Downloading Minecraft on M1 Mac.md

Prerequisites

• basic terminal knowledge
• having rosetta 2 enabled

Installation

Launcher

1. Download the pre-built from https://github.com/MultiMC/Launcher
   • MultiMC is a for from UltimMC which adds the capability to play without a Microsoft account
2. You have to move the .app into the Applications folder
3. You have to make the app executable chmod +x /Applications/UltimMC.app/Contents/MacOS/UltimMC

Java

Since UltimMC runs under Rosetta and is a x86 app, UltimMC requires 64bit Java. Minecraft Java needs Java17+, in this guide we're going to the latest available (18).

We're going to install the brew package manager and configuring it in a way that it will install x86 packages. If you already have brew installed, the new x86 installation won't interfere with your old installation at all.

1. Download brew manually and move it to /usr/local

cd ~/Downloads

mkdir homebrew

curl -L https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/tarball/master | tar xz --strip 1 -C homebrew

sudo mv homebrew /usr/local/homebrew 

2. Adding the new location to path

echo 'export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.zshrc

3. Setting up an alias to execute brew as x86

echo 'alias axbrew="arch -x86_64 /usr/local/homebrew/bin/brew"' >> ~/.zshrc

4. Quit and reopen the terminal and verify it is working with axbrew update
5. Finally install java with axbrew install openjdk

Source

Running everything

1. Right click on UltimMC and click open, confirm potential MacOS dialogues about having downloaded the app from the cyberspace
2. It will detect your java version by default, if you have multiple, pick the 64bit one
3. Once opened
   • Click on accounts and go to manage accounts
   • Add account and choose Local account
   • Provide whichever name and email-address (doesn't have to be valid) you like
4. Click on Add Instance, choose version ...
5. Click on launch and enjoy