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macOS Minecraft Tlauncher Installation Guide

June 28, 2025

This was written to play Minecraft Fabric 1.12.1, but can be generalized for vanilla versions too.

Official Installation Postmortem

Following the README-EN.txt from the official macOS installation of Tlauncher, it asks you to run sudo java -jar TLauncher.jar. It works for UNIX systems (which macOS technically is) and therefore should run.

However, macOS has security restrictions in place. The sudo in that command makes tlauncher install in the the root user’s directories. This is dangerous and unexpected behaviour.

This ended up installing Minecraft in a root directory that it can access, but I can't. No reason to give this this thing so much power. Ended up removing it

Prerequisites to installing Tlauncher

Shameless greedy self-promotion

  1. You will need to run copy paste terminal commands.
  2. The macOS default one is fine but Warp is a much better and beautiful alternative so you don’t have to remember precise syntax and it can do and fix things for you. Can explain everything going on as well.
  3. Use my referral link because I’m a greedy little bastard that loves free esoteric merch I can flex with (haha vanilla peasants)

Installing JRE 21 through a JVM meant for macOS

  1. You need JRE 21 (Java Runtime Environment) to run the newer versions of Minecraft
    1. The Java Development Kit you install will include the JRE
  2. There are multiple distributions of Java by multiple companies and most of them are dev-oriented as they are JDKs. Oracle doesn’t really offer standalone JRE installation anymore.
  3. SDKMAN! is a popular JVM (Java Version Manager) that you can use to install JDKs (Java Developer Kits)
  4. The recommended version of it is Azul Zulu JDK 21
    1. Less resource-intensive, better Minecraft performance
  5. Install SDKMAN! through this guide
    1. Just a few commands, installs pretty fast
  6. Run sdk list java | grep '21.*zulu' to see available versions
    1. This will show you JDK 21 versions from Azul Zulu JDK 21
  7. Pick the the highest number on pick the latest one, at the time of writing it was 21.0.7-zulu
  8. Install it sdk install 21.x.x-zulu
    1. Replace the x with the latest one you found here.
This installs sdkman in your bash config, not your .zshrc which is your default macOS shell. If you close this window you won’t be able to run sdk commands because your shell won’t have it. See a guide on adding sdkman to your zsh config in that scenario.
  1. Go to official website
  2. Download for macOS. It will be a .zip file
  3. The file should download in ~/Downloads directory
  4. Ignore .readme file from the folder
  5. Unzip file TLauncher.v[xx].zip file
  6. Open terminal of choice
    1. (Please use Warp it’s a much better alternative)
    2. My download referral link because I need that Warp branded tshirt to flex

Launching Tlauncher on your system

Run these commands

  1. mkdir ~/Games/tlauncher && cd ~/Games/tlauncher
    1. This makes a Games Folder in your user directory and then makes a tlauncher folder too
  2. Paste the TLauncher.jar file in here
  3. Run java -jar TLauncher.jar. This will launch Tlauncher
  4. Standard minecraft installation folder should be ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft'

Mods

  1. Uses Fabric 1.21.1 for now
  2. Tlauncher skins will not work as the installed version is not the Tlauncher version. Likely macOS issue
  3. Paste mod files into ~/Library/Application Support/.minecraft/mods

macOS Minecraft Tlauncher Installation Guide