MINECRAFT MODS: FABRIC INSTALLATION

Before You Install Minecraft Fabric

Welcome to another article in our “Minecraft Mods” series. Considering you’re reading this article, you’ve chosen Fabric as your modloader, great choice!

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In case you’ve stumbled upon this article by accident, here’s some context: this article explains what Fabric is, how it came to be and how to install it. This article is also a part of our “Minecraft Mods” series of articles fully explaining everything you need to know about mods. If after reading this article, you have any more questions – feel free to check out our previous general article.

What is Fabric?

As it was briefly mentioned in a previous article – Fabric is a modloader. In simple terms, it’s a middle man that makes modding Vanilla Minecraft possible, and therefore also allows you, as a player, to install and run mods. It’s a key requirement if you want to play Minecraft with mods.

Historical detour

Before we get to the installation process, let’s take a quick detour, so you will have a better understanding of why there are multiple primary modloaders in the community and not just one.

Around 2018, Minecraft released the new 1.13 “Aquatic Update”, which made serious changes to the game’s core. This meant that updating Forge to properly work with the new game version would take a very long time, because developers had to rewrite it from the ground up. 

Players waited for months on end, unable to mod or play modded Minecraft. Forge still wasn’t done. Frustrated by the wait, a group of developers decided to create their own modloader. They took a different approach – instead of making another massive engine, they created a lightweight, modular system called Fabric.

Fabric was truly a breath of fresh air – it was fast, light and easy to update. Unlike Forge, Fabric is up to date and ready to go within hours to a couple of days after any game update. That’s how the community got their second whale of modding.

Installation process

Now, with the formalities out of the way, let’s dive into the installation process. The first step is to open Minecraft Launcher, choose the version of the game you want to mod and launch the game. This is important, as this first initial launch sets up game files, which will be essential for Fabric installation.

Now, go to the official Fabric website and click “Download for Windows”.

Unlike Forge, you don’t need to click anything extra to properly open the installer – just double click the installer file and wait for it to open. Then choose the same game version you’ve chosen in the Minecraft Launcher, make sure you have “Create profile” checked(it’s checked by default) and click “Install”.

Upon completing the installation, you should be greeted with the following message:

The modloader is installed, but most of the mods for Fabric, also require you to have Fabric API downloaded. Luckily, it's easy to install – in fact, the installation process is not any different from installing a regular mod.

So, go to CurseForge(or Modrinth, as it has a great selection of mods for Fabric) and search for “Fabric API”. Choose the proper game version and modloader, click the file and click "Download".

Once Fabric API is downloaded, you are free to download any other mods you wish to, the process is the same.

Once you have all the mods downloaded, press the Win + R shortcut to open the “Run” window. Type in the “%appdata% .minecraft” command and hit Enter / “OK”.

In the file explorer that has opened, navigate to the .minecraft folder. Then to the mods folder. If you don’t have a mods folder, you can simply create it yourself: right click an empty space > New > Folder and name it “mods”.

Then, drag and drop all the mod files you’ve downloaded. Now, you can close file explorer and open Minecraft Launcher. Go to installations and make sure to run Fabric instance, instead of the default Vanilla Minecraft and you are good to go!

Alternative Fabric Installation Method: Modrinth App

If the first method seems a bit tedious, there is a great alternative for Fabric installation – Modrinth App. That’s right, the website Modrinth, where you can download lots of mods for Forge and Fabric, has its own app. Not just any app at that – it’s a game launcher. It links with your Minecraft account, so you still need to own the game, but it makes downloading and playing with mods much easier. Here’s how you can set it up for yourself.

Go to the official Modrinth website, click “Download the app”, and click “Download”.

After downloading, open it. Now you will be prompted to log in into your Minecraft account. If you have multiple accounts, you can add another one later.

Basically, that is it. The launcher is set up. Now you can go and browse for mods / modpacks. Downloading a modpack will result in creating a new game instance, with all the mods packed and installed for you(like Vanilla Perfected on the screenshot below). If you want to download mods yourself, to make a custom modpack, you will need to create a new game instance as well. You can do it by clicking “New instance” or when downloading a mod.(Note that you need one game instance per modpack. So if you are making a new custom modpack, you would only need to click “New Instance” when downloading mods once. Then you proceed to download mods to the previously created instance of the game.)

A great feature that Modrinth App has is that you can customize modpacks content by either adding new mods, removing existing ones, or just turning them on / off(without deleting from the modpack). 

This app is a real gem. It’s a perfect fit for both average players – making the mod installation super easy and straightforward, and a hardcore mod players – making the process of managing all the different game instances and modpacks incredibly convenient.

Conclusion

We sincerely hope this guide on Fabric installation was helpful, thank you for reading and good luck playing your brand new modded Minecraft!