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: 1.20 through 26.2 on Fabric and Forge; 1.20.1 through 26.2 on NeoForge (NeoForge skipped the 26.1 and 26.1.1 patches, so its 26.x line is 26.1.2 and 26.2).
  • Mod loader: Fabric, NeoForge, or Forge
  • Java: whatever your Minecraft version needs: 17 for 1.20-1.20.4, 21 for 1.20.5-1.21.x, 25 for 26.x (Minecraft 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-1.2.0-snapshot.7+26.2.jar; grab the jar matching your Minecraft version and mod loader. 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, so 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-1.2.0-snapshot.7+<your MC version>.jar into mods/.
  4. Launch Minecraft.

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

cp ~/Downloads/retromod-1.2.0-snapshot.7+26.2.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/ is 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/.