GaelQuinta/minecraft-metal-shaders

An alpha-stage shader and renderer fork for one narrow combination: Apple Silicon Macs running Minecraft 26.3. It is promising if you accept bugs and keep world backups; not yet a drop-in replacement for the Iris shader ecosystem.

The problem

Mac players who want shader-style visuals in Minecraft: Java Edition normally run Iris, which goes through OpenGL. On Apple hardware that path is slow: the author reports Iris plus Complementary Reimagined at roughly 22 FPS on a MacBook Pro M4 at native 3024×1964. The workflow also involves a stack of other mods (Sodium and dependencies) that must match versions. This project instead renders the terrain itself and draws effects in Metal, so the player installs one jar and sees shadows, volumetric clouds and reflective water without the OpenGL detour. The result is a playable frame rate at full Retina resolution with a built-in settings menu.

What's different

It is a fork of mcopt, a mod that provides a Metal renderer for Minecraft 26.3 and, since mcopt 0.3, its own terrain renderer. Metal Shaders layers effects written from scratch in Metal Shading Language on top — cascaded shadow maps, physically based sky, god rays, volumetric or blocky clouds, water with screen-space reflections, and HDR — and uses Apple-GPU-specific techniques such as tile memory, compressed render targets and a custom temporal upscaler. The practical benefit is that you can tune roughly 120 settings in an in-game menu, many applied live, in English or Spanish, rather than editing configuration files between launches.

That single-jar convenience comes with a hard trade-off: since 1.2 the mod draws terrain itself, so Sodium must be absent, along with Iris and mods that depend on Sodium. The project also replaces the usual Iris shader-pack workflow rather than supporting packs. It is explicitly labeled alpha, with the author saying it runs well on the M4 it was built on but to expect bugs and back up worlds. The README's comparison numbers are the author's own in-game recordings on one machine, not independent benchmarks.

Who should try it

This fits an Apple Silicon Mac user on Minecraft 26.3 who wants high-resolution shader-like visuals and is willing to run a small, Sodium-free mod set. The reported performance makes it especially relevant for Retina displays where Iris was too slow. It is a poor fit if your setup depends on Sodium, Iris or mods built around them, or if you need a stable environment for a long-term survival world rather than an alpha. Players unwilling to troubleshoot version-specific mod conflicts should wait.

Requirements and limitations

You need an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) running macOS 15 Sequoia or later, Minecraft: Java Edition 26.3, Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer and Java 25. Install Fabric for 26.3 through the installer, then place the mod jar from Releases in the mods folder; the shaders start on first launch with a balanced preset. Sodium must not be installed, and neither should Iris or mods that require Sodium — the game will not start with it alongside. Updating from 1.0 means removing Sodium and replacing the jar; settings are kept.

Alpha status is the main ongoing constraint. Bug fixes and compatibility changes arrive through releases, so expect to track them and occasionally adjust settings marked as requiring a restart. The shader ecosystem's presets and pack compatibility do not transfer.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo first recorded this repository at 13 days old, with 103 total stars and #18 on the NEW-REPOSITORY board (new-project board, not the overall trending board) for Java on 2026-10-25. That is a single dated snapshot, so persistence of interest cannot yet be judged. Before installing, verify the exact Minecraft 26.3 and Fabric combination on the project's install page and check that none of your other mods requires Sodium.