'Minecraft: Java Edition' gets Native Apple Silicon support

AppleInsider

"Minecraft: Java Edition" gets native Apple Silicon support in "The Wild Update" version 1.19 which also introduces new biomes.

Minecraft: Java Edition supports Apple Silicon in version 1.19 update

"Minecraft" is a Microsoft-owned game by Mojang Studios and it is among the most popular video games ever created. It is available on every major console, mobile device, and computer, and now it has native support for Apple's M-series processors.

Mojang introduced the native compatibility quietly with no fanfare or even a word in the press release. Buried deep within the official release notes found within the game launcher, users can find a single line: "The M1 ARM64 architecture is now supported."

Native support means that the Java edition will no longer need to run within Rosetta 2 and have full access to the M1 processor's capabilities. It isn't clear exactly how much of a performance boost this will provide, but it could be significant.

The new update launched on June 7 across every edition of the game with new biomes to explore. There are two versions of "Minecraft" available with distinct feature sets -- Bedrock and Java.

Bedrock is the modern version of "Minecraft" that appears on iPhone, iPad, and game consoles like the Playstation. This version is cross-platform compatible so players can interact with each other within subscription-based worlds called "Realms."

The "Minecraft: Java Edition" is the classic version of "Minecraft" still updated in tandem with the Bedrock version. It is available on Mac, PC, and Linux with its own siloed Realms cross play. This is the only version available on Mac and it has been updated with native Apple Silicon support in version 1.19.

Mac users interested in buying "Minecraft: Java Edition" can purchase it from the Minecraft website for $29.99. The Java edition is bundled within a launcher with the Bedrock version, but it isn't accessible on Macs.

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auxio

Since Minecraft uses Java, its been possible for a while now to use a custom Minecraft launcher app like MultiMC to load it with an ARM Java runtime environment (JRE) and have it run natively on Apple Silicon.  But nice to see that it's finally supported out of the box.

edited June 2022

dominikhoffmann

“The Java edition is bundled within a launcher with the Bedrock version, but it isn't accessible on Macs.”

So, how do I go about launching it on an M1 Mac?

mknelson

dominikhoffmann said:

“The Java edition is bundled within a launcher with the Bedrock version, but it isn't accessible on Macs.”

So, how do I go about launching it on an M1 Mac?

That last sentence is a bit awkward. The Java version is bundled with the Bedrock version, but the Bedrock version won't run on Macs.

"Bedrock is the modern version of "Minecraft" that appears on iPhone, iPad, and game consoles like the Playstation."

Some articles say you can run the iPad version on your M1 Mac, but the graphics may be blurry.

jdiamond

Your mileage obviously may vary.  I have a 16" Macbook Pro with the 10 CPUs and 32 GPU cores.  Running straight x86 Java Minecraft through Rosetta is honestly barely playable - sometimes you can get 20 fps, but you get frequent slowdowns.  It's a lot like trying to play Minecraft on my 2015 MBP.  Then I used MultiMC with (and this is important) an ARM version of Java that is NOT the one that comes bundled with MacOS.  I was shocked to immediately get 500-700 frames per second, just like YouTubers got!  But I found this was a peak case - it can drop as low as 60FPS.  But mind you, this is at high resolution and a render/simulation distance of the full 32 chunks.  (It you use the java that's bundled with Macs, you only get about 45 fps.)

I've been doing a lot of comparisons with M1 native versions vs Intel, and Minecraft hit the #1 spot, often running a solid 100x faster in the best case, and about 5x faster in the worse case.  I will be overjoyed if the new Minecraft Java for M1 will be this good.  All they ever had to do was switch out which JVM they bundled Minecraft with, but I'm not surprised they kept this really low key - they don't want people noticing how much faster Java with M1 is versus Bedrock on Wintel.
 

jdiamond

FWIW, I found the best performance using Azul's Java 17 ARM64 JDK with ManyMC.  It's truly amazing - peak is about 100x faster in everything - imagine selecting a Minecraft world and being able to start playing in less than 4 seconds! . Minecraft and Java really seems to have the single greatest speedup going native of all applications.  For me, #2 was Blender, which was about 12x faster.

auxio

jdiamond said:

FWIW, I found the best performance using Azul's Java 17 ARM64 JDK with ManyMC.  It's truly amazing - peak is about 100x faster in everything - imagine selecting a Minecraft world and being able to start playing in less than 4 seconds! . Minecraft and Java really seems to have the single greatest speedup going native of all applications.  For me, #2 was Blender, which was about 12x faster.

Yeah, the first time I got Minecraft working with an ARM JRE on my M1 MBP (so many acronyms, lol), I was very impressed with the speed.  Not surprising given that running the Intel version under Rosetta is effectively two layers of emulation (Java bytecode -> Intel -> ARM), which is incredibly expensive.

In regard to Bedrock vs Java edition, my son refuses to play the Bedrock edition after experiencing all the things you can do with the Java edition: custom shaders, an insane number of mod packs and skins freely available, running your own home server for free (as opposed to using Realms), building your own mods, etc.  Given all the free things you can do with the Java version, it's not surprising they're not spending a lot of marketing effort on it.  I'm actually pretty surprised they're still maintaining it.

edited June 2022

marvin

dominikhoffmann said:

“The Java edition is bundled within a launcher with the Bedrock version, but it isn't accessible on Macs.”

So, how do I go about launching it on an M1 Mac?

This video shows how to load it, the Java version is loaded from the launcher that is in the bundle:

fidonet127

auxio said:

In regard to Bedrock vs Java edition, my son refuses to play the Bedrock edition after experiencing all the things you can do with the Java edition: custom shaders, an insane number of mod packs and skins freely available, running your own home server for free (as opposed to using Realms), building your own mods, etc.  Given all the free things you can do with the Java version, it's not surprising they're not spending a lot of marketing effort on it.  I'm actually pretty surprised they're still maintaining it.

if I may, we run a bedrock server at home, and MS offers the server software for free. You can get free Mods for it, just not as much. The bedrock edition is more efficient CPU wise as it is written in C or C++. We run the bedrock version as it is compatible with the iPhone versions, and many others. I haven't bought the Java client for that reason and it is way more expensive compared to other versions. 

auxio

Fidonet127 said:

auxio said:

In regard to Bedrock vs Java edition, my son refuses to play the Bedrock edition after experiencing all the things you can do with the Java edition: custom shaders, an insane number of mod packs and skins freely available, running your own home server for free (as opposed to using Realms), building your own mods, etc.  Given all the free things you can do with the Java version, it's not surprising they're not spending a lot of marketing effort on it.  I'm actually pretty surprised they're still maintaining it.

if I may, we run a bedrock server at home, and MS offers the server software for free. You can get free Mods for it, just not as much. The bedrock edition is more efficient CPU wise as it is written in C or C++. We run the bedrock version as it is compatible with the iPhone versions, and many others. I haven't bought the Java client for that reason and it is way more expensive compared to other versions. 

I guess my initial impression of Bedrock after trying it when it was first released on a console and seeing skins for sale within the game was: oh, they're trying to lock down Minecraft so they can make money off modifications, skins, etc.  I'm ok with a one-time price, just not the continuous paying for every little in-app feature model that most phone/tablet games use these days.  Minecraft was always different that way in that it was completely free and open to modify, which makes it a great learning tool.

But now that I've seen mods opened up and a number of mods ported to Bedrock, I've changed my mind.  The problem now is that I run a mixed environment at home: Mac Mini server, M1 MBP for myself, and Windows gaming PC for my son.  So Bedrock edition doesn't work well for us.  And since the Java edition has been around far longer, there are still a number of mods which haven't been ported to Bedrock edition, though it's getting a lot better.  I was surprised to see RLCraft working on Bedrock given how many mods it requires.

I'm a C++/Obj-C/Swift/Java/Kotlin developer across a number of platforms, so I completely understand the efficiencies gained by using C++.  Funny enough, I was actually trying to explain this to someone in another thread about battery life.  I'm assuming they haven't ported Bedrock edition to Mac yet because it's a small gaming market, but hopefully soon.

edited June 2022

fidonet127

People used to side load the iPad version on M1 Macs until Apple prevented that. The base code is there, MS could do it if they wanted to. I could be happy with the iPad version if they allowed that, though I'm sure many people would complain how the UI doesn't quite work.

kurai_kage

jdiamond said:

Your mileage obviously may vary.  I have a 16" Macbook Pro with the 10 CPUs and 32 GPU cores.  Running straight x86 Java Minecraft through Rosetta is honestly barely playable - sometimes you can get 20 fps, but you get frequent slowdowns.  It's a lot like trying to play Minecraft on my 2015 MBP.  Then I used MultiMC with (and this is important) an ARM version of Java that is NOT the one that comes bundled with MacOS.  I was shocked to immediately get 500-700 frames per second, just like YouTubers got!  But I found this was a peak case - it can drop as low as 60FPS.  But mind you, this is at high resolution and a render/simulation distance of the full 32 chunks.  (It you use the java that's bundled with Macs, you only get about 45 fps.)

I've been doing a lot of comparisons with M1 native versions vs Intel, and Minecraft hit the #1 spot, often running a solid 100x faster in the best case, and about 5x faster in the worse case.  I will be overjoyed if the new Minecraft Java for M1 will be this good.  All they ever had to do was switch out which JVM they bundled Minecraft with, but I'm not surprised they kept this really low key - they don't want people noticing how much faster Java with M1 is versus Bedrock on Wintel.
 

Is there a particular version required to set this up?  Does it work (at all) with CurseForge?  I have a niece and nephew with first gen 13" M1 MBP, and for an yet to be determined reason, one of them has no trouble running 1.16.4 modded MC via CurseForge, but the other experiences a well documented crash on launch related to the wrong library being supplied by the launcher (which doesn't support ARM64).   I'd understand if they both hit the issue, but I'm puzzled by just one of them being impacted.  The issue is supposed to be resolved in 1.17, but that is little comfort to her when everyone she knows is still running 1.16.4 for the popular modpacks.  You wouldn't happen to have a guide or could point me in a direction to setting up the custom MC launcher with native ARM Java support would you?

jwsc

Marvin said:

dominikhoffmann said:

“The Java edition is bundled within a launcher with the Bedrock version, but it isn't accessible on Macs.”

So, how do I go about launching it on an M1 Mac?

This video shows how to load it, the Java version is loaded from the launcher that is in the bundle:

My son is ever so appreciative.  FPS is greatly improved.  He’s happy FWIW.

tht

Masparrow said:

I tried running Minecraft through Rosetta, and let me tell you, it was a bit of a rollercoaster. Barely playable, around 20 fps, and those annoying slowdowns, reminiscent of my 2015 MBP struggles. Then came MultiMC with an ARM version of Java (not the default MacOS one), and boom – 500-700 fps!

Hmm, the transcoding shouldn't have been that bad. It's like it wasn't using the GPU?