Installation

RetroMod installs like any other Minecraft mod — drop the JAR in your mods/ folder and launch the game. There’s no installer, no wizard, no account to make.

Requirements

  • Minecraft: 26.1.2 (the current target; older targets are in the works)
  • Mod loader: Fabric, NeoForge, or Forge
  • Java: 25 or newer (Minecraft 26.1 ships its own Java runtime, so this is usually taken care of automatically)

Get the JAR

Grab the latest release from GitHub:

github.com/Bownlux/RetroMod/releases

The file you want is named something like retromod-1.0.0-beta.1.jar. Download it somewhere you’ll remember — your Downloads folder is fine.

Find your Minecraft game directory

This is where your mods/ folder lives. The exact path depends on your OS:

OS Path
macOS ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/
Windows %APPDATA%\.minecraft\
Linux ~/.minecraft/

If you’re using a launcher like Prism, MultiMC, or ATLauncher, each instance has its own game directory — open the instance’s folder in the launcher instead.

Install the mod

  1. Open your game directory.
  2. If there’s no mods/ folder, create one.
  3. Drop retromod-1.0.0-beta.1.jar into mods/.
  4. Launch Minecraft.

That’s it. On macOS, the command-line version of step 3 looks like:

cp ~/Downloads/retromod-1.0.0-beta.1.jar \
  ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/mods/

First launch

The first time RetroMod runs, it creates two folders inside your game directory:

  • config/retromod/ — holds config.json and subfolders like verify-reports/ and aot-cache/. Safe to edit, safe to delete (RetroMod will regenerate defaults).
  • retromod-input/ — the inbox. Drop old mods here and RetroMod will transform them on the next launch, then move them to mods/. This is the only way to install old Fabric mods — Fabric rejects them before RetroMod gets a chance to help if they’re placed directly in mods/.

After first launch, you’ll see a RetroMod button on the title screen. That’s your sign everything’s wired up.

Updating

Delete the old retromod-*.jar from mods/ and drop in the new one. Your config is kept. If you’ve been using the AOT cache and RetroMod’s transform logic has changed, clear config/retromod/aot-cache/ so mods are re-compiled with the new logic.

Uninstalling

Remove the JAR from mods/. Your transformed mods stay transformed — they live in mods/ as regular JARs now, not linked to RetroMod anymore. To revert a mod, copy the original from retromod-backups/ back into mods/.