Customize Spring Boot Startup Banner with ASCII Art and ANSI Colors

What is Spring Boot banner.txt

When a Spring Boot application starts it prints a banner whose content is read from resources/banner.txt. By editing this file you can display any ASCII art, version information, or custom messages.

Creating or modifying banner.txt

Place the file under src/main/resources in your project. Example content using Spring Boot placeholders:

===========================================
==         AbsWeb 启动成功！ 🚀         ==
==         端口：${server.port}          ==
==         环境：${spring.profiles.active} ==
==         时间：${date}                ==
===========================================

Supported placeholders: ${application.version} – version from the JAR’s

MANIFEST.MF

${application.formatted-version}

– formatted version string ${spring-boot.version} – Spring Boot version ${server.port} – HTTP port ${spring.profiles.active} – active profile name ${date} – current date/time ${AnsiColor.NAME} – console colour (e.g., GREEN, RED)

Adding colour and style (optional)

Spring Boot supports ANSI escape codes. Wrap the banner with a colour code and reset it afterwards:

${AnsiColor.BRIGHT_CYAN}
===========================================
==         AbsWeb 启动成功！ 🚀         ==
==         端口：${server.port}          ==
==         环境：${spring.profiles.active} ==
==         时间：${date}                ==
===========================================
${AnsiColor.DEFAULT}

The result appears in cyan on terminals that support ANSI colours.

Disabling the default banner

To generate the banner programmatically, turn off the built‑in banner:

# application.yml
spring:
  main:
    banner-mode: "off"

or

# application.properties
spring.main.banner-mode=off

Printing a custom banner from Java

Define ANSI colour constants and a printBanner() method in the main class. Example:

public class AbsWebApplication {
    private static final String RESET = "\u001B[0m";
    private static final String CYAN  = "\u001B[36m";
    private static final String BLUE  = "\u001B[34m";
    private static final String PURPLE = "\u001B[35m";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(AbsWebApplication.class, args);
        printBanner();
    }

    private static void printBanner() {
        System.out.println();
        System.out.println(CYAN + "╔════════════════════════════════════════════╗" + RESET);
        // ... other lines omitted for brevity ...
        System.out.println(CYAN + "║ Version: v2.6.13  Time: " + java.time.LocalTime.now() + " ║" + RESET);
        System.out.println(CYAN + "╚════════════════════════════════════════════╝" + RESET);
        System.out.println();
    }
}

Running the application prints the coloured banner shown below.

Online tools for generating ASCII art (optional):

https://patorjk.com/software/taag/

https://ascii.co.uk/art

https://fsymbols.com/generators/carty/