Use the Vanish Plugin on Rust

Vanish, by Whispers88, lets a player with permission turn invisible on a Rust server, so staff can watch for cheaters or look into a report without being seen. It also covers the details around that: noclip, locked doors, an inventory viewer and what happens when a vanished admin disconnects.

Checked against Vanish 2.1.5 on uMod, October 2026 (released 6 August 2026). uMod describes it as allowing players with permission to become truly invisible.

If you run Carbon

Carbon ships its own optional Vanish module, which is off by default. Carbon's documentation lists the same vanish chat command and the permissions vanish.allow, vanish.unlock and vanish.permanent for it. Typing c.modules in the Console lists the modules, and c.setmodule Vanish true turns this one on, the same way it does for other Carbon modules. Use the module or the plugin, not both, because they answer to the same command and permission names. The rest of this guide is about the plugin, which has more permissions and options than the module.

Install it

Open the Plugins tab, stay on Store, search for Vanish and press Install. How to install Oxide/uMod plugins on your Rust server covers the tab and config window.

On Oxide, a newly installed plugin stays unloaded until you restart the server or type oxide.load Vanish in the Console. On Carbon it loads by itself within seconds, and oxide.load does nothing there, so use c.load Vanish, c.unload Vanish and c.reload Vanish. Permissions only exist once the plugin has loaded, so grant them afterwards.

Permissions

For a moderator, grant the first two from the Console, using their SteamID64:

oxide.grant user 76561198000000001 vanish.allow
oxide.grant user 76561198000000001 vanish.unlock

On Carbon, oxide.grant does nothing. Use c.grant with the same arguments, for example c.grant user 76561198000000001 vanish.allow.

Using it

• /vanish in chat toggles invisibility. /vanish true and /vanish false force it on or off, which suits a key bind. Type them in lower case, because True with a capital T toggles instead.
• With NoClip on Vanish on, which is the default, going invisible also switches noclip on, and reappearing switches it off.
• /inv or /invspy (the names come from the Inventory view cmd setting) opens the inventory of the player you are looking at, or of a player you name by name or SteamID64. It needs vanish.invviewer.
• With the teleport option on, hold the reload key while you place a map marker and a vanished player with vanish.teleport moves to it.
• The older debug.invis and invis commands still work, but they print a notice that /vanish has replaced them.

Settings

The first load writes oxide/config/Vanish.json (carbon/configs on Carbon). Edit it in the Config window on the Plugins tab. These defaults matter most:

• Automatically vanish players (with the vanish.use perm) on player connect is false. Turn it on to start every permitted player vanished.
• Keep a vanished player hidden on disconnect is true, and Teleport a vanished player above the map on connect is true.
• Disable metabolism in vanish and Turn off fly hack detection for players in vanish are both true.
• Enable GUI is true and shows an icon while you are vanished.
• Enable chat notifications is true.

The SteamIDs of players who were still hidden when they disconnected are kept in oxide/data/VanishPlayers.json (carbon/data/VanishPlayers.json on Carbon).

Common problems

1. "You do not have permission to do this." The player lacks vanish.allow (or vanish.invviewer for the inventory viewer).
2. "You are in a permanent vanish mode." The player holds vanish.permanent, so /vanish has nothing to toggle. Revoke that permission to give them control back.
3. A vanished admin cannot open a door. Grant vanish.unlock.
4. Damage works normally while vanished. The plugin only blocks damage between a vanished player and others when Use OnEntityTakeDamage hook is true, and it is false by default. With it on, a vanished player deals damage only if they hold vanish.damage.