Tutorials/Minecraft help FAQ

Template:TOC Before anyone can help players in the Minecraft Discord channel or Minecraft Forums, please make sure that the following has been performed so that we can eliminate these as possibilities. The player would be surprised how many problems these simple suggestions fix.

Note that no community channel is able to help players with account issues. For those, see the help website.

• Make sure the machine meets the specifications provided by Mojang here.
• Make sure the player is running the latest version of Java. On GNU/Linux, OpenJDK works as well but is not supported by Mojang. Headless versions don't
• If you are experiencing weird behavior and are using the most recent Java, try reinstalling Minecraft (see below)
• Some graphical issues may be related to old or outdated graphical drivers, make sure these are up to date from the manufacturer website. Windows update/device manager don't always install the correct ones
• If you are playing on a laptop/notebook/tablet or any other mobile device, make sure to be in high-performance mode rather than energy saving mode.
• Make sure that your OS, in general, is up to date.
  • Windows: Windows Update
  • macOS: Software Update
  • Debian-based GNU/Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint): in a terminal: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
  • RedHat based GNU/Linux distributions: yum update
  • Arch-based Linux systems: pacman -Syu

If the player still have issues after this point, and none of the basic answers below can solve the problem, then make sure the following have been done:

• If the game is crashing, copy and paste the crash log into Ubuntu Paste and copy the link into the channel with a description of your problem.
• Please be patient, the people the help in this channel are volunteering their expertise. Also, all help in the channel is considered "best effort"

Common fixes

Reinstalling Minecraft

One of the common ways to fix an ailing Minecraft installation of various bugs is to simply re-install it. Removing the launcher itself (the file you downloaded) however will not remove Minecraft. The steps below should work for most people.
Important step: Be sure to do a forced update if you still have issues.

Windows

1. Navigate to your Application Data Folder: %AppData%
2. Double Click the .minecraft folder
3. Copy out the saves folder to a different location
4. Go back one directory (to where you can see .minecraft)
5. Drag the .minecraft folder into the trash
6. Start the Minecraft.exe file to re-download Minecraft
7. Close Minecraft when you reach the title screen
8. Copy the saves folder back into the new .minecraft folder. You can safely overwrite any data that's currently in this folder

GNU/Linux

1. Open a terminal
2. Copy and Paste the following, one at a time, into the terminal to delete the current minecraft installation and retain the current saved worlds.
3. (Do not remove files to the /tmp directory, things can get randomly cleared. It is generally bad practice to do so)

$ mv -v ~/.minecraft/saves ~/saves.old/

Be careful, do not continue if your terminal gives you an error. The next command deletes your minecraft folder so if the prior command did not work all your hard work would be lost! Do NOT Run this under sudo or the root user

$ rm -rf ~/.minecraft/*
$ mv ~/saves.old/saves ~/.minecraft/saves
$ rm -rf ~/saves.old

1. Start Minecraft like you normally would. Your saves should be intact and the Minecraft client will re-download itself for you.

Alternatively, open up your Home folder and press Ctrl+H. This shows all hidden files and folders. Navigate down to .minecraft. From here, you can work in essentially the same way as outlined in the instructions for Windows above.

MacOS

1. Open a Finder window
2. Click the Go Menu item and Click Go to Folder
3. Type ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft into the text field and click Go
4. Drag the saves folder to your desktop
5. Drag everything else in the minecraft folder to the trash
6. Drag the saves folder back into the minecraft folder
7. Close the Finder window and launch the Minecraft App just like you would normally.

Latest Version

If you are having issues after a reinstall, or are having other client issues, you can try using forced update.

1. Open the Minecraft launcher
2. Click on the arrow (directly beside the version)
3. Click on "Latest Version!"
4. Click on "Play"
5. Soon, the client will re-download the game files

Reinstalling/Updating Java

• If Minecraft is not working due to an issue with Java, your Java install may be corrupt and/or out of date. To remedy a corrupt install, begin by uninstalling Java. After the uninstall is complete, you can then try reinstalling.
• For Windows users, it's recommended to use an uninstaller program, such as Revo Uninstaller (free) to remove Java. Revo will search in-depth for all things Java, and remove the files.
• To re-download/update Java, visit Java's download page here. Download the correct version for your machine, based on what operating system you have.
• Make sure you be careful with all instructions! (Anyone can edit this page)

Updating video drivers ("Bad video card drivers!"... et alia)

• If Minecraft has poor performance, has graphics that are distorted, or is simply not working, it's possible that you need a driver or an updated driver installed.
• Some graphics cards only accept drivers from the manufacturer of the computer (i.e. Dell, HP, Toshiba). Visit the support site of the company that affects you, if that ends up being the case for you.
• Windows Update is not a good method for updating video drivers. If a generic driver is installed, you should remove it before installing a new driver. Create a system restore point, or perform a driver rollback if you experience issues after installing a new driver.
• If further help is need the video in the link may help you to fix this error - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zkpyLMSFB0

Update instructions

• AMD users: Use the AMD Driver Autodetect utility to automatically find your driver. Alternatively, use AMD's GPU support webpage to find the appropriate driver.
• Intel users: Use the Intel Driver Update Utility to automatically find your driver. Alternatively, use Intel's Download Center to find the appropriate driver.
• Nvidia users: Use Nvidia's Smart Scan utility (Java required) to automatically find your driver. Alternatively, use Nvidia's Download drivers webpage to find the appropriate driver.

Common Questions

How to Back Up Minecraft Worlds

While in Minecraft, select the world you wish to backup and click edit. You will then have the option to create a backup, which will be saved in /.minecraft/backups as a .zip file.

Setting up a Server

Go here for information on setting up a server.

Installing Client on Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Download this script and run the following commands in a terminal:

sudo chmod 755 ~/Downloads/minecraft_installer.sh
sudo sh ~/Downloads/minecraft_installer.sh --install_client

Playing through a proxy on GNU/Linux

Install proxychains and use a configuration file such as:

$ cat ~/.proxychains/proxychains.conf
strict_chain
[ProxyList]
http <proxyHost> <proxyPort>

Then run Minecraft through proxychains:

$ proxychains java -jar Minecraft.jar

Syncing Your Single Player Worlds Across Multiple Machines

All of your single-player worlds is stored in the saves folder within .minecraft. The folders names are the same as names of your worlds in Minecraft. There are several ways you can backup/archive or copy worlds across different machines.

Manual Syncing

If you want to simply manually back them up for later use, you can either copy out the whole saves folder, or just the world folder that you want to backup. If you want to move the order to the worlds in the saved menu, just change the number at the end of the world folder name to adjust the order as you would like.

Automatic Syncing via Dropbox

If you want all world saves to automatically synced and backed up across multiple systems (and revision controlled), The easiest way to do this would be to use Dropbox. First thing you need to do is sign up for an account on Dropbox.com and download the client on all of your systems.

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on GNU/Linux

This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for GNU/Linux. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (HOME/Dropbox) for your client.

1. Close Minecraft
2. Open a terminal
3. Copy and paste the following into your terminal:

 mv ~/.minecraft/saves ~/Dropbox/Minecraft; ln -s $HOME/Dropbox/Minecraft $HOME/.minecraft/saves

1. Close the terminal

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on macOS

This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for macOS. For you Mac users, I'm sorry there isn't a more "Mac-Friendly" way of handling this, however, we are taking advantage of some of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (HOME/Dropbox) for your client.

1. Close Minecraft
2. Open a terminal
3. Copy and paste the following into your terminal:

 mv ~/Library/"Application Support"/minecraft/saves ~/Dropbox/Minecraft;ln -s $HOME/Dropbox/Minecraft $HOME/Library/"Application Support"/minecraft/saves

1. Close the terminal

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Windows Vista, 7 & 8

This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for Windows Vista and 7. We will be using symbolic links so we will need to get under the hood a little bit. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (%HomePath%\Dropbox) for your client.

1. Close Minecraft
2. Open a new Explorer window
3. Go to %AppData%\.minecraft
4. Open a second Explorer window with the My Dropbox folder open
5. Move the saves Folder in the .minecraft window to the My Dropbox window
6. Rename the saves Folder to Minecraft
7. Close both windows
8. Go to Start → Run and type CMD and hit enter (note: you may need to run CMD as Administrator)
9. Type the following:

 mklink /d %AppData%\.minecraft\saves %HomePath%\Documents\Dropbox\Minecraft

1. Be sure to double check the path to your Dropbox directory in the above command
2. (if it gives you a message about needing Administrator access then go back to the Start Menu and right click on cmd and choose "Run as Administrator" and then retype the above command)
3. Close the Command Prompt and enjoy Minecraft on multiple PCs.

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Windows 2000 and XP

This process will link the saves folder for minecraft into Dropbox for Windows 2000 and XP. We will be using the Windows equivalent of symbolic links so we will need to get under the hood a little bit. We will be assuming that you have setup Dropbox to use the default folder (%HomePath%\My Documents\Dropbox) for your client.

1. Close Minecraft
2. Download Junction from Microsoft's site and install it.
3. Open a new Explorer window
4. Go to %AppData%\.minecraft
5. Open a second Explorer window with the Dropbox folder open
6. Move the saves Folder in the .minecraft window to the Dropbox window
7. Rename the saves Folder to Minecraft
8. Close both windows
9. Go to Start → Run and enter CMD and hit return.
10. Type the following:

 junction -d %AppData%\.minecraft\saves "%HomePath%\My Documents\Dropbox\Minecraft"

1. Close the Command Prompt

Linking Minecraft to Dropbox on Windows 7 & 8

You can do the same as for Windows XP above, but you do not need to download junction.exe.

To create a junction in Windows 7 & 8 use the built-in mklink command. mklink /J saves <path to dropbox folder> should do the trick.

This section needs more information.