OptiFine Alternatives
Why?
OptiFine was originally a great mod offering many quality of life improvements for the player in the beginning. However, over the years, its benefits have dwindled and has caused many issues for modders. This is due to Minecraft's codebase improving over the years and OptiFine's aggressiveness towards replacing entire swaths of code while being closed source making it very difficult to figure out why OptiFine has broken another modder's mod. Also, worth noting that OptiFine natively doesn't support Fabric, and it's hard to maintain OptiFabric.
In the modern Minecraft era, with Fabric's community effort, modders have begun to create alternatives for most of OptiFine's features to allow players to maintain better performance, better mod compatibility, and better support.
OptiFabric: A note about the 1.16 crashes
This list
This list will list recommended OptiFine alternatives by me (LambdAurora), so it has some requirements for mods to be listed here:
- They must be publicly available - if they're only available on request they are not eligible.
- Mods must respect the Mojang EULA.
- “PVP” clients (Badlion / Lunar / etc.) and cheat clients are not considered mods.
- Mods must not refer to cheat clients.
- Mods that change gameplay in a way (e.g. zoom) that have a way for servers to disable them will be favored.
- Free and open-source mods are favored.
This list now has a fancy URL: https://optifine.alternatives.lambdaurora.dev/
Contribute
You can contribute to this list by opening a pull request on the
data
branch via
GitHub.
Alternatives
Performance
Client
by TeamMidnightDust
Adds culling to leaf blocks, providing a huge performance boost over vanilla. Similar to OptiFine's Smart Leaves feature.
Forge
NeoForge
by juliand665, LostLuma
Reduce resource usage while Minecraft is in the background or idle.
by FoundationGames
Reduce FPS lag with block entities, as well as customize them with resource packs.
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Fabric: 1.16.3 -> 1.21.4
by bre2el
Improve performance when Minecraft is in the background, minimized or left inactive/idle for a while.
by CaffeineMC
Modern rendering engine and client-side optimization mod for Minecraft.
General
by astei
A mod to optimize the Minecraft networking stack.
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Fabric: 1.16.3 -> 1.21.10
by astei
Makes the initialization of DataFixerUpper "lazy". DataFixerUpper (or DFU for short) is the system used by Minecraft to convert old worlds to the current version you're running, in Vanilla it's initialized at startup and is slow (and eats a lot of resources). This mod delays the initialization of DFU by initializing only when needed, if you're playing only on multiplayer it'll never get initialized for example.
by CaffeineMC
No-compromises game logic/server optimization mod.
by CaffeineMC
No-compromises lighting engine optimization mod. Incompatible with Starlight.
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Fabric: 1.15 -> 1.16, 1.17 -> 1.18, 1.19.4
by PaperMC
Rewrites the light engine to fix lighting performance and lighting errors. Uses a custom format for light storage. Incompatible with Phosphor.
Cosmetic
by FoundationGames
A mod implementing the OptiFine/MCPatcher animated texture format.
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Fabric: 1.17 -> 1.21.8
by jimbot6000
Adds a slider to change the render distance for block entities.
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Fabric: 1.18 -> 1.21
by Emi
Adds predicates for more interactive item models, CIT replacement with a custom format.
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Fabric: 1.16 -> 1.16.5, 1.18 -> 1.19.3, 1.20 -> 1.20.4
by shsupercm
Re-implements MCPatcher's CIT (custom item textures from optifine resource packs)
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Fabric: 1.17 -> 1.21
by grondag
Horizon and fog match the sky color. True blue skies!
by kvverti
An independent implementation of the custom colors mod for Minecraft.
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Fabric: 1.14, 1.15 -> 1.16, 1.17 -> 1.19
by TwilightFlower
An implementation of the MCPatcher/Optifine connected textures format on the Fabric modloader.
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Fabric: 1.16
by PepperCode1
A Fabric mod that allows for efficient connected textures. Support emissive textures.
by dorianpb
An implementation of custom entity models heavily based off of Optifine's format that aims to achieve feature parity with Optifine's custom entity models.
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Fabric: 1.16, 1.17 -> 1.20
by omoflop
A mod allowing to animate GUI textures or replace container textures with minimal predicates.
-
Fabric: 1.16, 1.17
by Traben
A Fabric mod implementing support for OptiFine-format custom entity model (CEM) resourcepacks. Fully compatible with Sodium & Fresh Animations.
by Traben
A Fabric mod implementing randomized & emissive texture support for mobs set by the resourcepack. Fully compatible with the Optifine format & Sodium.
by vram-guild
JMX adds support for FREX Rendering API features to Minecraft JSON model loading. It can also be configured to load all JSON models as FREX meshes, which may offer a modest reduction in memory usage due to more efficient data structures.
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Fabric: 1.16, 1.17 -> 1.20
by FoundationGames
Data driven entity model library, should work with most entities. Does not support OptiFine's format.
-
Fabric: 1.18 -> 1.21.4, 1.21.8
by LambdAurora
Adds better grass and snow to the game.
Quilt
by LambdAurora
The most feature-complete dynamic lighting mod for Fabric.
by omoflop
Allows resource packs to change block models depending on new conditions! Custom format.
-
Fabric: 1.17 -> 1.20
by soir20
Animate almost any Minecraft texture with more options.
by FlashyReese
Allows resource packs to define custom skyboxes. OptiFine format is not compatible by default, converters are available. Formerly known as FabricSkyboxes.
by opekope2
Custom inventory GUIs on Fabric with OptiFine resource pack support & many more features.
-
Fabric: 1.18 -> 1.21.10
by MehVahdJukaar
Multipurpose Visual Customization mod: tweak colors, colormaps, lightmaps, sounds, GUI elements, biome effects, particles, fog colors and more. Supports old OptiFine formats.
by Trikzon
Allows resource packs to make entities support transparency.
by digifox03
This mod allows the resource packs creator to have multiple randomized textures for the same mob. Uses custom format, OptiFine-based resource packs will need conversion.
-
Fabric: 1.16
Splash Screen
by TeamMidnightDust
Change Minecraft's loading screen to your liking! Completely configurable!
-
Fabric: 1.16 -> 1.21.3
by A5b84
A simple mod to make the loading screen darker.
-
Fabric: 1.14 -> 1.21.10
by LoganDark
Splash is a Fabric mod that allows you to customize the colors of your splash screen.
-
Fabric: 1.16, 1.17
Shaders
by vram-guild
A new rendering engine. Incompatible with Sodium.
-
Fabric: 1.17 -> 1.20.2
by IrisShaders
A new shaders mod for Minecraft intended to be compatible with existing ShadersMod/Optifine shaders.
Fog
by Setadokalo
A mod allowing you to customize the appearance of fog in your world.
-
Fabric: 1.15 -> 1.19, 1.20.4 -> 1.21
by capnkork
Allows the user to adjust the (client) distance at which fogs render or disable them completely.
-
Fabric: 1.17, 1.20.4
by Tommeh2, Virtuoel
A simple client-side mod supporting both forge and fabric that removes all fog. (ARR)
Utility
by ramidzkh
Take insanely large screenshots, useful for content creation.
-
Fabric: 1.16 -> 1.21.10
by kb1000
No Telemetry is a mod that allows you to disable Microsofts data tracking which has been added in the snapshot 21w38a.
by juliand665
Allows you to set render resolutions and take large screenshots.
-
Fabric: 1.14, 1.15 -> 1.16
by UltimateBoomer
Allows you to set render resolutions and take large screenshots.
-
Fabric: 1.16.5, 1.19.4 -> 1.20.4
Cloud Height
by haykam
Allows changing the height at which clouds appear.
-
Fabric: 1.16.3 -> 1.21.4
by Draylar
Allows changing the height at which clouds appear.
-
Fabric: 1.15 -> 1.16
Zoom
by henkelmax
Additional features concerning the player's camera.
-
Fabric: 1.17 -> 1.21.10
by LogicalGeekBoy
Super simple zoom key for Minecraft.
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Fabric: 1.15 -> 1.16, 1.17 -> 1.21.10
by Gluton
Adds a client-side keybind for using a spyglass anywhere in your inventory.
-
Fabric: 1.17
by isXander
A rather simple zoom mod with moderate customizability.
-
Fabric: 1.18 -> 1.21.10
Extras
The mods listed below are not part of the OptiFine alternatives directly but those are still nice to have.
-
Ears
- Faithful fancy fashion features for fuzzy folk. It offers a lot of skin customization options, directly encoded into the skin file uploaded to Mojang. A very good alternative to express yourself than restrictive capes.
- Available for: b1.7.3, 1.2.5, 1.4.7 -> 1.21, Not so Seecret Saturday (a1.1.2), New Frontier Craft (b1.7.3)
-
DashLoader
- Attempts to improve loading times by caching the game's content. May be incompatible with some of the mods in this list.
- Available for: 1.16 -> 1.20.1
-
Entity View Distance
- This mods allows more precise manipulation of entity view distance on client and server
- Available for: 1.17 -> 1.20.4
-
FerriteCore
- Memory usage optimizations.
- Available for: 1.16 -> 1.20.4
-
Hydrogen
- Reduces the memory usage of the game in more modded scenarios.
- Available for: 1.16 -> 1.17
-
Overworld Two
provides an alternative optimized world generator for overworld and nether. Much faster than Vanilla but isn't identical to Vanilla.
- Available for: 1.16
-
Sodium Extra
- Adds features that should not be in Sodium.
- Available for: 1.16 -> 1.20.4
-
Reese's Sodium Options
- Alternative Options Menu for Sodium with intention of improving UX.
- Available for: 1.16 -> 1.20.4
No Dynamic FOV
As of 1.16.2 and above, this is now a vanilla feature under the accessibility settings. If you are playing in 1.16.2 or above, the mods for this feature are irrelevant.
These are client-only mods that prevent Minecraft from changing the FOV in all situations.
Compatibility
Only one mod at a time can replace the rendering engine, as such feature requires a full control of the engine to avoid graphical corruption and crashes. This means rendering mods like Sodium, VulkanMod, and Canvas Renderer are incompatible.
When a mod replaces the rendering engine it will also need to provide support for Fabric Renderer API, so that mods which interact with custom models can properly render them.
Canvas provides a Fabric Renderer implementation, Sodium only provides one since its 0.6 release, before then Indium was required to add support. As a rule of thumb, Sodium 0.6 exists since 1.21, Sodium 0.5 and below target 1.20.6 and below and will require Indium on those versions.
Missing
- Custom entity models (might come to Vanilla at an unknown date?) currently incompletely replaced: current existing implementations are very hardcoded to Vanilla entities
- Vertical culling for glass panes currently incompletely replaced: culling is either excessive (MC-264676) or none at all
- Overlay blending mode for glass (originally a MCPatcher feature)
Need help?
If you need help about Sodium, Lithium, Phosphor (any of CaffeineMC's mod to be short), please check out CaffeineMC's discord server.
If you need help related to LambDynamicLights, LambdaBetterGrass, or Inspecio, if you don't want to post in the comments a suggestion you can check out my own discord server