AutoUpdatePlugins for Minecraft 1.20.1, 1.21.1

AutoUpdatePlugins v12.2.0

Keep your server’s plugins up-to-date - automatically, safely, and across platforms.

TL;DR Drop in the jar ➜ list the plugins you want ➜ it finds, downloads, validates, and stages updates from a ton of sources - on a schedule, in parallel, without blocking your main thread.

Table of Contents

• Highlights
• Supported Sources & Platforms
• Requirements
• Installation
• Quick Start
• Configuration

• config.yml
• list.yml
• Scheduling Cheat Sheet
• Performance Tuning Guide
• Commands & Permissions
• How It Works (Under the Hood)
• Examples for Every Source
• Troubleshooting & FAQ
• Building from Source
• Security Notes
• Contributing, Issues & Support
• License

Highlights

• One list, many sources. Pull updates from GitHub Releases/Actions, Jenkins, SpigotMC (Spiget), dev.bukkit,

Modrinth, Hangar, BusyBiscuit, blob.build, Guizhanss v2, MineBBS, CurseForge, or any page with a direct .jar link.

• Local sources. Point at local jar files or run scripts that output a jar path for custom/patched builds.
• Smart file selection. Use ?get=, [N] (pick the N-th asset - works for both GitHub and Jenkins

artifacts), ?artifact=2 for GitHub Actions bundles, ?prerelease=true, ?alpha=true, ?beta=true, ?latest=true, ?channel=Alpha, ?autobuild=true - mix and match to land on the exact build you need.

• Zero-friction config evolution. New options are auto-added to config.yml without clobbering your comments or

existing values.

• HTTP flexibility. Add custom headers, rotate User-Agents, and route through proxies when needed.
• Performance built-in.

• Fully async downloads; no main-thread stalls.
• Java 11+ HTTP/2 client for modern, non-blocking transfers.
• Java 21+ virtual threads for ultra-lightweight concurrency.
• Connection pooling, parallel downloads, and retry with exponential backoff.
• Flexible scheduling. Interval + boot delay or cron with timezone support.
• Cross-platform. Works on Spigot, Paper, Folia, Velocity, BungeeCord.
• Safe updates. Download ➜ validate ➜ atomic replace, staged through temp/update paths.
• Integrity + dedupe. Optional zip integrity checks and MD5 comparison skip corrupted or unchanged downloads.
• Rollback safety net. Snapshot the previous jar and auto-restore if the new build fails to start.

Supported Sources & Platforms

Download Sources

Source - Release/Build Discovery - Notes / Selectors Supported

GitHub - Releases & Actions - [N], ?artifact=2, ?get=regex, ?prerelease=true, ?alpha=true, ?beta=true, ?latest=true, ?autobuild=true Jenkins - Latest build artifacts - [N], ?get=regex SpigotMC (Spiget) - Resource page URL - Auto-resolves latest dev.bukkit - Project page - Auto-resolves latest Modrinth - Project/version URL - ?get=regex, ?alpha=true, ?beta=true, ?latest=true Hangar - Project/releases - ?get=regex, ?alpha=true, ?beta=true, ?latest=true, ?channel=Alpha BusyBiscuit - Project index - Auto-resolves blob.build - Build artifacts - ?get=regex Guizhanss v2 - Project index - Auto-resolves MineBBS - Resource page - Auto-resolves CurseForge - Project/files - ?get=regex Generic - Direct .jar link - Exact file URL Local file - Local path - file:, local:, path:, or absolute/relative path Local script - Script stdout path - script: or exec: (script prints jar path to stdout)

Note: GitHub and Jenkins links both accept [N] to pick the N-th artifact on their release/build pages ( 1-indexed). Tip: You can pass just the project root URL for most sources (e.g., a GitHub repo or Spigot resource page) and let AutoUpdatePlugins choose the latest artifact. Add selectors for precision.

Server Platforms

• Spigot, Paper, Folia
• Velocity, BungeeCord

Minecraft & Java

• Minecraft: 1.8 → Latest
• Java: 8+ (uses advanced features automatically on 11+ and 21+)

Requirements

• Java 8 or newer.

• Uses Java 11+ HTTP/2 client when available.
• Uses Java 21+ virtual threads when available.
• Network access for source builds (Gradle/Maven wrappers or system gradle/mvn, if used).

Installation

• Download the latest .jar from Spigot.
• Place it into your server’s plugins/ directory.
• Start the server to generate default config files.
• Edit plugins/AutoUpdatePlugins/config.yml and plugins/AutoUpdatePlugins/list.yml.
• Run /update or /aup update (or restart) to kick off the first check.

Velocity / BungeeCord: Same process - drop the jar in plugins/, configure, then trigger an update run.

Quick Start

• Add a few entries to list.yml:

ViaVersion: "https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/viaversion.19254/" Geyser: "https://download.geysermc.org/v2/projects/geyser/versions/latest/builds/latest/downloads/spigot" EssentialsXChat: "https://github.com/EssentialsX/Essentials[3]"

• Leave updates.interval at the default (every 120 minutes), or set a cron schedule.
• Optional: Add a GitHub token in config.yml to avoid rate limits.
• Trigger a run:

/update

• New jars are staged atomically in your plugins folder (using temp/update paths under the hood). Restart the

server to load the updated jars.

Configuration

config.yml

The plugin adds new options automatically without overwriting your comments. Below is the full schema with defaults and notes.

AutoUpdatePlugins - Main Configuration

updates:

How often to run plugin updates (minutes). Default: 120 (every 2 hours)

interval: 120

Delay after server startup (seconds) before the first run. Default: 50

bootTime: 50

Schedule (experimental): Use a cron expression to control exactly when

updates run. When set, this overrides both interval and bootTime.

Examples:

Every day at 03:30: "30 3 * * *"

Every 15 minutes: "*/15 * * * *"

At 5 past every hour on weekdays: "5 * * * 1-5"

schedule: cron: "" # Cron expression (UNIX 5-field). Leave blank to disable. timezone: "UTC" # Timezone for the cron schedule, e.g. "America/New_York"

Optional GitHub personal access token (PAT). Strongly recommended if you use

many GitHub links to avoid API rate-limits when listing releases/artifacts.

Scope: public_repo is enough for public repos.

Generate a token: https://github.com/settings/tokens

key:

HTTP configuration (optional)

http:

If blank, a rotating pool of realistic User-Agents will be used.

userAgent: ""

Extra request headers added to every request. Only add if you know you need it.

headers: [ ]

Verify TLS certificates (set to false to trust all; only if you must)

sslVerify: true

Optional pool of User-Agents; the plugin will rotate between them to avoid

strict CDNs blocking automation.

userAgents:

• { ua: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/123.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" }
• { ua: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.0 Safari/605.1.15" }
• { ua: "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:126.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/126.0" }

Proxy configuration (optional)

proxy: type: "NONE" # HTTP | SOCKS | (anything else = disabled) host: "proxy.example" port: 8080

Behavior toggles

behavior: useUpdateFolder: true

Open downloaded .jar/.zip to ensure integrity before install (recommended)

zipFileCheck: true

Skip replacing an existing plugin if the new jar has the same MD5

ignoreDuplicates: true

Allow GitHub/Modrinth/Hangar pre-releases by default for release queries.

allowPreRelease: false

Enable source-build fallback for GitHub repositories.

autoCompile: enable: false

Build when a release has no .jar asset (zip-only)

whenNoJarAsset: true

Build from source if default branch is newer than latest (pre)release by N months

branchNewerMonths: 6

Verbose debug logging. Toggle with /aup debug on|off

debug: false

Restart the server/proxy automatically after updates.

restartAfterUpdate: false

Delay in seconds before restarting after updates.

restartDelaySec: 5

Broadcast message before restarting (supports {delay}).

restartMessage: "Server restarting to apply updates."

Optional custom paths

paths: tempPath: '' updatePath: '' filePath: '' rollbackPath: ''

Performance and reliability options

performance: