Here’s How To Find the Location of Your Minecraft Launcher
When games and apps get installed, they all get stored in a particular folder on your PC. Where that app or game you installed gets placed depends on what you chose, but sometimes it is out of our control. Our devices sometimes choose where the files are installed to make everything more manageable and neat. Since that is the case with Minecraft, where’s the Minecraft launcher located, and how do you find it?
Where is Minecraft installed on PC?
As previously mentioned, Minecraft is, by default, installed in your %appdata% folder. There are two ways to access this folder under normal circumstances. You can either go into your Windows start menu search bar to find it, or you can right-click on the Minecraft launcher and choose to open the file location to access it.
Other than these two methods, there is no other way to access the folder. If you tried hard and looked for it, you wouldn’t have any success whatsoever, but why is that?
The hidden folder
The %appdata% folder is one of the few folders on your PC that remains hidden and can’t be accessed by ordinary means. If you went into your file explorer and pinpointed the exact location of these folders, you would be left searching endlessly with no success whatsoever. There is a way to make these folders visible, but I wouldn’t recommend it; these files are hidden by default for a good reason.
The reason is that it helps prevent the user from interacting with the data within these files, which could cause damage to your PC. These files reduce the probability of users interacting with them so that they may delete, modify, or corrupt these files, which are crucial to keeping the system running smoothly.
On the other hand, if you know what you’re doing, you can make use of these hidden files. Windows operating systems are very limited in terms of what you can do with the operating system, and if you want to change something that’s not made to be changed, you’ll likely need to access these hidden files.
Take, for example, your desktop. On Windows 11, you are limited in what you can do with the desktop’s appearance, but revealing the hidden files changes that, and you can, if you know what you’re doing, change almost anything you wish. I wouldn’t recommend changing anything unless you have a specific tutorial that tells you you need to access these hidden files to change something, though. To reveal these hidden files, follow these steps.
- Click on the Search Bar at the bottom of your screen. (It’s located on the taskbar)
- Search for the Control Panel and access it.
- While in the Control Panel interface, click on the Appearance and Personalization icon.
- Go to the File Explore Options.
- While in this window that popped up, click on the View tab located on the upper side of the window.
- Click on Advanced Settings and find the Hidden Files and Folders category.
- Once you’ve found it, check the box that says ‘Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives’
- Click on Apply and exit the window and Control Panel
- Once you access your files, you’ll notice that some files are slightly transparent, this marks the files that were hidden before and should remain hidden.
Changing the location of the .minecraft folder
The Minecraft launcher’s folder is called the .minecraft folder, and moving the folder from the %appdata% folder at first can seem scary. After all, it’s there by default, so perhaps your worry is that changing it will corrupt the game and delete all of your worlds. It’s a reasonable concern, but if you follow these steps exactly, there’s nothing to worry about.
A quick note before I start, though. There’s no particular reason you would want to change the destination folder of your Minecraft launcher. It doesn’t come with any benefits, and it’s easy enough to access the %appdata% folder without it being revealed along with the rest of the files.
- Go to the %appdata% folder and locate the .minecraft folder.
- Once located, move the .minecraft folder anywhere you want it to be.
- Then, open the Minecraft launcher and click on the installations tab.
- Click on the profile that you usually play on and under the Game Directory, click on the Browse button.
- Select the .minecraft folder from the directory you moved it to and you’re done.
Where to find your Minecraft launcher install folder?
If perhaps you downloaded Minecraft and didn’t put a shortcut on your desktop menu, you might want to make a shortcut by locating the Minecraft launcher install folder and finding the app there. Some people say you shouldn’t do this because it can break your PC, but it’s simple and harmless.
Go to the Search Bar on your Windows Taskbar and type in Minecraft Launcher. Then, you should click on it and drag it to your desktop, and you’re done. If you can’t find the Launcher using the search bar, you’ll need to access all the apps and drag it from there. Depending on how many programs and documents you have on your PC, this may take some time.
Still, the easiest way to find the launcher application is to go into the .minecraft folder and scroll down until you see the application.
What can you do with the folder?
There are tons of things you can do with the .minecraft folder. For instance, you access your screenshots, can import shaderpacks, and add mods to your game. The folder makes it easy to locate these files, and even a complete noob can do this thanks to the mod APIs like Forge that eliminate the act of having to input the mod code manually into the game’s code completely.
When downloading mods, shaderpacks, and texture packs, ensure you’re downloading from trusted websites and that the files have plenty of downloads and positive comments. Some of the most popular sites for this are CurseForge and Planet Minecraft.
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