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💬
FunJava ✓Bedrock ✓

/tellraw

Send colorful, formatted text to players using JSON.

🪨Bedrock note: Bedrock wraps text in rawtext - e.g. /tellraw @a {"rawtext":[{"text":"Hi"}]}.

Overview

What is the /tellraw command?

The /tellraw command sends richly formatted JSON text to players — colours, bold and italic styles, clickable links, hover tooltips and values pulled live from scoreboards or entity data. It's the professional version of /say and /msg.

Map makers and datapack authors rely on it for menus, clickable buttons and dynamic readouts in chat.

When to use it: Use /tellraw when you need styled, clickable or data-driven chat messages instead of plain text.

At a glance

Syntax

Syntax
/tellraw <target> <json>
commandtargetcoordsvaluerequiredoptional

See it

What it does

<Alex> gg<Bot> joined the game
★ Welcome, hero ★
A message hits the chat

Anatomy

Every part, explained

  1. 1
    /tellrawCommandRequired

    Sends raw JSON text to players.

  2. 2
    <target>TargetRequired

    Who sees it. Use @a for everyone.

  3. 3
    <json>JSON textRequired

    The message and its styling as JSON.

Your turn

Try it yourself

Playground
3 tokens · press Enter to run

Copy & paste

Examples

/tellraw @a {"text":"Hello","color":"gold"}

Golden greeting for everyone.

/tellraw @s {"text":"Bold!","bold":true}

Show yourself bold text.

/tellraw @a {"text":"Click me","color":"aqua"}

Aqua message to all players.

Avoid these

Common mistakes

✕/tellraw @a Hello
✓/tellraw @a {"text":"Hello"}

The message must be JSON, not plain text.

✕/tellraw {"text":"Hi"}
✓/tellraw @a {"text":"Hi"}

You must name a target before the JSON.

Good to know

Frequently asked questions

How do you send colored text in chat?
Use /tellraw <player> with a JSON component, e.g. /tellraw @a {"text":"Hi","color":"gold"}.
How do you make text clickable?
Add a clickEvent in the JSON, e.g. {"text":"Click","clickEvent":{"action":"run_command","value":"/spawn"}}.
How is /tellraw different from /say?
/say sends plain text to everyone; /tellraw sends styled JSON to chosen players and supports colours, clicks and live data.

Keep going

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