Auto Pin Signs

Auto Pin Signs creates map pins from the text of signs without requiring the player to open the map. It is intended primarily for no-map playthroughs used together with a compass or another navigation mod.

The mod has two pin discovery modes:

1. Local sign discovery — the original behavior. A client creates or removes pins when nearby signs are loaded.
2. Server-authoritative sign pins — an optional server-controlled mode. The server parses signs throughout the world and keeps one authoritative pin list updated for all connected clients in real time.

Configuration is synchronized from the server when the mod is installed there.

Features

• Creates pins from sign text using the five standard user pin icons: Fire, Base, Hammer, Dot and Portal.
• Supports configurable full-text lists, prefixes and suffixes.
• Prefixes and suffixes are hidden from the visible sign text and pin name while the original text remains available when editing the sign.
• Supports rich-text signs and optional rich-text tag stripping.
• Updates or removes local pins when a loaded sign changes or is destroyed.
• Can remove nearby saved user pins that no longer have a matching loaded sign.
• Can cross off recognized sign pins with Shift + E and show (x) on checked signs.
• In server-authoritative mode, pins from distant signs appear for every connected client as soon as the server processes the change, without opening the map or using a cartography table.
• Provides autopinsigns clear [range], autopinsigns status and autopinsigns resync console commands.

Server-authoritative pins

Enable Server Authoritative Pins / Enabled on the server to use the server's sign-derived list for selected standard user pin types.

The server detects signs throughout the world, updates the shared list when their parsed pin data or checked state changes and sends the current list when a client connects or requests resynchronization. Updates are live: if another player places, edits, checks, unchecks or removes a pinned sign far away, the corresponding pin is updated for connected clients without them opening the map, touching a cartography table, visiting the sign or loading its area. This is the main usability advantage over local sign discovery.

Controlled pin types

Server Authoritative Pins / Controlled pin types is a flags setting. Select any combination of Fire, Base, Hammer, Dot and Portal. The default is All.

Only selected types are replaced by the server snapshot. Types not selected remain client-controlled and continue to support ordinary local and sign-derived pins.

Warning

Enabling server-authoritative pins temporarily hides existing client pins using the selected controlled types. They remain saved in the player profile and return when authoritative mode or the corresponding controlled type is disabled. Server pins are displayed as a runtime overlay and are not saved to the player profile.

Map pings, events, players, locations, deaths and every other pin type are not removed or synchronized.

While authoritative mode is active, selected user pin types always reflect the server list. Creating local pins of those types is disabled; non-selected user pin types remain available.

Administrator-only signs

Enable Server Authoritative Pins / Only administrator signs to publish only matching signs authored by members of the Valheim server administrator list. Host-authored signs are accepted. Signs with an unknown or non-administrator author are ignored by the shared list.

This controls publication only and does not change normal game permissions for placing or editing signs.

Merging nearby duplicates

Set Server Authoritative Pins / Merge identical pins within distance above 0 to merge nearby pins that have:

• the same parsed pin type;
• the same final pin name after prefixes and suffixes are removed;
• a horizontal distance no greater than the configured number of meters.

Candidates are ordered by ZDOID and the first one is retained, making the result deterministic. The retained sign supplies the pin position and checked state. A value of 0 disables merging.

Checked pin signs

Enable General / Allow checked pin status, look at a recognized pinned sign and press Shift + E. The hover text displays the game's $hud_crossoffpin command only for signs that currently resolve to a pin.

• Normal E still opens the sign editor.
• Standard ward/private-area access is required.
• A checked sign begins with (x) followed by its parsed visible pin name.
• The original sign text is preserved for editing.
• Local mode updates the local map pin when the sign is loaded.
• Server-authoritative mode distributes the checked state in the live server snapshot, so every connected client sees the same crossed-off pin.
• Disabling the option hides checked state without deleting it; enabling it again restores the stored status.

Checked state does not change matching or duplicate identity. When duplicate merging is enabled, the retained first ZDOID sign determines the resulting pin's checked state.

Matching priority

Matching is case-insensitive and uses this priority:

1. Exact full-text matches from the configured Fire, Base, Hammer, Dot and Portal lists.
2. Explicit prefixes.
3. Explicit suffixes.
4. Partial matches from the configured lists when General -> Less strict string comparison is enabled.
5. The first configured anyPin prefix fallback.
6. The first configured anyPin suffix fallback.

When several explicit prefixes, suffixes or partial list values match, the longest matching value wins. This lets a specific rule override a shorter overlapping rule.

Prefixes and suffixes

Default prefixes:

• Fire:
• Base:
• Hammer:
• Pin:
• Portal:

Pin: Boat creates a Dot pin named Boat. The visible sign text is also Boat, while opening the sign for editing returns the original Pin: Boat text.

A prefix or suffix does not need to contain a word or include surrounding spaces. For example, configuring : as a prefix makes the sign text : Boat create a pin named Boat. The matched part is removed and whitespace around the remaining name is trimmed.

Suffixes provide the same behavior where helper words or phrases naturally come after the pin name. For example, Russian can use the prefix Тут: Тут Лодка becomes Лодка. In English, Here Boat sounds awkward, so the suffix here can be used instead: Boat here becomes Boat. The matched suffix and surrounding whitespace are removed from the final pin name.

If you want to use HTML tags as prefixes, disable General -> Strip HTML tags from text mod config. This is also useful for signs that use emoji, symbols or other values encoded through rich-text tags.

The anyPin keyword

A prefix or suffix list may contain the special value anyPin. It is not removed from sign text because it is not a real prefix or suffix; it is a final fallback that accepts any non-empty sign text when no exact, explicit prefix/suffix or partial-list rule matched.

If several pin types contain anyPin, the first type in Fire, Base, Hammer, Dot and Portal order is used. Prefix anyPin has priority over suffix anyPin.

Console commands

• autopinsigns clear [range] — removes saved standard user pins near the player. Default range: 5 meters. Server-controlled types are skipped.
• autopinsigns status — prints the active mode, revision, controlled types and pin counts.
• autopinsigns resync — rebuilds the server list or requests the current server snapshot.

Configuring

The best way to handle configs is Configuration Manager.

Or Official BepInEx Configuration Manager.

Mirrors

Nexus — legacy page. Current releases are published on Thunderstore. Questions can still be asked there, but Discord is the preferred support channel.

Donation

Buy Me a Coffee

Discord

Join server

2.0.0

• new feature: Sign Suffixes. The same as Sign Prefixes but useful for languages with different word orders.
• new mode: Server Authoritative Pins. The server maintains one shared pin list from matching signs throughout the world and updates connected clients in real time. Pins appear when another player places or edits a pinned sign, without opening the map, using a cartography table, visiting the sign or loading its area.
• added configurable authoritative pin types, optional administrator-only sign publishing and deterministic merging of identical nearby pins.
• server-authoritative pins preserve existing client pins in the player profile. Client pins are temporarily hidden while controlled and return when server authority or the corresponding controlled type is inactive.
• added optional checked sign pins. Use Shift + E on a recognized pinned sign to cross it off; checked state is synchronized in server-authoritative mode.
• migrated config synchronization to ConditionalConfigSync.

1.2.0

• configs will now be synced from server to clients if mod is installed on a server
• new feature: Sign Prefixes. If enabled, the mod checks whether sign text starts with a configured prefix (e.g. "Pin: "). Prefix text is NOT included in the pin name or visible sign text, but is preserved when editing the sign.

1.1.0

• complete rework
• more stable sign recognition and state update
• pin list configs now have custom config drawer for configuration manager
• after pin list config update sign states will be updated
• new config for removing nearby pins with no related signs

1.0.8

• patch 0.220.3

1.0.7

• Ashlands

1.0.6

• patch 0.217.46

1.0.5

• option to less strict strings comparison

1.0.4

• patch 0.217.22

1.0.3

• improved stability
• support of signs with html tags
• console command to clear nearest pins

1.0.2

• Added some protection from potential issues

1.0.1

• Added config update on sign interaction

1.0.0

• Initial release