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Ultra‐Low Memory Footprint

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embeddedt edited this page Aug 9, 2023 · 8 revisions

This page aims to provide a guide for playing vanilla Minecraft on the absolute least memory possible. Many of these steps will also apply to modded, but you may need to remove some config options suggested below if they cause crashes.

Setup instructions

  1. Create a fresh MC instance on a version supported by ModernFix and install Fabric. For my tests I used Java 17. I don't think the specific JVM is important but I used Temurin.
  2. Install FerriteCore, Sodium, and the latest version of ModernFix (5.2.0+, or a development build).
  3. Launch the game once on a heap size of at least 700MB. Due to inefficiencies in Fabric Loader (not Minecraft) the first game launch after installation requires significantly more memory.
  4. Close the game. Set the minimum and maximum memory usage to 128MB. I used no additional JVM flags for these tests.
  5. Enable the following options in config/modernfix-mixins.properties:
mixin.feature.disable_unihex_font=true
mixin.perf.clear_fabric_mapping_tables=true
mixin.perf.clear_mixin_classinfo=true
mixin.perf.dynamic_resources=true
mixin.perf.remove_spawn_chunks=true
  1. Launch game, reduce render distance to 4 chunks or less.
  2. Join a multiplayer server like Hypixel, you should be able to move around without stutter and major FPS drops.

You should also be able to play vanilla singleplayer by bumping the heap to 192MB (tested on 1.18.2, results should be similar on other versions). A few minor features will be impacted, such as spawn chunks and the Unihex font being disabled (this will make many fancy characters on Hypixel not render). Simply remove those lines if these are important to you.

These options may or may not work reliably in larger, heavily modded packs, hence why they are not enabled by default.

Some users have experienced lower memory usage with No Telemetry installed (I have not verified this myself). On 1.19+ I recommend using No Chat Reports over that mod as the latter also disables the controversial chat reporting feature.

Quilt users: I recommend using Fabric instead of Quilt for the best low memory experience, as Quilt Loader has additional overhead. However, if you do wish to use Quilt, and experience OutOfMemoryErrors when playing modded games on small heaps, make sure you are using Loader version 0.20.0-beta.7 or later, as it includes memory usage optimizations.

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