Neat Mod Guide: Entity Health Bars, Player Display, and Line-of-Sight Distance
Neat is a Minecraft utility mod that draws information above entities, and this guide covers the settings that control which entities get bars, how players are displayed, and how far away entities can be before line of sight matters.
Tuning Which Entities Display Bars
The Toggle Health Bars option is the master switch for the bars themselves. When it is off, no entity shows a health bar regardless of any other setting. Turn it on first, then use the remaining options to narrow down what appears.
Show HP Percentage adds a numeric percentage alongside the bar so you can read exact remaining health instead of estimating from the bar's length. This is useful when you care about precise values rather than a quick visual glance.
Color Health Bar by Type changes how bars are colored. Instead of a single uniform color, the bar's color reflects the entity type, which makes different mobs easier to tell apart at a distance.
Background Padding adjusts the space around the bar's background. Increasing it gives the bar more breathing room; decreasing it makes the display tighter against the bar itself.
show entity full health controls whether entities at full health are shown at all. With this enabled, an entity that has taken no damage still gets a bar. With it disabled, only entities that have lost health are displayed, which reduces clutter in busy areas. The related showFullHealth option expresses the same idea for the full-health condition, letting you limit display to entities that are already at maximum health.
only health bar for target restricts the bar to the entity you are currently targeting. Everything else stops rendering a bar, so your view stays clean and only the thing you are looking at gets the readout.
Player Display
Display on Players decides whether players receive the same bar treatment as other entities. Enable it to see health bars over other players; disable it to keep player displays free of bars while mobs still show them.
render without gui lets the display render even when the GUI is hidden. If you play with the interface turned off for screenshots or a cleaner view, this keeps the entity information visible anyway.
Name Tag Render Behavior governs how name tags are drawn in relation to the display. Use it to control whether name tags appear, and how they behave alongside the bars you have enabled.
Line-of-Sight Distance Limits
max distance without line of sight sets how far away an entity can be while still showing its bar when you do not have direct line of sight to it. Entities within this range are displayed even through obstructions. Beyond this distance, an entity without line of sight is not shown. Entities you can see directly are unaffected by this limit.
This setting is the main tool for balancing awareness against clutter. A larger value reveals more entities through terrain; a smaller value keeps the display limited to what is nearby or actually visible.
Debug Information
show debug with f3 makes debug information appear together with the F3 debug screen. This is stated directly: the debug info is shown with F3.
Operating These Options
All of the options above are toggles or value settings rather than items you craft. Open the mod's interface to change them, and use the corresponding hotkey (set it in the controls menu) for any action you want bound to a key. No default key is assumed here; assign your own in the controls menu if a hotkey is needed.
A practical order is to enable Toggle Health Bars, decide whether Display on Players should be on, then use show entity full health and only health bar for target to cut down what renders. Finish by setting max distance without line of sight to a range that matches how much you want to see through walls and terrain.