Pure Metal [Mac]

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Pure Metal ⚡

Pure Metal is a client-side Fabric performance mod for Minecraft Java on Apple Silicon Macs. It replaces OpenGL with a native Apple Metal renderer and works with Sodium. The game looks the same, it just runs on Metal.

Performance 📊

MacBook Air M2 (fanless), fullscreen 3420×2148, render distance 16, vsync off, same flight route every run. Medians of several runs in alternating order.

Measured on Pure Metal 0.4.0 with its default settings.

With Sodium

Without Sodium

Render Scale vs Vulkan (without Sodium)

Pure Metal vs mcopt (1920×1080 window)

Separate test from the tables above: one 20-second flight per renderer, same world and path.
Pure Metal 0.4.2, Sodium 0.9.3-beta.1, mcopt 0.3.0-alpha.2.

Render Scale 🎚️

Optional, off by default. Draws the 3D world at fewer pixels and scales it up. Menus, chat and the HUD stay sharp.

• Render Scale: Native, or 50 to 100%.
• Auto Render Scale: off by default. Lowers the scale when your GPU can’t reach your FPS target and raises it when it can (100, 85, 70 or 60%).
• Upscaler: Bilinear (fastest), MetalFX Spatial (sharper) or MetalFX Temporal (sharpest, may ghost on fast motion).

Find it on the Pure Metal screen in Video Settings or on the Pure Metal page in Sodium’s settings.

More options ⚙️

• Terrain LOD: on by default at render distance 16+. Simplifies distant terrain, leaves, plants and water. Nearby terrain and glass stay unchanged.
• Faster World Generation: off by default, singleplayer only. While chunks near you are still missing, FPS is limited to twice your refresh rate so the CPU can build chunks faster. Normal FPS returns once they have loaded.
• Smooth Frame Pacing (Experimental): off by default, needs vsync. Shows frames at an even pace.
• Metal 4 (Experimental): off by default, needs macOS 26. Metal 3 is currently faster.
• F3 screen: shows the active renderer, GPU, upscaler and render scale, and whether the Distant Horizons path is on.

How it’s built 🔧

• Sodium works without patches or add-ons. Its terrain renderer runs natively on Metal.
• Vsync off removes the FPS cap without screen tearing.
• The screen always shows the newest finished frame, so input stays responsive.
• Built around how Apple GPUs work, cutting the memory traffic that slows them down.

Privacy and safety 🔒

• No network access and no telemetry.
• If Metal can’t start, Minecraft falls back to its default renderer. You can switch to OpenGL or Vulkan in Video Settings at any time.

Distant Horizons 🌄 (Experimental)

Pure Metal 0.4.1+ can run Distant Horizons 3.3.4 on Metal. Add this to your launcher’s JVM arguments:

-Dpuremetal.experimentalDistantHorizons=true

Keep DH’s rendering engine on AUTO. Distant terrain may take time to generate. Not supported with Iris. If it can’t run, the F3 screen shows why.

Requirements

• Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer), macOS 14 or newer
• Minecraft 26.3, Fabric Loader, Java 25
• Sodium is optional but recommended

Shader packs aren’t supported.