Don't Mod Minecraft Directly! Use The PRISM Launcher

Most video tutorials that I see about modding Minecraft still show how to install Forge or Fabric directly into the Minecraft Launcher, and then copy mods into the mods folder. That's so 2017.

Not only is that overly complicated, error prone, and difficult to manage, it just isn't necessary anymore. There are so many easier ways to do this!

The name of this software is unfortunate, because the Minecraft Launcher is the name of the official launcher for Vanilla Minecraft. Which can itself be adapted with mods. Then there are Minecraft MOD launchers, that make the whole process easier. I find myself calling both Minecraft launchers. I'll be careful in this post to distinquish by calling them Minecraft mod launchers, vs just the Minecraft Launcher (which I'll also capitalize the L)

With the rise of dedicated Minecraft mod launchers like Prism, Curseforge, and ATLauncher, managing and installing mods has never been easier. These launchers offer a simple, user-friendly experience that takes the hassle out of modding Minecraft. Instead of dealing with the tricky process of manually installing mods into the Minecraft Launcher, you can now use these tools to handle everything for you. They make modpack management easy, reduce errors, and let you switch between different modded setups effortlessly.

So stop modding the Minecraft Launcher directly. Use a Minecraft mod launcher! In this post, I'll show you all about Prism, what I think is the best Minecraft mod launcher for most people's purposes.

I go into a LOT of detail here, because I like to talk about why as well as what. And I like to show steps for those that need it. You're welcome to skip ahead. Here's a table of contents.

Why Use a Minecraft Mod Launcher?

There are many Minecraft mod launchers, and they all offer the same benefits over modding the Minecraft Launcher directly.

Simplified Modpack Management - Minecraft launchers streamline the process of finding, installing, and managing modpacks. Instead of searching for and installing mods individually, you can browse through collections of mods bundled together for a seamless experience.

One-Click Installs - Launchers allow for quick and easy installation of mods and modpacks. No downloading mods, worrying about versions and compatibility.

Ease of Switching Profiles - With a dedicated launcher, you can create and manage multiple profiles, each with its own set of mods and settings. This is perfect if you like to switch between different modded setups without hassle.

Error Reduction - Launchers handle dependencies and updates automatically, reducing the risk of conflicts and crashes. This means fewer headaches and more time enjoying the game.

Why Use the Prism Launcher over Other Launchers?

I sometimes use other launchers when they're better suited for the task. For example, CurseForge can be more convenient for browsing through modpacks and mods when I am researching and want to see what's most popular. Though honestly, I usually do that and install them on Prism!

So what makes Prism better than other launchers? OK, let's be honest. We're mostly comparing it with the Curseforge launcher here.

Independent of Minecraft Launcher
Unlike the Curseforge launcher, the Prism launcher does not rely on the Minecraft Launcher at all. This means you have a more streamlined and direct approach to managing your modded Minecraft instances without needing to go through the Minecraft Launcher.

Cross-Platform Support - Prism Launcher runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux. Many others don't support Linux specifically.

Supports Curseforge and Modrinth - Prism Launcher supports both Curseforge and Modrinth platforms (plus FTB, Techit, ATLauncher) for finding mods and modpacks. This means you have access to a vast library of mods and can easily find what you need.

Lightweight and Fast - Prism Launcher is lightweight and fast. It doesn't require as many system resources as some other launchers. I compared the download time for Prominence II RPG, which has over 400 mods in it, between Prism and Curseforge.

Prism Downloaded it and was ready to play in 21 seconds.

Curseforge took 1 Minute and 20 seconds!

I'm not sure what Curseforge is doing that takes so long. I assume it has something to do with it being an Electron app (not native, more on that below). If you're trying our different modpacks, which I often do, Prism is a huge time (and frustration) saver!

Customizability - Prism launcher offers a high level of customizability. You can tweak settings to optimize performance and tailor your gaming experience to your preferences.

Advanced Modpack Management - Prism launcher provides advanced tools for managing mods and modpacks. This includes easy import/export options, detailed instance settings, and more.

Prism is a Native App - Unlike Electron-based applications like Curseforge, which rely on web technologies and include a bundled web browser (Chromium), Prism Launcher is built using native development frameworks and tools that are optimized for performance and resource efficiency on each operating system it supports.

Here's Prism's jab at Curseforge on their homepage. Ouch.

They stop short of calling themselves a native app, because while Qt toolkit isn't native native, as in a C++ Win32 or Cocoa app, it lives in the same place on the app stack. For our purposes, it's native. And most importantly not built on top of a web browser with all that overhead. I digress.

Open Source - Prism Launcher is open-source, which means it's continually improved by the community. You can trust that it's safe, transparent, and regularly updated with new features.

Downsides to The Prism Launcher?

It's important to note that sometimes modpacks include a mod that don't support third-party launchers, which is a disadvantage to using Prism. Prism has implemented a pretty ingenious method to get past this by stepping you through downloading the mods directly in a browser where it will pick right up again. I'll cover this later when we step through installing the Prominence II modpack.

Otherwise, like I said above, the interface looks more like an app than a web browser, and in that regard, it's just not as navigable. This is why I sometimes fall back to Curseforge when I'm researching mods and modpacks. But honestly, I can just use their website.

Getting Started with Prism Launcher

I'm going to go through the Prism Installation in full detail so we don't lose anybody. It's pretty standard software installation stuff, so feel free to skip ahead to installing your first modpack.

Visit the Prism Launcher website and download the installer for your operating system.

What OS? Windows? MacOS? Linux? Steam Deck? Really!!?! Now that's awesome.

You can just run an installer, or download the Portable version and run it from a single directory rather than having it installed in Windows in general. I'll do that so I can start fresh. Just extract the ZIP file into it's own directory and run prismlauncher.exe. Or if you used the installer, you can run it from the Start menu or an icon from your desktop.

Either way, from here the process is the same. Choose a language and click Next.

Choose a Java version. If you don't have one, you may need to install Java. My favorite java is Adoptium. I play modded Minecraft and have plenty of RAM, so I'm going to increase my default memory allocation to 4GB and max 8GB. You can configure the RAM usage per instance as well.

You can click the green checkmark to test your Java. Also, note that some versions of Minecraft don't specify that Java 21 is supported and Prism may complain about this. You can turn that detection off. I've personally never had a problem with Java 21 on 1.20 and 1.21 Minecraft.

Choose your icons and background cat. This is very important. (jk). Then click "Finish"!

Next you'll see a very sad looking empty interface. Click the cat button to make it less sad. Let's make it even less sad and get some Minecraft in here!

Click the Accounts button to log into your Minecraft account and click manage accounts.

Click Add Microsoft

When you click this button, you'll get a window that looks like this:

This gets a little confusing, but what it needs you do to is go to this form on the Microsoft page and paste that code in. The button on the bottom left will attempt to do this for you. It should look like this (your code will be different), and then click Next.

From here you'll be prompted to sign into Microsoft.

Go through whatever sign in process you have, and you'll end up here. Which means you're done!

Go back to Prism, and you should see your Minecraft account there in the Accounts screen.

You can add multiple accounts here if you want to!

Click the close button on the bottom left and we're ready to set up modded Minecraft!

How to Install a Minecraft Modpack with Prism

Let's learn how to install a modpack using Prominence II RPG as an example, since it does have some mods that don't support direct download from Curseforge. That's a long story for another time.

First, click the Add Instance button

Choose the mod platform to search, in this case Curseforge, though it is also avaialable on Modrinth, and search for "Prominence". You'll see the list narrow. Choose prominence II [RPG] from the list and click OK. on the bottom right, you can choose an older version if you want to, but you'll use the latest generally.

It will start to install, and you'll see that this pack has some "Blocked mods". Unless you want to download and move the mods manually, click on "Open Missing" to open a browser tab for each mod and allow them to download. Once they all do, they'll appear as "Found" in the list.

This is difficult to show in screenshots, but when I clicked "open missing" my browser opened with tabs on the download pages for any of these missing mods.

Most importantly, these files will automatically be discovered once they're downloaded.

It's really much easier than it looks here. click OK on the bottom of that window and the installation will complete.

And there it is. Double click on that to start the modpack!

If you've used Curseforge, you'll notice that you don't have to pass through the Minecraft Launcher on the way. Minecraft will start right up from here after it downloads the Minecraft files

You'll get a Console window that shows the status of it loading. And I'm showing this as an example of what can go wrong if you don't have the correct version of Java installed.

This is actually a lie. It will work with Java 21. Just go into the Instance Java settings to disable the Java compatibility check. Alternatively you can disable it for all instances by opening the Global Settings. If you're not comfortable doing this, you can also just download and install an older version of Java, like Java 17.

With that disabled, click Launch at the bottom of the console to try again.

Loading modded Minecraft can take several minutes. Even if the console seems to stop, be patient!

And here we go. We did it!

By the way, if you want to play Prominence II RPG, I've got some information here. I recommend it highly. It's one of my favorite modpacks.

How to Install a single Minecraft Mod with Prism

Sometimes you just want to install a single mod. Let's do that quickly.

You can install a mod onto an existing instance, like the one we just created. Or we can make a fresh instance. Let's do that and install Iris for shader support plus JEI and Xaero's Minimap. We'll also install a shader. Create a new instance and choose "Custom". Then choose the Mod Loader you want. Here we'll use Fabric. Then be sure to choose the Fabric version. I'm choosing the latest.

Click on that new instance, which I should have renamed when creating it, and then click Edit

Next, select Mods, Download Mods, Modrinth (or Curseforge as both will work), search for iris, then select Iris Shaders, and Select mod for download. There's two windows here. The Download Mods will appear after you click that button.

Then without leaving this window, you can search for JEI and select that for download as well. Then click Review and Confirm.

You'll see the mods that are getting dowloaded into your Instance. Where did Sodium come from? Iris requires that, so it added it automatically!

Now you have three mods installed. Let's install a shader pack

Same process as with mods, Click Shader packs, Download shaders, and I'm selecting BSL and Complementary. Click Select shader pack for download on each and then Review and confirm.

Something weird is happening to me here and I'll show it in case it happens to you. It says two shader packs are installed, but they're not showing.

But if I click View Folder, they are there

So I'm just going to trust it. Click Launch...

and I got an error...

JEI need the Fabric API installed. I'm not sure why it didn't get installed automatically, but here's a learning experience. I went back into Download mods and found fabric to install it.

Here we are...

And let's see if this works. Click Launch.

This time it's happy!

In Options.. Video Setting... Shader Packs, I can see my shaders. I do need to choose one. Let's pick BSL.

Click Done, Done, Done to get back to the menu and create a new world. We've got shaders!

And JEI!

Guys we did it! We basically just made a modpack. How cool is that?

How to Export an Instance with Prism

That's not all we can do with Prism. We can now export our instance for our friends to use. In that menu on the right, click the Export down arrow to choose a format to share.

Share that file with your friends, and when they create an instance, they can import it.

Amazing! And now to play with your friends, why not set up a server!?

I've got lots of ways to do that here in this post: How to Play Minecraft with your Friends.