Metal Shaders

Native Metal shaders for Minecraft: Java Edition on Apple Silicon Macs. Real-time shadows, volumetric clouds, god rays, reflective water, HDR and more, written directly in Metal instead of going through OpenGL, at the full resolution of a Retina display.

Download · Install · Performance · Features · ☕ Support · Español

Alpha. It runs well on the Mac it was built on (MacBook Pro M4), but expect bugs. Back up your worlds.

Every shader pack for Java Edition runs through Iris on OpenGL, and OpenGL on macOS has been frozen since 2011. On a MacBook Pro M4 at its native 3024×1964, Iris + Complementary Reimagined runs at about 22 FPS.

Metal Shaders is a fork of mcopt, a mod that gives Minecraft 26.3 a Metal renderer and, since mcopt 0.3, its own terrain renderer (no Sodium needed). On top of it, every effect is written from scratch in Metal Shading Language and runs inside the game's own frame, with Apple-GPU-specific tricks (tile memory, compressed render targets, a custom temporal upscaler). Same Mac, same resolution: 90–120 FPS with the balanced preset, and 135–150 FPS at 1440p.

Recorded in-game on a MacBook Pro M4 (the camera paths were scripted with the test harness in bench/).

Showcase (85 s): sunsets, god rays, water, survival, auroras	Every preset × every resolution with F3 (49 s)

Full-resolution photos (3024×1964) are in the release.

MacBook Pro 14" M4 (10-core GPU), macOS 26, Minecraft 26.3, measured in-game with 1.0-alpha while recording the videos above (the recorder costs a few FPS). F3 shows the numbers in each clip. 1.2 (mcopt 0.3, no Sodium) runs at the same speed as before: measured against 1.1 on the same Mac, +0.8 % in a lake test and −1.1 % in a fast flight over new terrain (+1.6 % / −0.5 % with Distant Horizons).

Average FPS over each 10-second clip, 16 chunks, while recording the video (F3 on):

For reference, on the same Mac: Iris + Complementary Reimagined (OpenGL) at 3024×1964 ≈ 22 FPS, at 1080p ≈ 43 FPS.

• Shadows from the sun and the moon (cascaded shadow maps, soft contact-hardening shadows), coloured shadows through stained glass, entity shadows.
• Lighting: sky light, block light and bounce, held lights (a torch in your hand lights the world around you, around corners), emissive blocks.
• Sky: physically based atmosphere, sun and moon discs, stars and the Milky Way, aurora in cold biomes.
• An in-game settings menu (pause menu → Shaders...): about 120 settings on 11 pages (lighting, shadows, colour and camera, atmosphere, god rays, clouds, night sky, water, weather, Nether and End, performance), in English and Spanish, most of them applied live while you watch.
• Volumetric clouds with cloud shadows, lit by the sunset; or blocky clouds: Minecraft's own cloud shapes with volume, sunlight, shadows and reflections; or the game's normal clouds.
• God rays (volumetric light) through forests, cave mouths and clouds; morning mist and forest air.
• Water: waves, screen-space reflections, refraction, absorption, caustics, foam, waterfalls with white water, underwater fog and light shafts.
• Weather: wet surfaces and puddles, rain ripples, lightning.
• HDR pipeline with bloom, auto-exposure, a filmic tonemap, and XDR/EDR output on Liquid Retina XDR displays.
• TAAU (temporal anti-aliasing and upscaling) and dynamic resolution; an output resolution button in the pause menu.
• Nether and End looks.
• Distant Horizons support: the far LODs are lit by the same shaders (lighting, fog, water reflections).
• Presets: performance, balanced, quality, ultra; looks: epic, storybook, natural.
• Runs on macOS 15 Sequoia, 26 and 27. The shaders compile in the background, so the first world load after installing or updating macOS takes a fraction of a second instead of a few seconds.

You need:

• An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) on macOS 15 Sequoia or later
• Minecraft: Java Edition 26.3 with Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer, on Java 25

That's all: since 1.2 Sodium is not needed (mcopt 0.3 draws the terrain itself), and the game won't start with Sodium installed next to it.

Steps:

1. Install Fabric for 26.3 (installer, or in Prism Launcher: new instance → 26.3 → Fabric).
2. Put metal-shaders-<version>.jar (from Releases) in your mods folder.
3. Start the game. The shaders are on from the first launch (balanced preset).

Updating from 1.0: take Sodium out of the mods folder and replace the old Metal Shaders jar. Your settings are kept (the config's profile=alpha line changes to profile=indie by itself, the terrain renderer the shaders light).

Settings: pause the game and press Shaders... (above the Resolution and Output buttons). Changes show at once behind the menu; the ones marked with * apply after restarting the game. Reset page / Reset all bring back the defaults. The Fabulous graphics preset works too (since 1.2.2; before, it made the water invisible). General → Shaders: On/Off (since 1.2.1) turns the shaders off after a restart, so the game runs plain mcopt 0.3 (Metal without effects, more FPS); the pause menu keeps its Shaders... button to turn them back on. Everything you change is saved in config/mcopt.properties in your game folder (written on the first launch), where you can also edit it by hand:

For the most FPS: Video Settings → VSync off, Max Framerate unlimited. To see your FPS, press F3.

Distant Horizons (optional): add Distant Horizons 3.3.4 for 26.3 and Fabric API to the mods folder. It runs on Metal too, and its far terrain is lit by the same shaders (DH's own SSAO, anti-aliasing and fog are turned off while they run). Since 1.2.2, Shaders... → Performance → Distant Horizons picks DH's distance and detail from presets tested with the shaders (DH's own / Performance 32 chunks / Balanced 64, the default / Quality 96 / Ultra 128; on an M4 at 1080p with 8 normal chunks: about 168 / 134 / 114 / 109 FPS), and DH's far water always gets the shaders' water, even with DH's transparency off. With DH, 8 to 12 normal chunks look and run well.

• Bottom half of the screen dark with DH? DH's Vanilla Fade Mode is on DOUBLE_PASS (DH's default), which clashes with the shaders. Since 1.0-alpha.2 the mod sets it to NONE by itself at startup. On 1.0-alpha: open config/DistantHorizons.toml, set vanillaFadeMode = "NONE" (or SINGLE_PASS), and restart the game (DH reads it only at startup).

• metal/ — the mod (fork of mcopt 0.3.0-alpha.2). The shading code is in metal/src/main/resources/mcopt/shade/*.metal (the terrain's in terrain_own.metal) and metal/src/main/java/mcopt/metal/shade/. Everything new sits behind mcopt.shade flags: with mcopt.shade=false the mod behaves like upstream mcopt.
• docs/shader-bible.md — the design of every effect (E01–E27), frame budgets and licensing. docs/research/ — studies of Apple GPUs, the 26.3 renderer, Iris, Distant Horizons and other packs' techniques. docs/releases/ — notes of every version (in Spanish).
• bench/ — the test harness: mcbench (an in-game benchmark mod: a fixed world, camera routes, screenshots, frame times, and the "cine" mode that recorded the videos above) and the scripts that launch the game and measure it.

Build: ./gradlew :metal:build with JDK 25 → metal/build/libs/.

Metal Shaders is free and open source, and it will stay that way. If you enjoy it and want to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi or GitHub Sponsors. It helps me keep testing and adding things. It's built on mcopt by Noah Dunnagan, so a star on his repo is a nice thank-you too.

• mcopt by Noah Dunnagan — Apache-2.0. Since 1.2 (mcopt 0.3) nothing is derived from Sodium; versions up to 1.0-alpha.4 had Sodium-derived terrain shaders under the PolyForm Shield 1.0.0 licence.
• Portions of the clouds and volumetric light are adapted from Photon Shaders by sixthsurge, from its MIT-licensed snapshot 26c2906e (LICENSES/MIT-Photon.txt). Other techniques credited in NOTICE (SE Natural Bloom, MJP's Catmull-Rom, public papers). No code from Complementary, BSL or SEUS: those were only studied.
• Distant Horizons is LGPL and is not included; install it separately.
• Shader code and the harness: Apache-2.0. Not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft.

Made by Gael Quintanilla, with Claude (Anthropic) writing most of the code.

Shaders nativos en Metal para Minecraft Java en Macs con Apple Silicon. Sombras, nubes volumétricas, rayos de sol (godrays), agua con reflejos, HDR y más, escritos directamente en Metal en lugar de pasar por OpenGL.

En una MacBook Pro M4 a resolución completa (3024×1964), Iris + Complementary corre a ~22 FPS. Con Metal Shaders, la misma Mac a la misma resolución da 90–120 FPS (preset balanceado), y 135–150 FPS a 1440p.

Instalación: Mac con Apple Silicon y macOS 15 Sequoia o más nuevo (también 26 y 27), Minecraft 26.3 con Fabric 0.19.5 y Java 25. Desde la 1.2 ya no hace falta Sodium (mcopt 0.3 dibuja el terreno por su cuenta; con Sodium instalado el juego no arranca). Pon el jar de Releases en la carpeta mods y abre el juego: los shaders se activan solos (preset balanceado). Si vienes de la 1.0: quita Sodium de mods y cambia el jar viejo por el nuevo; tus ajustes se conservan.

Ajustes: pausa el juego y entra a Shaders...: unos 120 ajustes en 11 páginas (iluminación, sombras, color y cámara, atmósfera, rayos de sol, nubes, cielo de noche, agua, clima, Nether y End, rendimiento), en español e inglés según el idioma del juego. Casi todos se ven al momento; los marcados con * se aplican al reiniciar. Nubes: volumétricas, cuadradas (las de Minecraft con volumen, luz y sombras), las normales del juego, o ninguna. General → Shaders: Sí/No (desde la 1.2.1) los apaga al reiniciar para usar mcopt 0.3 tal cual (más FPS); el botón Shaders... sigue en el menú de pausa para volver a prenderlos. La resolución de salida se cambia con el botón "Salida" del menú de pausa. Compatible con Distant Horizons 3.3.4 + Fabric API (opcional); desde la 1.2.2, en Shaders... → Rendimiento → Distant Horizons eliges presets de DH probados con los shaders (Rendimiento, Balanceado, Calidad, Ultra), y el agua lejana de DH siempre tiene los reflejos de los shaders. El preset gráfico Fabulous ya funciona (antes el agua se volvía invisible). Si con DH la mitad de abajo de la pantalla se ve oscura (versión 1.0-alpha): en config/DistantHorizons.toml pon vanillaFadeMode = "NONE" y reinicia el juego; desde la 1.0-alpha.2 el mod lo hace solo.

Es una versión alfa: haz respaldo de tus mundos.

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