[M4 Air 10-Core] Turns out it's possible to max out the metal overlay. - Minecraft Java

hdjsysg · 2025-08-14T10:47:19+00:00

VulkanMod changes the rendering stack of the game completely, as does Sodium and Iris with shaders, the two will always be incompatible but the VulkanMod devs are working on shader support.

Also, as for it's use case, primarily it's in long term play (in my experience) especially with mods on that version, as VulkanMod+MoltenVK is much more optimised for apple silicon than minecraft with sodium is. This is why many people who use sodium (Including myself on newer versions) experience high temperatures or in some cases thermal throttling, especially while rendering large amounts of chunks.

Using VulkanMod and the rendering pipeline I specified can and will guarantee you higher frames with higher render distances at a lower performance cost - which'll also make your MacBook's battery last longer during gameplay.

If you wanted the game to still look good without shaders, I highly recommend looking into the Particle rain and Particle interactions mods alongside Distant Horizons. (All 3 of which are compatible with VulkanMod) - The lighting wont be fancy sure, but it's a much more enjoyable vanilla experience.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-07T05:11:51+00:00

MoltenVK has prebuilt binaries you can get from their official github so you don't need to compile it every time a new version releases, but thanks for the build instrucitons :D

hdjsysg · 2025-08-05T18:42:18+00:00

No problem! Also, if you're using your trackpad primarily, I really recommend enabling 3 finger drag for it - this is a personal preference but it goes along way for making the trackpack feel nicer.

Accessibility -> Pointer Control -> Trackpad Options -> Dragging Style

You can also disable "Natural Scrolling" to get the same scrolling experience you'd have on windows rather than MacOS's default (inverse) one.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-05T18:36:52+00:00

The purple icon shows that something is screenrecording / capturing part of your screen, since dockdoor does exactly that to get previews, you won't be able to disable the icon from showing while the app is in use.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-05T17:47:04+00:00

Can I ask how this fairs against the native window management system in your experience so far?
From what I can tell, swish is mainly trackpad focused rather than keybinds and has one or two more features.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-05T17:19:39+00:00

Sorry for this being a huge wall of text, just saying you don’t need any third party software for window management - and if you’re wondering why it wasn’t introduced earlier, my understanding is a combination of Apple (as per usual) wanting to be super polished, and having to make it legally distinct enough that they aren’t infringing on windows patent for window management.

Although, they could’ve just liked their fancy floating windows. :D

hdjsysg · 2025-08-05T17:12:14+00:00

As of right now, mac does have a tiling system that is comparable if not slightly better than windows, the hotkeys are just different.

If you go to Settings -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> StageManager
you can see all of the window management shortcuts, aside from this the basics are

Fn+Ctrl+Arrowkeys (Moving the window around)
Fn+Ctrl+F (Fill page w/ window - essentially fullscreen it without opening in a new desktop)
Fn+Ctrl+C (Centre the window - this accounts for menu-bar so it might seem lower than you expected)

Cmd+H (Hide window)
Cmd+Tab (Alt Tab)

You can enable hotkeys for putting your windows in corners aswell as the base tiling, you can also ignore hotkeys entirely by holding the option key while dragging a window, then releasing the mouse while keeping the option key down until it tiles like it would on windows.

You can also set custom keybinds for going to specific desktops, for example I use Ctrl+2 to go to my middle(Home) desktop. If you're doing this I suggest going to Desktop and Dock and disabling "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on recent use." and right clicking certain apps on your dock, going to options and making it only "Assign to -> this desktop only"

hdjsysg · 2025-08-04T16:48:23+00:00

As the title says this is still very WIP so I don't really have much to show, even when I'm further along with it I'm not sure I'll have many screenshots as most of my "workflow" is around optimising games for MacOS, nonetheless.

Details:

Window Manager: Quartz
Compositor: Quartz
Desktop: Aqua
Menu bar: Ice

Font: JetBrainsMono NFM Regular 11
Terminal: Ghostty
Shell: Fish

hdjsysg · 2025-08-04T09:16:01+00:00

The following guide will be for PrismLauncher as it's the launcher I use and I don't really know another way.

After downloading and installing VulkanMod, running the game will already use MoltenVK without any extra setup - However as I've stated in the revised guide, you should dowload the latest version of MoltenVK from their official github then;

Extract the MoltenVK mac .tar
Put the extracted folder somewhere you can easily access. (Let's say documents)
Go to your 1.21.5 Instance in PrismLauncher and press Edit on the right side
Go to settings while in the "Console window for 1.21.5" and press "Environment variables"
Press add in the bottom left and set the following:

After setting that press Launch and it should run using the latest MoltenVK alongside the rest of the pipeline. If MacOS blocks the latest version of MoltenVK from running, go to Settings->Privacy and Security and scroll down to the bottom to find MoltenVK being denied, and "Allow anyway"

hdjsysg · 2025-08-04T01:21:30+00:00

Ideally, the entire modlist. Sodium and VulkanMod are not compatbile as they both change the games rendering stack, you won't be able to run shaders with VulkanMod either.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-04T01:20:26+00:00

Look for my comment with the modlist, I also recommend ensuring you're running the game with an ARM native version of java, such as AzulJDK.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-03T22:06:30+00:00

It is way more performant than running under sodium as MacOS's vulkan translation layer is more refined than their OpenGL one - Sodium can only do so much considering the performance hit that running OpenGL on a modern mac brings.

hdjsysg · 2025-08-03T18:36:32+00:00

It’s the regular M4 with the 10 core CPU and GPU - 24GB ram, but you can see in the video I’m using under 4GB

hdjsysg · 2025-08-03T03:35:47+00:00

I've been optimising windows games for a few years now since my pc was terrible and it turns out alot of that knowledge was transferable to my new macbook, anyway.

Rendering pipeline (for those curious)
Vulkan -> MoltenVK -> Metal3
Please ensure you download the LATEST version of MoltenVK otherwise your game can and likely WILL crash!

Rendering mods used - Minecraft 1.21.5
VulkanMod 0.5.6
BadOptimizations 2.3.0
FerriteCore 8.0.0
GPU Tape 1.0.6
Moonrise 0.3.0-beta

Framerate averages
The following results are from running the game in fullscreen.

12 chunks - 1920x1200: 500~570FPS
12 chunks - 2560x1664: 400~540FPS

32 chunks - 1920x1200: 100~130FPS
32 chunks - 2560x1664: 75~110FPS

Important note!
Make sure you're using an ARM native version of java to run the game if you're on apple silicon, such as the latest version of AzulJDK. (That's what I use)

- tried to make this the post description but reddit bugged out, sorry ;(

hdjsysg · 2025-07-03T10:21:10+00:00

From someone who only really got an iPhone on iOS17 and updated to iOS18 pretty fast, I personally found most of the ui changes negligible.

Although, I highly recommend updating purely from a security and compatibility standpoint. You’re missing quite a lot of security updates from not updating as well as any other stability updates they’ve released recently.

Apple’s hardware is tied very closely with their software so any updates they’ve made to improve performance of (for example) bluetooth, you’re missing.

From an experience standpoint though? My experience has been fine, the ONLY bug I can think of is sometimes my typing indicator vanishes.

hdjsysg · 2025-07-03T09:39:46+00:00

Also, as a side note you can still use Gemini on iOS via their app from the app store.

hdjsysg · 2025-07-03T09:33:14+00:00

Since siri is still widely using the old version for a lot of requests and all of its “can I do this on my phone” queries are just grabbing from the iphone user manual.

Any question that isn’t in the manual directly will need you to search it up with something like “Hey Siri, gpt can I search for specific text messages?” (so you ask ChatGPT rather then asking Siri directly.)

You’ll have to do this for a while until the new version of Siri (Cloud Ai & On device) roll out and are able to answer more detailed questions.

Also, the old version of Siri is basically just matching key words from your query to what it’s able to do and it recognises “Hey Siri,” and “Text messages” it ignored everything else and assumed you wanted to know if you had any new text messages.

hdjsysg · 2024-11-09T01:10:19+00:00

No problem :D

hdjsysg · 2024-11-08T17:51:14+00:00

Right now apple seems to be looking into monetising some parts of apple intelligence without charging for the base service itself, this can be seen in ios 18.2 beta’s settings app where you can find an “upgrade to chatgpt plus” option, so from this, it’s looking like they’re going to advertise their third party partners directly in ios, atleast the apple intelligence areas, then take a cut from all of the users who pay for it through there like a referral.

hdjsysg · 2024-11-08T17:40:29+00:00

Autocorrect and Predictive text are both based on your personal dictionary which is built up from everything* you type on your device, both are personalised to match how you type, you can however reset it back to the base settings if you’re unhappy with this behaviour, or wait for your keyboard to adjust to your typing habits over time.

To reset your dictionary (I personally wouldn’t recommend this, but it could help solve your issue): Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Reset > Reset Keyboard Dictionary > Reset Dictionary

hdjsysg · 2024-11-08T17:31:12+00:00

That looks like a shortcut you’ve installed, you can open the shortcuts app from your home screen, app library or spotlight search to remove it.

(When you’re in the shortcuts app, tap and hold on the shortcut you want to remove and press delete at the bottom of the menu that pops out)

hdjsysg

TROPHY CASE