Voice chat on a Minecraft server: Plasmo Voice and Simple Voice Chat

In short: install the Plasmo Voice or Simple Voice Chat plugin on the server, open the voice UDP port and ask players to install the same project's client mod for Fabric, Forge or NeoForge (Simple Voice Chat also has Quilt). Plasmo Voice listens on UDP at the same number as the game port by default; Simple Voice Chat uses UDP 24454. Players without the mod join and play as usual, just without voice. Voice works in Java Edition only: Bedrock players won't get it.

Plasmo Voice vs Simple Voice Chat#

• Plasmo Voice — 3D audio on OpenAL, RNNoise noise suppression, optional sound occlusion through blocks and directional audio, a Discord-like overlay, PlaceholderAPI placeholders, vanish support, Opus and encrypted voice. Groups, broadcasting your voice to the whole server and more come as add-ons.
• Simple Voice Chat — push-to-talk or voice activation, whispering, password-protected groups, 3D sound, Opus and RNNoise, AES encryption, recording with separate audio tracks and many add-ons through its API. The menu opens with V, and on first join the mod walks the player through microphone setup.

Installing on a single server#

1. 1

   Get the plugin and the mod of one project

   Each project goes on both the server and the player's client, so players need the mod of the same project as the server plugin. Download both from Modrinth. The plugin goes into plugins/, then restart — details in how to install a plugin.

2. 2

   Open the UDP port

   Voice travels over UDP, not TCP like the game. An open TCP 25565 doesn't mean UDP 25565 is open. On a VPS open the port in the firewall; on a game host find a UDP port in the panel or allocate an extra one. More on ports in server IP and port.

3. 3

   Set the port if you need a different one

   Plasmo Voice: port in the [host] section of config.toml (0 means the game port's number). Simple Voice Chat: port in voicechat-server.properties. The Simple Voice Chat docs strongly advise against -1 (the game port's number): UDP on it is used by the server query by default, and that can crash the server.

4. 4

   Install the mod yourself and test

   Join with the mod and press V. Plasmo Voice shows its menu when everything works, or "Connecting…" and "Not installed" when it doesn't. In Simple Voice Chat, test a player with /voicechat test <player> (permission voicechat.admin).

ports:
  - "25565:25565"
  - "24454:24454/udp"

If the server runs in Docker, the voice port has to be published separately with the /udp suffix — that's how the Simple Voice Chat wiki example does it. You can build the base docker-compose.yml with our Docker Compose generator; the container itself is covered in Minecraft in Docker.

Voice chat behind Velocity and BungeeCord#

Every backend behind the proxy gets the voice chat plugin. A plugin on the proxy itself is optional but handy: then a single UDP port faces the internet instead of one per server.

If the proxy and backends share a machine, each backend needs its own voice port — two servers can't share one. The proxy itself and player info forwarding are set up as usual — see Velocity setup.

Permissions and voice moderation#

• Recording. In Simple Voice Chat players may record voice chat by default (allow_recording=true). Turn it off if that doesn't fit your rules.
• Rules for voice. Write down in advance what's banned in voice chat and how to report it — you can build the rules in our rules generator, and how to organise moderators is in the moderation team.
• Vanish. Plasmo Voice supports vanish plugins; Simple Voice Chat since 2.6.0 hides vanished players from the volume list.

Which one to pick#

• You want 3D audio, muffling through walls and add-ons like broadcasting — Plasmo Voice.
• You want groups out of the box, whispering and recording — Simple Voice Chat.
• A modpack — check which project it already includes: players will install the mod of the same project as the server.
• A server behind TCP-only DDoS protection — sort out UDP first: neither works without it.

Voice chat and the anticheat#

Voice chat makes mods the norm: every player needs a Fabric, Forge or NeoForge client. You can no longer demand a "clean" client, so cheaters have to be caught by behavior rather than by what launched the game. DGuard — the best anticheat for a modern Minecraft server — checks combat, movement, building, inventory and packets and covers all 47 cheat types in our comparison: KillAura, Reach, Fly, Scaffold and the rest.

Like voice chat, DGuard works behind Velocity and BungeeCord. Bedrock players coming through Geyser get no voice, and DGuard makes exceptions for Bedrock players joining through Floodgate — see Geyser and Bedrock.

FAQ#