Minecraft shaders: Iris, OptiFine and how to install a pack

Minecraft shaders are packs of shader programs that change how the game draws light, shadows, water and sky. On Java Edition a shader pack needs a shader loader, which usually means Iris or OptiFine. Bedrock Edition has its own official graphics modes instead.

Nobody here has run these packs. Every fact below comes from the loaders’ own sites, the shader packs’ Modrinth pages and Mojang’s and Microsoft’s pages, checked on October 20, 2026. We do not rank them.

What a shader pack does

OptiFine’s shader documentation describes the pipeline that Java shader packs are written for: deferred rendering. First the gbuffer programs render data to textures, then optional composite programs process those textures, and a final program draws the result to the screen. All of the pack’s shader files sit in a folder named shaders inside the pack.

The BSL Shaders page gives a typical effect list: real-time shadows, volumetric light, ambient occlusion, bloom, custom clouds and water, and built-in anti-aliasing. Optional extras include depth of field, motion blur, specular and normal mapping, cel shading and world curvature.

Some packs also read extra material data from resource packs. Photon, for example, lists “Full labPBR resource pack support”.

Java vs Bedrock shaders: what is the difference?

Java Edition: shader packs plus a loader

Every pack in this guide is a Java Edition pack. On Modrinth, shader packs are filtered by the loader they run on: Iris, OptiFine, Canvas or Vanilla. The packs below all list Iris and OptiFine. The install, as BSL’s page puts it: install OptiFine or Iris, put the pack in the shaderpacks folder, and choose it in the video settings.

Bedrock Edition: Vibrant Visuals and ray tracing

The Iris FAQ answers the Bedrock question directly: “Bedrock Edition cannot be modded due to restrictions on mobile devices.” It calls any Bedrock shader mod for mobile that does not use the game’s built-in features a scam. For Windows players, it points to BetterRTX.

The built-in feature is Vibrant Visuals. Mojang calls it “Minecraft’s biggest official visual enhancement”, with infinite clouds, reflective water, volumetric lighting and enhanced textures. It does not change gameplay. Mojang lists it for Windows, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Android and iOS, with these limits:

• Android: Adreno 640, Mali-G68, Mali-G77, or Xclipse 530 or higher
• iOS: A12 or M1 or higher
• PC: Minecraft running on DirectX 12

To turn it on, open Settings, select the Video tab and choose Vibrant Visuals from the Graphics Mode drop-down. Mojang’s page notes that splitscreen is not supported: the game falls back to Fancy or Simple rendering when more than one local player joins. The same page says Vibrant Visuals is planned for Java Edition “in the future”. On October 20, 2026 it is still Bedrock only.

The other option is ray tracing. Microsoft’s creator documentation says ray tracing is still supported, but that it has “largely been superseded by Vibrant Visuals”. It needs 64-bit Windows and a GPU with DirectX hardware ray tracing, such as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series card or an AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series card and newer.

Iris or OptiFine: which shader loader for Java?

The Iris site describes Iris as “remaining (mostly) compatible with Optifine packs”.

Iris

Iris is an open-source shader mod under the LGPL-3.0 licence. Its site says it supports all versions from 1.16.5, on Fabric from 1.16.5 and on NeoForge from 1.21.1. It also says: “Forge is not supported.” Iris ships with Sodium, the rendering mod, and the Modrinth download page marks Sodium as a required dependency.

Iris is only a shader loader. Its FAQ says other OptiFine features “are not planned for Iris” and points to separate Fabric mods for things like connected textures and zoom.

OptiFine

OptiFine is a wider mod. Its home page lists shader support “based on the Shaders Mod by Karyonix”, next to HD textures, connected textures, dynamic lights and many video options. Its newest full release is HD U J9 for Minecraft 1.21.11, dated February 5, 2026, and compatible with Forge 61.0.8. For 26.1.2 and 26.2 the downloads page lists preview builds only, and it lists nothing for 26.3.

Can you use both?

No. The Iris site lists OptiFine, Canvas and Vulkan mods as “Incompatible, and will crash the game.” Pick one per instance.

How to get shaders on Minecraft Java

With the Iris installer

Iris’s own guide recommends this method if you want Iris “without any other mods”. The download page offers a Windows .exe installer and a universal JAR that “works on any platform”. The installer “automatically downloads and installs Iris and Sodium.”

1. Download the installer from the Iris download page and run it. The universal JAR needs Java.
2. Choose your Minecraft version under Select game version.
3. Click Install, and close the installer when the button says Completed!.
4. Open the Minecraft Launcher and play with the new Iris profile.

The guide was last updated on December 8, 2022, so its screenshots are older than the current installer. The download page sums up the current one in a line: “Run the installer, choose your Minecraft version, and hit install.”

With Iris in a modded setup

To use shaders next to other mods, download Iris from Modrinth or CurseForge. The Iris download page reminds you that you “will also need Sodium”. Both go into the mods folder of a Fabric or NeoForge install. Our Prism Launcher guide shows how to create an instance with a mod loader and add mods from Modrinth.

With OptiFine

OptiFine’s official forum thread gives the simple method:

1. Double-click the OptiFine JAR you downloaded from optifine.net. The installer starts.
2. Click Install. OptiFine is added to the official launcher with its own profile, named “OptiFine”.
3. Start the official launcher and play.

For Forge, the thread’s rule is “Install OptiFine AFTER Forge.” The downloads page lists the matching Forge build next to each OptiFine release. Our Minecraft Forge guide covers the Forge install itself.

Add and switch on a shader pack

1. Download the pack. Keep it as a .zip: the Complementary page says “Please don’t unzip the file”.
2. Launch the game and open Options, then Video Settings. With Iris, open Shader Packs. With OptiFine, open Shaders.
3. Put the .zip in the shaderpacks folder inside .minecraft. In Iris, the Open Shader Pack Folder… button opens it, or you can drag the file onto the menu.
4. With Iris, click the refresh button, click Shaders: Disabled to turn shaders on, select the pack and click Apply. With OptiFine, choose the pack in the list.

Each pack has its own options screen. With Iris it is under Shader Packs, then Shader Pack Settings, per the Iris FAQ. The same FAQ says to press K to turn shaders off without opening the menu.

Minecraft shader packs and what their pages say

These six packs each have a Modrinth page, and Complementary has one per style. The order is alphabetical. All of them list Iris and OptiFine as loaders.

Complementary Shaders

Complementary comes in two styles. According to its description, the only difference between them is the default settings. Unbound aims at “a more realistic experience”, and Reimagined at preserving Minecraft’s look. Profiles range “from Potato to Ultra”, and the pack “started as an edit of BSL Shaders in 2018”. Its own Complementary Installer does the install steps for you.

BSL Shaders

BSL describes itself as “bright, colorful, and distinct” and as made only for Java Edition. Its effects are the ones listed at the top of this guide. Its official site is capttatsu.com, which carries the FAQ and the changelog.

Photon Shaders

Photon calls itself “a gameplay-focused shader pack with a semi-realistic style”. Features include a weather system that gives different skies each day, layered clouds, and voxel-based colored lighting that needs Iris and the Ultra profile. Iris is its recommended loader. Nvidia, AMD and Intel GPUs are supported; Apple GPUs (Metal) are not.

Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders

Sildur’s supports Minecraft from 1.7.10 up to the latest release and comes in presets. It names one hardware point: medium or high “should work fine on a GTX 960”. It also claims compatibility with mac and Intel GPUs.

MakeUp: Ultra Fast

MakeUp aims at “the best quality / performance ratio”. Every effect is optional, from shadows and volumetric clouds to TAA and depth of field. Shadows and depth of field are the two it names as resource-intensive. The licence is LGPL-3.0 or later, with the source on GitHub.

Bliss Shaders

Bliss is “a big edit of Chocapic13’s V9.0 – V9.1” shaders, with a fantasy style. Its requirements name Iris, and say OptiFine “might work as well”. It is designed for Minecraft 1.17 and newer. Apple devices have limited support because of OpenGL version limits.

Performance and compatibility notes

We publish no frame rate numbers, because we have not measured any. What the official pages say:

• Several packs scale down. Complementary has a Potato profile, MakeUp lets you switch off each effect, and Photon has temporal upscaling for low-end devices, off by default.
• Distant Horizons and Voxy work only with packs that support them, per the Iris site. Photon and Sildur’s list support for both.
• Resource packs that use core shaders stop working when a shader pack is on, per the Iris site.
• Two pages list Apple limits: Photon does not support Apple GPUs, and Bliss has limited support on Apple devices.

Sources

• Iris Shaders website and Iris download page
• Iris on Modrinth and IrisShaders/Iris on GitHub, including the installation and usage guide and the FAQ
• OptiFine home page and OptiFine downloads
• OptiFine shader documentation on GitHub
• OptiFine official thread on Minecraft Forum
• Modrinth shader pack directory
• Complementary Reimagined and Complementary Unbound on Modrinth
• BSL Shaders on Modrinth
• Photon Shaders on Modrinth
• Sildur’s Vibrant Shaders on Modrinth
• MakeUp: Ultra Fast on Modrinth
• Bliss Shaders on Modrinth
• Vibrant Visuals on minecraft.net
• Microsoft Learn: Getting started with ray tracing