Minecraft needs no introduction. Having sold 238 million copies across all platforms, Minecraft is considered the best-selling game of all time, so that should tell you something. With an impressive 93 Metacritic score from critics and a 7.6 from users, there’s no sign of its popularity waning any time soon.

Minecraft is truly a one-of-a-kind game, able to attract both children and adults (I’ve already logged 100+ hours), and we’re lucky it has supported macOS, virtually from Day 1. But how well can your Mac run Minecraft? Can it run on M1 Macs?

Can you play Minecraft on Mac?

You can absolutely play Minecraft on your Mac, and that includes Intel and M1 Models. In fact, Minecraft is one of the few AAA games that support M1 Macs with a native ARM Apple Silicon version.

Minecraft received native Apple Silicon recently as part of The Wild Update, version 1.19, in July 2022:

The M1 ARM64 architecture is now supported

It is worth mentioning that it has been possible to run Minecraft natively on M1 Macs for a while now. As a Java application, users have been using launcher apps such as MultiMC to load natively with an ARM Java runtime environment (JRE), but it is great to be able to simply run the game natively out of the box without needing any specific workarounds.

Bottom line: Minecraft runs great on modern Macs, including MacBook Airs and Mac Minis. We’ll share real-world benchmarks on M1 and Intel machines below.

Minecraft on Mac: Everything you need to know

A genre-creating game, Minecraft allows us to scratch our creativity itch as no other game has before. The ability to build whatever you can imagine, a variety of game modes, and a huge modding community mean the game never gets old or repetitive. Often described as building with Legos on the computer, it quickly became one of the most popular adventure games ever released.

With a variety of different modes to play, Minecraft can be a sandbox game allowing you to build undisturbed, a multiplayer game where you can cooperatively build your world with friends, or a game you play on Minecraft servers where survival is the goal (my son’s favorite used to be a Hunger Games server).

And while Minecraft’s purchase by Microsoft in 2014 caused some concern, so far, the game has remained true to its roots. With a huge modding community, the ability to join or create your own servers, and the ability to create actual working machines within the game, Minecraft created what many believe to be a new genre of games, but perhaps one in which it is the only true member.

If you want a truly open world where you can build whatever you want, with friends or alone, with monsters trying to destroy your creations or not, Minecraft is the game for you. Plus, it now features tons of awesome character customization options. And did you know Minecraft is so big, it recently got an RPG version called Minecraft Dungeons?

Minecraft Mac requirements

These are the game’s official Mac requirements:

Into Adventure games? These are our favorites:

How to Play Minecraft on Mac

As mentioned before, Minecraft now runs natively on Mac, and that includes Intel-based and M1 Macs. Therefore, we won’t waste your time talking about Parallels, Crossover (both excellent tools, but only useful for Windows-exclusive games…), or Streaming services (this has to be said, as some guides spend entire pages talking about streaming WoW on Mac).

Can your Mac run Minecraft? Benchmarks!

These are the Minecraft M1 benchmarks we have gathered so far:

As a reminder, this is how we describe the different levels of performance:

• Below 20 FPS: Unplayable: Laggy gameplay, full of stutters and slowdowns.
• 20-30 FPS: Borderline: Can be OK in slow-paced games. Still, not optimal.
• 30-45 FPS: Playable: Acceptable for most (most gaming consoles do this).
• 45-60 FPS: Smooth: Fluid gameplay, with no perceivable stutters.
• 60+ FPS: Very Smooth: For hardcore and professional players, a luxury for most.

Intel benchmarks

These are some of our Intel-based benchmark results:

We tested Minecraft on the following Intel Macs:

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016): 2.0 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, Intel Iris Graphics 540 (1.5GB)
• iMac (5K, 27-inch, Late 2014): 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon R9 M290X (2GB)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2013): 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, GeForce GT 650M (1GB)

These are the settings we used (we understand these settings are somewhat low, but we had to be conservative when testing older machines):

Can my Mac run Minecraft?

As proven by all of our benchmarks, Minecraft can run on virtually any modern Mac. Performance may hurt when playing on extremely busy servers, but for the most part, Minecraft is an accessible Mac game anyone with a Mac from the past ten years should be able to enjoy.

Its modest system requirements allow any recent and many older Macs to play, and a reasonable price, means there’s no reason why every Mac gamer shouldn’t have Minecraft on their computer.

Can You Play Minecraft On A Macbook Pro?

MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs should be able to run Minecraft without a problem. In fact, when testing our 2016 Macbook Pro at higher resolutions, the results were still great:

• 1280×800: 60 FPS
• 2560×1600: 60 FPS

Running in Java truly helps Minecraft have consistent results across different Macs. Any recent Mac should have no trouble with it as long as you meet the minimum graphics requirements.

But What If You Have An Older Mac?

Our test 2013 Macbook Pro ran the game at 56.7 FPS, which is way above our target. If your Mac is even older than that, it will really depend on your machine’s graphics. If you have the minimum Intel HD Graphics 4000, you should be able to easily play Minecraft.

Minecraft is an excellent game for older Macs. Again, the fact that it runs in Java actually helps with consistent performance, and the blocky graphics keep those system requirements modest.

Download Minecraft for Mac

Minecraft is available for download from the official Minecraft Store; a demo is also available.

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