Spring Boot banner

Spring Boot banner tutorial shows how to create banners in a Spring Boot application. Banner is a text message that is displayed at the start of a Spring Boot application.

springboot

Aug 29, 2025

last modified July 16, 2023

Spring Boot banner tutorial shows how to create banners in Spring Boot application.

Spring Boot is a popular application framework for creating enterprise application in Java, Kotlin, or Groovy.

Spring Boot banner is a text message that is displayed at the start of a Spring Boot application.

. ____ _ __ _ _ /\ / ’ __ _ () __ __ _ \ \ \
( ( )__ | ‘_ | ‘| | ‘ / ` | \ \ \
\/ )| |)| | | | | || (| | ) ) ) ) ’ || .__|| ||| |_, | / / / / =========||==============|/=//// :: Spring Boot :: (v3.1.1)

This is how the default banner looks like. This banner can be turned off or it is also possible to create a custom banner.

The banner can be disabled using configuration settings or programatically.

spring.main.banner-mode=off

We can turn off the banner with the spring.main.banner-mode property.

SPRING_MAIN_BANNER-MODE=off

It is also possible to disable the banner with the SPRING_MAIN_BANNER-MODE environment variable.

new SpringApplicationBuilder(MyApplication.class) .bannerMode(Banner.Mode.OFF) .run(args) … var app = new SpringApplication(Application.class); app.setBannerMode(Banner.Mode.OFF); app.run(args);

Programatically, it is possible to turn off the banner with SpringApplicationBuilder or SpringApplication.

The banner can be specified in text file. The default name for a banner is banner.txt. The default location of banner files is src/main/resources.

spring.banner.location=classpath:custom-banner.txt

The default location of a text file banner can be configured with the spring.banner.location property.

Custom ASCII banners can be created using specialized sites such as patorjk.com/software/taag.

Inside the banner.txt file, we can use any of the following placeholders:

        Variable
        Description
    



    
        ${application.version}
        The version number of your application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF
    
    
        ${application.formatted-version}
        The version number of your application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF
            and formatted for display
    
    
        ${spring-boot.version}
        The Spring Boot version
    
    
        ${spring-boot.formatted-version}
        The Spring Boot version formatted for display
    
    
        ${application.title}
        The title of the application, as declared in MANIFEST.MF

In addition, the text can be coloured with variables such as ${AnsiColor.NAME} or ${AnsiBackground.NAME}.

Note: On Windows, the colours can be seen only on the built-in IntelliJ IDEA terminal or the newest Windows terminal; it is also necessary to set the spring.output.ansi.enabled property to always.

The following application uses a custom banner.

build.gradle … src ├───main │ ├───java │ │ └───com │ │ └───zetcode │ │ Application.java │ └───resources │ application.properties │ banner.txt └── test ├── java └── resources

This is the project structure of the Spring Boot application.

build.gradle

plugins { id ‘java’ id ‘org.springframework.boot’ version ‘3.1.1’ id ‘io.spring.dependency-management’ version ‘1.1.0’ }

group = ‘com.example’ version = ‘0.0.1-SNAPSHOT’

java { sourceCompatibility = ‘17’ }

repositories { mavenCentral() }

dependencies { implementation ‘org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter’ }

This is the Gradle build file. The spring-boot-starter is the core starter that includes auto-configuration support, logging, and YAML. The application is packaged into a JAR file.

resources/application.properties

spring.main.log-startup-info=false spring.output.ansi.enabled=always

The spring.output.ansi.enabled property is needed to enable colours on Windows.

resources/banner.txt

__      __             ___

/\ \ /\ \ /_
\ \ /\ \ \ \ __ //\ \ ___ ___ ___ ___ __ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ /’\ \ \ \ /'___\ / __\ /’ __\ /’\ \ \ \_/ \_\ \/\ __/ \_\ \_ /\ \__/ /\ \L\ \/\ \/\ \/\ \ /\ __/ \ _x_/\ _\ /_\ _\ _/\ _\ _\ _\ _
‘///_/ // // // // ////// /____/

Application Name: ${application.title} Application Version: ${application.version} ${AnsiColor.RED} :: Spring Boot${spring-boot.formatted-version} :: ${AnsiColor.RED} ${AnsiColor.DEFAULT}

This is our text banner. The application name and the application version are only displayed when executing the final JAR file; i.e. not from IDE. We use the ${AnsiColor.RED} to output the Spring Boot formatted version in red colour.

com/zetcode/Application.java

package com.zetcode;

import org.springframework.boot.Banner; import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner; import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication; import org.springframework.boot.builder.SpringApplicationBuilder;

@SpringBootApplication public class Application implements CommandLineRunner {

public static void main(String[] args) {

    new SpringApplicationBuilder(Application.class)

// .bannerMode(Banner.Mode.OFF) .run(args); }

@Override
public void run(String... args) throws Exception {

    System.out.println("Spring Boot console application");
}

}

The Application sets up the Spring Boot application. The CommandLineRunner interface indicates that a bean should run when it is contained within a SpringApplication. It can be used to create command line applications in Spring Boot.

$ ./gradlew bootRun

Application Name: Application Version: :: Spring Boot (v3.1.1) ::

Spring Boot console application

We build the application and run it.

In this tutorial we have worked with a Spring Boot banner.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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