Guide

Minecraft's Vulkan renderer on a Mac

By Ryleigh Newman · Published

Minecraft Java Edition has had a Vulkan renderer since 26.2, released 16 June 2026, as a Graphics API option in Video Settings with three values, Default, Prefer Vulkan (Experimental) and Prefer OpenGL, where Default currently means OpenGL; on a Mac the Vulkan backend runs through MoltenVK, a layer that translates Vulkan to Apple's Metal (Minecraft Wiki, read on 2026-09-19). Rockstar Shaders renders only when the game is on that Vulkan backend. On OpenGL it logs a warning, does nothing, and asks at the title screen to switch.

I made Rockstar Shaders for Apple Silicon Macs and built it on Vulkan because Vulkan is the API the game is moving to, and the one that can hand me a Metal device. This page is what the switch is, how to make it, what MoltenVK does, and why the ray tracing goes through Metal rather than Vulkan.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

Why Mojang is switching

Mojang said it on 18 February 2026. Java Edition has rendered with OpenGL since the start, and kept it because it ran on Linux, Windows and macOS. OpenGL stopped receiving updates nine years ago and is being deprecated on macOS; in Mojang's words, "in the future OpenGL will not run at all on macOS devices". Vulkan is directly supported on modern Windows and Linux machines and reaches macOS through a translation layer. The plan: Vulkan appears in snapshots alongside OpenGL, players can switch between the two while it is tested, and once Mojang is happy with performance and stability across devices the OpenGL implementation is removed, with notice and updated minimum requirements. GPUs ten years old or more may not support Vulkan at all. For modders, Mojang says mods that use OpenGL for rendering will be affected and that moving off it will take more effort than a normal version update. Read on 2026-09-19.

What shipped in 26.2 and 26.3

Java Edition 26.2, released 16 June 2026, added Graphics API to Video Settings with Default, Prefer Vulkan (Experimental) and Prefer OpenGL. Default is the same as Prefer OpenGL for now. Prefer Vulkan tries Vulkan and falls back to OpenGL if it does not work; Prefer OpenGL does the reverse. The requirement is Vulkan 1.2 with dynamic rendering and push descriptors, which the wiki says may change. The F3 debug screen shows which backend is running, in its system_specs section. On macOS the wiki is explicit: MoltenVK is used to translate Vulkan to Metal. Java Edition 26.3, the version Rockstar Shaders depends on, was released on 15 September 2026. Apple's own table of what each Mac supports stops at OpenGL 4.1, which is why the OpenGL side of that toggle was never going to grow on a Mac. All read on 2026-09-19.

What MoltenVK is

MoltenVK is, in its own README's words, a layered implementation of Vulkan 1.4 graphics and compute functionality built on Apple's Metal framework, for macOS, iOS, tvOS and visionOS. It is Apache 2.0 licensed and ships in the Vulkan SDK. It is not a driver in the Windows sense; it is a library that turns Vulkan calls into Metal calls, and the game uses it on a Mac. Rockstar Shaders was tested against MoltenVK 1.4.2. One consequence matters to this mod: the Vulkan device MoltenVK presents on a Mac exposes no VK_KHR_ray_query, so there is no Vulkan ray tracing to be had. The mod expects that and logs a line at start-up, "No VK_KHR_ray_query on this driver; using screen-space and ray-marched reflections.", which is normal on macOS and not an error. What the Vulkan device does expose is VK_EXT_metal_objects, which is how the mod gets to Metal, below.

How the game gets switched to Vulkan

Minecraft starts on OpenGL by default. Rockstar Shaders notices at the title screen, once per launch, and shows a confirm screen titled "Rockstar Shaders needs the Vulkan graphics API" with two buttons, Switch to Vulkan and quit and Not now. The first sets the game's preferred backend to Vulkan, saves the options and quits; the next start is on Vulkan. Not now is remembered in the config and the prompt stays away until the master switch is turned on again. The prompt never appears when the pack is switched off, or once the backend is already Vulkan.

The manual route is the Graphics API row in Video Settings, set to Vulkan, then a restart. In options.txt the line is preferredGraphicsBackend:"vulkan", with the quotes. Without them the line fails to parse silently and the game comes up on OpenGL again. The mod's own log line prints the unquoted form; the quoted one is the one that works. To confirm, F3's system_specs names the backend, and the header of the K settings screen reads "Rendering with Rockstar Shaders, pipeline generation N." The whole first run is on First launch.

Why the mod requires it

Two reasons, one of them enough on its own. The renderer is built on the game's Vulkan backend: its pipelines are registered with the game's GPU device at start-up (the log says "Precompiled N pipelines"), and when the active backend is OpenGL the mod writes "RockstarShaders requires the Vulkan backend but the active backend is ..." and disables itself, so the world renders vanilla. There is no OpenGL path, and OpenGL is the renderer Mojang is removing.

The second reason is Metal. The ray tracing is a native side-car, libvrt.dylib and vrt.metallib inside the jar, and it gets its Metal device by exporting it from the game's Vulkan device through the VK_EXT_metal_objects extension. No Vulkan device, no export, no trace. The side-car checks a chain of gates and the log names the one that failed: the Vulkan backend, VK_EXT_metal_objects enabled on the device, the library present, an MTLDevice exported, a device that supports Metal ray tracing, a self test. If any fails, the mod still renders, but the traced sun shadows, sky visibility, one-bounce GI, water reflections and fog occlusion are gone and enclosed spaces look veiled. The log line is "Ray tracing unavailable:" and the reason.

What Vulkan gave, and cost, on this Mac

One number I can stand behind, from the one machine this has run on, an M4 Max with 48 GB. Dropping MoltenVK's per-pass and per-transfer barriers took a sunset bay frame from 36.1 to 28.1 ms with no pixel changed. The mod's pass timings come from per-pass GPU timestamps, which MoltenVK reports at 1 ns resolution on Apple Silicon and the mod reads back two frames late; Show pass timings puts them on screen. I have no measurement of vanilla Minecraft on OpenGL against Vulkan on a Mac. On Windows cards, a test of the first 26.2 snapshot in April 2026 found Vulkan up to 31% faster on an NVIDIA card and slower on AMD and Intel ones; that is Windows, and it says nothing about MoltenVK. What the mod costs in frames, with resolutions, is on getting more frames.

What it means for other mods

Mojang's warning is for mods that render through OpenGL. Iris says on its site that Vulkan mods are incompatible and will crash the game, which is the same fact from the other side: Iris is an OpenGL loader, so Iris and Rockstar Shaders cannot share a launch, and the mod needs no Iris, OptiFine or Sodium. Sodium's Modrinth page says its 0.9.x line for 26.2 has early Vulkan support. None of that changes what this mod is: a renderer of its own, with the shaders inside the jar, for the backend the game is moving to. The longer version is on Iris and Sodium on a Mac.

When something is wrong

The log is logs/latest.log in the Minecraft folder and the mod logs as RockstarShaders, one word. "RockstarShaders requires the Vulkan backend but the active backend is ..." means the switch did not happen. "RockstarShaders: options ask for Vulkan but the game is running on ..." means the option did not take; set it from Video Settings rather than the file. "Ray tracing unavailable: requires the Vulkan backend" is the side-car saying the same thing. The settings header "The pack is not rendering (see the log); vanilla is on screen." points you back to the log. Everything else that can look wrong, from a vanilla-looking world to a disabled pack, is on Troubleshooting, and what to send when it is a bug is on Reporting a bug.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

About the author. Ryleigh Newman wrote Rockstar Shaders and every page on this site. Facts about other packs and programs come from their own sites, with the date they were read. More about the project.

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Questions

Is Vulkan on by default in Minecraft 26.3?

Not when I read the wiki on 2026-09-19: the Graphics API option's Default is the same as Prefer OpenGL. Rockstar Shaders asks at the title screen to switch, and the switch takes one restart.

Does Vulkan on a Mac mean Metal?

Yes, through MoltenVK. The game speaks Vulkan and MoltenVK turns it into Metal calls. Rockstar Shaders was tested against MoltenVK 1.4.2 on an M4 Max.

Is the ray tracing Vulkan ray tracing?

No. MoltenVK exposes no VK_KHR_ray_query. The mod exports the Metal device from the Vulkan device through VK_EXT_metal_objects and traces in Metal, in a side-car packaged inside the jar.

What happens when Mojang removes OpenGL?

Nothing for this mod: it never used the OpenGL renderer. Mojang's warning is for mods that render through OpenGL, which includes Iris by its own statement. I do not know when the removal happens and Mojang has not given a date.

The game came back on OpenGL after I edited options.txt. Why?

The line needs the quotes: preferredGraphicsBackend:"vulkan". The unquoted form fails to parse silently. The mod's own log line prints it unquoted, which is misleading; use Video Settings or the quoted line.

Does the mod work on Windows or Linux, where Vulkan is native?

No. The ray tracing is a Metal side-car, macOS only, and the release is Apple Silicon only, tested on one M4 Max. Windows and Linux are not supported and not tested.