Shaders are specialized mods that enhance the game’s graphics by altering lighting, shadows, colors, and other effects. They change the way the world appears when you’re playing, making it look more realistic, giving it a specific hue, or setting a mood. Shaders can be used to make everything more vibrant, beautiful, or even add an eerie glow. I’ve tested hundreds of Minecraft shaders and compiled a list of the best ones you should be using to improve the visuals of your game. These are the Minecraft shaders that you should be using in Mojang’s survival game right now.
AstraLex
AstraLex has many visual effects, but the most striking of them are the modifications it adds to the sky in your game. It’s hugely customizable too, with the ability to add birds, fast clouds, rainbows, and other effects. Beyond that, you can modify the bloom value, meaning the luminosity of the world, making it quite dreamy. The mod also offers different-colored eyes for spiders, Endermen, and the Ender Dragon, as well as a new version of the End Portal. AstraLex affects the weather too, with more realistic rain and fog.
Complementary Reimagined
Perhaps one of my favorite shader packs of all time, Complementary Reimagined has some seriously impressive tweaks. The water is potentially the highlight, though, looking ultra-realistic and bouncing reflections in a simply beautiful way. Complementary also comes in the Unbound version, which is even more realistic, but can be quite taxing on low-end PCs. It’s absolutely gorgeous, with clouds that look so good, it’s possible they’re edible.
Sildur’s Shaders
Sildur’s completely reimagines the lighting system of the base game and adds advanced features such as volumetric lighting, bloom, ambient occlusion, and reflections, but maintains high performance. It’s a must-have shader pack for anyone with a mid-tier or low-end PC, as it isn’t resource-heavy at all, but still makes Minecraft look stunning.
Solas
Solas is one of the most popular Minecraft shader sets, having garnered over three million downloads to date. It has a slight twist to some others on this list, as it’s styled after modern fantasy games. It’s compatible with most mods, and adds multicolored block lighting with fog illumination, which is impressive to see. Clouds, fireflies, and more all now appear 3D, while turning your gaze to the night sky will reveal the Milky Way, black holes, and even the Aurora Borealis, if you’re lucky.
Dr Destens
Dr Destens features water effects with reflections, motion blur, realistic depth of field, and more. As you can see from the screenshot above, though, the depth of field is really its strongest point. It adds texture and detail to blocks, creating an immersive experience that is truly impressive in-game.
Super Duper Vanilla
The Super Duper Vanilla shader pack was created to convey the style of the canceled Super Duper Graphics pack. It focuses on maintaining as much of the vanilla Minecraft experience as possible, but with a smoother, more polished appearance. It’s subtle and light on resources, but still offers a new visual experience.
BSL
BSL is a shader pack made exclusively for Minecraft’s Java edition and emphasizes a look that’s bright, colorful, and distinct. It includes real-time shadows, volumetric light, ambient occlusion, customizable clouds and water, and built-in anti-aliasing. You can also customize additional effects, including motion blur, depth of field, cel-shading, and more.
Photon
Photon is a comprehensive shader pack that fully revamps Minecraft’s sky, lighting, and water. It includes an impressive weather system with multiple volumetric clouds, meaning the sky will appear different each day. There are new lighting color effects and an extensive menu that allows you to customize every aspect of the shader pack, including Minecraft-style clouds and a night sky galaxy.
Bliss
Bliss is one of my favorite Minecraft shader packs thanks to its calming, hazy effects. It overhauls lighting and weather systems, but the sky is where it truly shines. It has a dynamic time of day cycle, so sunrise and sunset are a joy to behold.
How to use Minecraft shaders
Now that you’ve found the shader pack you want to use for the ultimate Minecraft visual experience, we should probably tell you how to use and install them. Open Minecraft and head to the Options menu before selecting Video Settings. Then select Shaders. Here, you’ll see a screen with several options on the right and a list of shaders on the left. Click on the Shaders Folder option and place your downloaded shader pack into that folder. Once they’re in there, press Done to install the shader pack. Restart your game and you should see a completely different visual effect in your world. Enjoy!
For more Minecraft tips and hints, head to our Minecraft guides hub, where we cover everything you need to know.