Just Enough Items (JEI) mod review and install guide

Just Enough Items, JEI for short, does one job: it shows you every item in your game and how to make it. Hover over an item, press R, and you get its recipes. Press U and you get everything that item goes into. Once a pack has more than a handful of mods, nobody remembers every recipe. JEI puts them all one key away.

The project describes itself as an item and recipe viewer “built from the ground up for stability and performance”. It is still under active development: the Modrinth page lists several new builds in the week before we checked, and the CurseForge page counts more than 635 million downloads.

This is a refresh of our old JEI page. Nobody here has played through a new pack for this update. Every fact below comes from JEI’s official pages, checked on October 16, 2026.

What JEI does

JEI adds an item list to the side of your inventory screen. Everything in the game sits in that list, vanilla and modded, and every entry leads to its recipes. It does not add blocks, items or new mechanics. It only shows you what is already there.

Recipes and uses

These are the two keys you will use all day:

• R, or a left click on an item in the list, shows how to make it.
• U, or a right click, shows what you can make with it.

The recipe screen pages with the scroll wheel. Click a category name to see every recipe of that type, for example every furnace recipe. The [+] button moves the ingredients from your inventory into the crafting grid for you, and Shift-click on it fills more than one set.

Search

Click the search bar or press Ctrl + F. A right click clears it, and the Up arrow brings back your last search. The search box has a few prefixes that save a lot of scrolling:

• @ searches by mod name, so @create shows only items from Create.
• # searches tooltip text.
• % searches creative tabs.
• - excludes a term, and | combines two searches.

Put a phrase in quotes to search for more than one word. Ctrl + O hides or shows the item list.

Cheat mode and edit mode

In cheat mode, a click on an item gives you a full stack and a right click gives you one. Drop an item onto the list to delete it. To switch cheat mode on, Ctrl-click the wrench button at the bottom right; a plain click on the wrench opens the config menu. Edit mode lets you hide items you never want to see: Ctrl-click hides one item, and Ctrl-Shift-click hides everything from that mod.

Server or client?

This changed with Minecraft 1.21.2. From that version on, Minecraft stores recipes on the server, not on the client. If you play on a server, JEI and the mod loader must be installed on the server too, or JEI has no recipes to show. On 1.21.1 and older, JEI can run on the client alone or on a vanilla server, with some features switched off.

Version and loader support

JEI’s README sorts its builds into “latest”, “supported” and “unsupported”. Unsupported builds stay downloadable, but they get no more fixes.

Forge stops at 1.21.1, so for anything newer, pick NeoForge or Fabric. The current builds also list MezzConfig, a small config library by the same author, as a required dependency. You need it in your mods folder next to JEI.

How to install JEI

Our 2014 posts had you copy jars into .minecraft/mods by hand. A launcher does that part now. We use Prism Launcher in these steps because it is free, open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The CurseForge app works the same way.

1. Install Prism Launcher and sign in with your Microsoft account.
2. Create a new instance for the Minecraft version you want to play.
3. Select the instance, click Edit, then open the Version tab and add a loader. Prism’s own advice: Forge for 1.20.1 and older, NeoForge for newer versions, or Fabric.
4. Open the Mods tab and click Download Mods. Pick Modrinth or CurseForge.
5. Search for “Just Enough Items” and select it. If MezzConfig is not added with it, search for MezzConfig and select that too.
6. Click OK to download, then launch the game. Open your inventory and the item list is on the right.
7. On a server running Minecraft 1.21.2 or newer, put the same JEI and MezzConfig files in the server’s mods folder.

The manual way

You can still do it by hand. Install the loader, download JEI and MezzConfig for your exact Minecraft version and loader from CurseForge or Modrinth, and copy both jars into the mods folder of your game directory. Match the loader in the file name to the loader you installed; a Fabric jar does nothing on NeoForge.

Alternatives

JEI has two well-known rivals, and both are on Modrinth:

• Roughly Enough Items (REI) calls itself “Clean and Customizable” and an “Alternative to Just Enough Items/JEI”. It has builds for Fabric, Forge and NeoForge up to Minecraft 26.3.
• EMI describes itself as “a featureful and accessible item and recipe viewer”. It supports Fabric, Quilt, Forge and NeoForge, and its newest listed version is Minecraft 1.21.1.

JEI also works with other mods. Jade, the information HUD that replaced Waila, has keys to open JEI’s recipes and uses for the block you are looking at. Our Waila page covers Jade and the other successors.

Verdict

4.5 out of 5

JEI is still the recipe viewer we would put in any pack with more than a handful of mods. We hold back half a star because Forge support stops at 1.21.1 and newer versions need a server install.

Facts checked against the official pages on October 16, 2026

Sources

• Just Enough Items on CurseForge
• Just Enough Items on Modrinth
• mezz/JustEnoughItems on GitHub
• MezzConfig on Modrinth
• Roughly Enough Items on Modrinth and EMI on Modrinth
• Prism Launcher wiki: Downloading mods