s3.amazonaws.com Minecraft.Download

This is the most up-to-date JAR source. It also provides some advanced stuff which we'll go over later, but now the basics.

Resources for these versions: https://github.com/tomsik68/mclauncher-api/wiki/Minecraft-1.6-resources

Download the version list

This source is the most sophisticated one, so it provides version list and information about different versions separately. The version list is located at https://launchermeta.mojang.com/mc/game/version_manifest.json

I'll trim the repeating values, so we can better understand it:

{
  "versions": [
    {
      "id": "1.14.4-pre3",
      "type": "snapshot",
      "url": "https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/05582943711628ecc6efa1849eb23c0c51117cbe/1.14.4-pre3.json",
      "time": "2019-07-08T11:25:22+00:00",
      "releaseTime": "2019-07-08T11:21:42+00:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "1.14.4-pre2",
      "type": "snapshot",
      "url": "https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/c95933990092b5bc44ad976bd87e76482b29c347/1.14.4-pre2.json",
      "time": "2019-07-04T14:43:13+00:00",
      "releaseTime": "2019-07-04T14:41:05+00:00"
    },
  ],
  "latest": {
    "release": "1.14.3",
    "snapshot": "1.14.4-pre3"
  },
}

---

Version List Step By Step

  "versions": [
    {
      "id": "1.14.4-pre3",
      "type": "snapshot",
      "url": "https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/05582943711628ecc6efa1849eb23c0c51117cbe/1.14.4-pre3.json",
      "time": "2019-07-08T11:25:22+00:00",
      "releaseTime": "2019-07-08T11:21:42+00:00"
    },
    {
      "id": "1.14.4-pre2",
      "type": "snapshot",
      "url": "https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/c95933990092b5bc44ad976bd87e76482b29c347/1.14.4-pre2.json",
      "time": "2019-07-04T14:43:13+00:00",
      "releaseTime": "2019-07-04T14:41:05+00:00"
    },
  ],

This is the version list. It includes basic information about available versions.

---

Single version step-by-step

    {
      "id": "1.14.4-pre2",
      "type": "snapshot",
      "url": "https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/c95933990092b5bc44ad976bd87e76482b29c347/1.14.4-pre2.json",
      "time": "2019-07-04T14:43:13+00:00",
      "releaseTime": "2019-07-04T14:41:05+00:00"
    },

• id = Version ID (1.6.1 or 13w18c) ATTENTION: THIS IS NOT UNIQUE, AS YOU MAY FIND SNAPSHOT CALLED 1.5.2 AND RELEASE 1.5.2 IN THE LIST!
• time
• releaseTime
• type = release/snapshot
• url = where to download full version information JSON

I didn't figure out the difference between `time` and `releaseTime` fields, so don't ask me about that(sometimes, they're the same, sometimes they differ in hours, minutes, seconds or days...).

Latest section

  "latest": {
    "release": "1.14.3",
    "snapshot": "1.14.4-pre3"
  },

I think this is pretty self-explanatory. It tells us which versions are latest for individual release types.

Further steps

Let's say we want to download snapshot 1.14.4-pre2. First, you need to download JSON from https://launchermeta.mojang.com/v1/packages/c95933990092b5bc44ad976bd87e76482b29c347/1.14.4-pre2.json . There, you can find more information about this version.

To understand the full version information JSON, check out Extended version information.