When no tier permission is present, everyone shares tier zero, so the see permission alone decides who can see whom.

Tiers come from LuckPerms

Tier resolution reads the verite.vanish.level.<n> nodes through LuckPerms, including nodes inherited from groups. LuckPerms is optional: when it is not installed, every staffer shares tier zero and only verite.vanish.see matters.

What a vanished staffer is hidden from

While a staff member is hidden, Verité conceals the traces that would otherwise reveal them. Each of these can be turned on or off on its own.

Trace	What is hidden
The player themselves	The body is removed from view for anyone who may not see the staffer, using standard visibility handling.
Chat	Anything a hidden staffer types is delivered only to staff who may see them, plus the server console. Regular players never receive it.
Server list ping	The hidden staffer is removed from the player sample shown on the multiplayer list, and where the platform allows it, the online count is lowered to match.
Join and leave messages	While hidden, a staffer who joins or leaves the server shows no join or leave message.
Sounds	Footsteps, eating, drinking, splashing, and similar positioned sounds coming from the staffer's location are dropped for players who may not see them.
Particles	Movement and action particles from the staffer's location are dropped for players who may not see them.
Item pickups and drops	The staffer cannot pick up or drop items, so no item moves on its own.
World interaction	Block breaking and placing, pressure plates and tripwires, and filling or emptying buckets are prevented.
Advancements	Advancement announcements from a hidden staffer are suppressed.
Projectiles	Arrows, snowballs, and other projectiles cannot be fired, so nothing streaks out of thin air.
Damage and targeting	The staffer takes and deals no damage, and monsters do not target them.
Hunger and air	Hunger does not drain and the air bar stays full underwater.
Vehicles	If another player tries to board a vehicle the staffer is riding, the staffer is quietly removed from the seat first.

Players and staff who are allowed to see the hidden staffer, and the hidden staffer themselves, continue to hear, see, and receive everything normally.

Sound and particle hiding reaches into the server

Sounds and particles are the only traces the server sends directly to nearby players, so no ordinary setting can stop them. Verité filters them at the connection level. On a server version this cannot safely read, sound and particle hiding switch themselves off and the rest of vanish keeps working. Matching is by proximity to the staffer's recent position, so a sound triggered well away from the staffer (for example a projectile they fired, which is prevented separately) is not covered here.

The fake leave message

This is the anti-evasion heart of vanish. When a staff member goes hidden, the server can broadcast a normal-looking leave message so everyone believes that staffer has logged off, while in reality they stay online and watching. A rule-breaker who was only behaving because staff were present may then slip up in front of someone they cannot see. When the hidden staffer becomes visible again they simply reappear with no message.

This is controlled by the fake.message toggle. When it is off, no fake leave message is shown.

Observer perks (effects)

The moment a staff member goes hidden they receive a set of quality-of-life perks that make watching easier without giving them away. Which perks apply depends on both the matching config toggle and the staffer's permissions.

Perk	Requires	What it does
Self-view transparency	self.view toggle	The staffer's own body looks see-through on their own screen, a clear reminder they are hidden.
No collisions	Always, while hidden	Other players no longer bump into the staffer.
Sleep ignored	Always, while hidden	The staffer never holds up the night; they are not counted for sleeping.
Flight	fly toggle and verite.vanish.fly	The staffer can fly while hidden.
Invulnerability	invulnerability toggle and verite.vanish.invulnerable	The staffer takes no damage.
Night vision	effects toggle and verite.vanish.effects	The staffer can see in the dark.

Night vision is a real potion effect, because the client itself brightens the view, so its small status icon is the one unavoidable on-screen marker. It is applied with no particles or sparkles. Whatever night vision the staffer already had is remembered in durable storage before the vanish effect is applied, so it survives a restart. When the staffer becomes visible again, their body turns solid, the vanish night vision is removed, and their original effect is restored exactly as it was, or left off if they had none.

Fire resistance and water breathing are deliberately not granted as effects, since a hidden staffer already takes no fire, lava, or drowning damage and keeps a full air bar, so those effects would be pure on-screen clutter. When the staffer reappears, flight is kept only if they hold verite.vanish.fly.keep, or they are in creative or spectator mode.

Observer tools

Beyond the perks above, a hidden staffer has several tools for inspecting a situation. Each has its own config toggle.

• Double-sneak spectator toggle (gamemode): while hidden, pressing sneak twice quickly drops the staffer into spectator mode to float through walls and watch, and double-sneaking again returns them to their previous mode. The two presses must land within a short window.
• Silent container opening (silent.container): right-clicking a chest, barrel, shulker, or other container opens it with no lid animation, sound, or open-count that would tell nearby players. Right-clicking an ender chest opens the staffer's own ender chest.
• Player inventory inspect (inventory.inspect): sneak and right-click another player to open a live view of what they are carrying. The player being inspected never sees the interaction.
• Ghost view (ghost): for a viewer who is allowed to see a hidden peer, the hidden staffer is shown as a translucent spectator-style figure rather than being fully invisible. This is a per-viewer visual overlay only; it never changes the staffer's real game mode. On a server version it cannot resolve, the viewer simply sees the staffer fully hidden instead.

Inventory inspect is not read-only

The live inventory view opened by inventory inspect is not locked to look-only at the item level, since staff are trusted.

Actionbar reminder

While hidden, a small persistent message reading that the staffer is vanished is shown just above their hotbar and kept refreshed. This prevents the common mistake of a staffer forgetting they are invisible and acting as though other players can see them. Only hidden players see this reminder. It is controlled by the actionbar toggle.

Feature toggles

Every part of vanish above can be turned on or off on its own without disabling the whole component. The toggles live under vanish.features in config.yml, and each one defaults to on. Set vanish.enabled to false to disable the component entirely.

vanish:
  enabled: true
  features:
    fake.message: true
    actionbar: true
    self.view: true
    fly: true
    invulnerability: true
    effects: true
    gamemode: true
    ride.entity: true
    silent.container: true
    inventory.inspect: true
    server.ping: true
    ghost: true
    prevent.chat: true
    prevent.pickup: true
    prevent.drop: true
    prevent.interact: true
    prevent.block.break: true
    prevent.block.place: true
    prevent.target: true
    prevent.damage: true
    prevent.food: true
    prevent.buckets: true
    prevent.advancement: true
    prevent.projectiles: true
    muffle.sounds: true
    muffle.particles: true

Key	Controls
fake.message	The fake leave message when a staffer hides, and hidden join or leave messages.
actionbar	The on-screen vanished reminder above the hotbar.
self.view	The see-through look of the staffer's own body on their own screen.
fly	Flight while hidden, when the staffer also holds verite.vanish.fly.
invulnerability	Damage immunity while hidden, when the staffer also holds verite.vanish.invulnerable.
effects	The night vision effect, when the staffer also holds verite.vanish.effects.
gamemode	The double-sneak spectator toggle.
ride.entity	Removing a hidden staffer from a vehicle another player tries to board.
silent.container	Opening containers with no animation, sound, or open-count.
inventory.inspect	Sneak-right-click to view another player's inventory.
server.ping	Hiding vanished staff from the server list ping.
ghost	The translucent spectator overlay for viewers who may see the staffer.
prevent.chat	Keeping a hidden staffer's chat visible only to staff who may see them.
prevent.pickup	Blocking item pickups.
prevent.drop	Blocking item drops.
prevent.interact	Blocking pressure plates and tripwires.
prevent.block.break	Blocking block breaking.
prevent.block.place	Blocking block placing.
prevent.target	Stopping monsters from targeting the staffer.
prevent.damage	Stopping the staffer from taking or dealing damage.
prevent.food	Keeping hunger from draining and the air bar full.
prevent.buckets	Blocking filling and emptying buckets.
prevent.advancement	Suppressing advancement announcements.
prevent.projectiles	Blocking projectile launches.
muffle.sounds	Dropping positioned sounds from the staffer's location for players who may not see them.
muffle.particles	Dropping particles from the staffer's location for players who may not see them.

Hunger and air share one toggle

Both hunger draining and the underwater air bar are held by the single prevent.food toggle.

PlaceholderAPI placeholders

When PlaceholderAPI is installed, vanish state can be read from tab lists, scoreboards, and chat configs with no code, under the verite identifier.

Placeholder	Value
%verite_vanished%	true or false, whether the queried player is currently vanished.
%verite_vanish_count%	The number of players currently vanished.

When PlaceholderAPI is not installed, these placeholders simply do not exist and nothing else is affected.

For developers

Vanish exposes two ways for another plugin to react to vanish state changes:

• A cancellable event fired before a player's vanish state changes, so a plugin can veto a vanish or unvanish (for example, denying vanish in a specific world).
• A lightweight callback that fires immediately after a vanish state change, for plugins that only need to be told when it happens.

For the public developer surface, see the Developer API.