Guide
Complementary Shaders on a Mac, and what I built instead
By Ryleigh Newman · Published · Updated
Complementary Shaders runs on a Mac the way it runs anywhere: as an OptiFine-format pack loaded by Iris or OptiFine on the game's OpenGL renderer. Its own pages list Iris and OptiFine as the loaders and Minecraft 26.3 among the versions, and say nothing about macOS either way (read on 2026-09-19). Rockstar Shaders is a different thing: a Fabric mod for Minecraft Java 26.3 on Apple Silicon Macs, with the shaders inside the jar, rendering through the game's Vulkan backend and tracing rays in Metal. It does not load Complementary or any other pack.
I made Rockstar Shaders on a Mac, for a Mac, because the packs everyone recommends are written for loaders that run on OpenGL, an API Apple stopped at version 4.1 and Mojang plans to remove. This page puts the two side by side and says plainly where each one is the better choice.
Every Complementary fact here comes from its site and its Modrinth listings, read on 2026-09-19. Every Rockstar Shaders number comes from one machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB, and I say so each time.
Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.
Side by side
| Complementary | Rockstar Shaders | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A shader pack in the OptiFine format, in two styles, Reimagined and Unbound | A Fabric mod with its own renderer; the shaders ship inside the jar |
| Loads through | Iris or OptiFine | Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer and Fabric API; no Iris, OptiFine or Sodium |
| Graphics API | OpenGL, through its loader | The game's Vulkan backend; MoltenVK on macOS |
| Ray tracing | Not stated | A Metal side-car: sun shadows, sky visibility, one-bounce GI, water reflections, fog occlusion |
| Operating systems | Not stated on its pages | macOS on Apple Silicon (M1 or later) only; Windows, Linux and Intel Macs are not supported |
| Minecraft versions | 1.7.10 through 26.3 | 26.3 |
| Quality profiles | Potato to Ultra | None on screen; the shipped defaults are the top set, with 82 settings and an Advanced page |
| Tested on | Not stated | One machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB |
| Downloads | 66.5 million Reimagined and 43.3 million Unbound on Modrinth | Version 1.0 |
| Price | Free | Free, from rockstarshaders.com and GitHub (Modrinth pending) |
| License | Custom | Proprietary, closed source: personal use, no redistribution; screenshots and videos welcome with credit |
Complementary facts read on 2026-09-19.
What Complementary is
Complementary started as an edit of BSL Shaders in 2019, has had a complete rewrite since, and still gets regular updates; its site says it is shaped by user feedback over anything else. It comes in two styles. Unbound is for people who want a more realistic look, and Reimagined keeps Minecraft's own visual elements, in its own words. Both list Iris and OptiFine as loaders and run from 1.7.10 to 26.3. Both carry profiles from Potato to Ultra, custom effects for almost every block in the game, and a custom license. Reimagined shows 66.5 million downloads on Modrinth and Unbound 43.3 million. The installer on its site downloads Iris along with the pack, and it needs a Java of its own; Minecraft's will not do. All of this read on 2026-09-19.
It is a good pack. If your machine runs it well, this page is not trying to talk you out of it.
What a Mac changes
Complementary's pages say nothing about macOS, so the Mac question is really a loader question. Iris lists 26.3 among its versions and says on its site that Vulkan mods are incompatible and will crash the game, so Iris is the OpenGL route. Sodium, which Iris ships with, says its official support is for cards with drivers compatible with OpenGL 4.5 or newer; Apple's own table of what each Mac supports stops at OpenGL 4.1. OptiFine's newest download when I looked was a preview for 26.1.2, with 1.21.11 the newest release build, so OptiFine does not reach 26.3 yet. Mojang wrote in February 2026 that OpenGL is being deprecated on macOS and that the game's OpenGL renderer will be removed once Vulkan is stable. All read on 2026-09-19.
None of that means Complementary fails on a Mac today. It means the route it takes is the one Apple and Mojang are both closing, and I cannot give you a frame rate for it, because I have not measured Complementary on this machine.
What Rockstar Shaders does instead
Rockstar Shaders needs the game on its Vulkan backend, which Minecraft 26.2 added as a Graphics API option and which macOS runs through MoltenVK. On OpenGL it logs a warning, does nothing, and asks at the title screen to switch. Ray tracing does not come through Vulkan, because MoltenVK exposes no VK_KHR_ray_query; it comes from a native Metal side-car inside the jar, reached through VK_EXT_metal_objects, tracing the game's own chunk vertex buffers. That trace supplies sun shadows, sky visibility, one bounce of global illumination, water reflections and the fog's sky occlusion.
The rest is a deferred renderer: four cascaded shadow maps in a 4096 atlas, ground-truth ambient occlusion, contact shadows, a froxel fog march, an analytic atmosphere, a water engine with a simulated ripple field, temporal anti-aliasing, auto-exposure, bloom, depth of field and AgX grading. There is no pack folder and no resource-pack slot. K opens the settings in a world, and the same screen is the first row of Video Settings.
What Complementary users will recognize
Waving leaves, grass and crops. A cloud deck: the original blocky one by default, lit and marched, or a volumetric cumulus with Blocky clouds off. Rain streaks, snow, drops on the lens, puddles, storm decks and lightning drawn by the pack. Connected glass and sandstone, Better Grass and per-block rotated textures built in, plus OptiFine resource-pack formats read natively, with no Continuity, EMF or ETF: connected textures, emissive textures, custom entity models, random entity textures and custom skies. Gold and iron as near-mirrors, glass that reflects the sky and the scene. An extended horizon that keeps every chunk you have seen on the skyline, out to 64 chunks (1,024 blocks) by default. The Nether and the End render with their own sky, fog and ambient.
Everything sits on one settings screen: 82 settings in 11 categories, and an Advanced page of about 600 tune keys. Each category has its own page under help; the water alone is on Water.
What it costs in frames, on one machine
Every number is from an M4 Max with 48 GB and only means something at the resolution it names. At a sunset bay, looking down at the water, at 1708x960, a frame took 34.3 to 35.7 ms after the last performance pass; it was 45.7 before. At my own window, 1706x1966, 46.0 to 46.5 ms. Render scale 75% is the default because it took that pose from 44.98 to 33.95 ms, while each quality knob one step down was worth a few tenths of a millisecond. Ray tracing is not the cost to cut: everything on was 27.9 ms and all three traces off was 29.5, because each fallback costs more than the trace it replaces.
Complementary's Potato to Ultra ladder has no counterpart here. There is no profile chooser, the shipped defaults are the top set, and Render scale and Target FPS are the levers; getting more frames walks through them. An M1 will be slower than an M4 Max. By how much, nobody has measured.
What you give up
An honest list. Complementary runs wherever Iris or OptiFine runs; Rockstar Shaders runs on Apple Silicon Macs and nowhere else, and has been run on exactly one of them. Complementary is free and finished; Rockstar Shaders is a free 1.0 release, and settings can move between builds. Complementary has two styles; this has one look. Known wrong things in this release: your own first-person shadow does not appear yet, shore foam and spray are compiled out at the defaults so the Shore foam % slider does nothing, ground the horizon generates on demand is not saved, colored block light leaks through thin walls, and the ripple field restarts from flat when the settings screen rebuilds the renderer. The software is proprietary and closed source; the license is at /terms and ships as LICENSE.md with the mod.
Which one to pick
On Windows, Linux or an Intel Mac: Complementary through Iris, and this page has nothing more for you. On an Apple Silicon Mac, wanting a finished pack with a style choice and a quality ladder: Complementary through Iris on the OpenGL backend, for as long as that backend lasts. On an Apple Silicon Mac, on 26.3, wanting a renderer built for the API the Mac actually has, with shadows and GI traced in Metal, and able to live with a 1.0 release: that is what this is for.
Installing it is a jar in the mods folder and one Vulkan switch, on the install page. The trade against BSL, SEUS and the rest is on the comparison, and Iris on a Mac explains why the two cannot share a launch.
Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.
Related
Sources
- https://www.complementary.dev/ (read 2026-09-19)
- https://www.complementary.dev/shaders/ (read 2026-09-19)
- https://modrinth.com/shader/complementary-reimagined (read 2026-09-19)
- https://modrinth.com/shader/complementary-unbound (read 2026-09-19)
- https://irisshaders.dev/ (read 2026-09-19)
- https://modrinth.com/mod/iris (read 2026-09-19)
- https://github.com/CaffeineMC/sodium (read 2026-09-19)
- https://optifine.net/downloads (read 2026-09-19)
- https://support.apple.com/en-us/101525 (read 2026-09-19)
- https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/another-step-towards-vibrant-visuals-for-java-edition (read 2026-09-19)
- https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_26.2 (read 2026-09-19)
Questions
Does Complementary Shaders work on a Mac?
Its pages do not say, but they list Iris and OptiFine as loaders and 26.3 among its versions, and Iris lists 26.3 too. Iris runs on the game's OpenGL backend, which Minecraft 26.3 still ships. Read on 2026-09-19; I have not measured it on this machine.
Can I run Complementary and Rockstar Shaders together?
No. Rockstar Shaders needs the Vulkan backend and does not load shader packs, and Iris says Vulkan mods crash it. Pick one per launch.
Is Rockstar Shaders a port of Complementary?
No. It has its own renderer and its own shaders, inside the jar. Nothing in it comes from Complementary.
Does Rockstar Shaders run on Windows or Linux?
No, and it has not been tested there. The ray tracing is a Metal side-car, which is macOS only. The target is Apple Silicon, M1 or later, and the one machine it has run on is an M4 Max with 48 GB.
Is Rockstar Shaders free?
Yes. It is a 1.0 release, free from rockstarshaders.com and GitHub (Modrinth pending), and the software is proprietary: personal use on your own Macs, no redistribution. The license is on the terms page.