Guide

Ray tracing in Minecraft on a Mac: what Bedrock cannot do here, and what Java can

By Ryleigh Newman · Published

Minecraft's own ray tracing, the Bedrock Edition feature sold as Minecraft with RTX, does not run on a Mac. Bedrock Edition is not released for macOS, and Microsoft's requirements for its ray tracing are 64-bit Windows and a DirectX ray tracing GPU. On Java Edition, ray tracing has only ever come from shader packs, and on a Mac the packs that trace need OpenGL and a loader whose developers list Apple Silicon as unsupported. Rockstar Shaders is my Fabric mod for Java Edition 26.3 that traces sun shadows, sky visibility, one-bounce global illumination, water and metal reflections and the fog's sky occlusion on Apple's Metal, from inside the game's Vulkan renderer, on Apple Silicon Macs.

I am Ryleigh Newman. I built it because a Mac has had a ray tracing GPU since the M3 and no Minecraft that used it. This page says what Bedrock's ray tracing is and why it stays on Windows, what a Java shader can and cannot trace, and exactly which rays Rockstar Shaders casts, with the measured cost. Facts about Bedrock, SEUS, Iris, OptiFine and Apple are from their own sites, read on 2026-09-19.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

Why Bedrock's ray tracing is not on a Mac

Minecraft with RTX arrived as a Windows 10 beta on 16 April 2020, built with NVIDIA on Bedrock's Render Dragon engine, and Mojang describes it as path tracing. Its requirements, as Microsoft's creator documentation lists them, are a 64-bit Windows PC, a DirectX ray tracing GPU such as an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 series or an AMD Radeon RX 6000 series, an Intel Core i5 or equivalent, 8 GB of RAM and Bedrock 1.16.200 or later. The Minecraft wiki calls the feature exclusive to the Windows version of Bedrock Edition.

The deeper reason is that Bedrock Edition itself is not on macOS. The wiki's platform list is Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Android, ChromeOS, iOS, iPadOS and Fire OS, and macOS is not on it. Microsoft's documentation also says ray tracing has largely been superseded by Vibrant Visuals, a Bedrock graphics mode; the wiki says Vibrant Visuals for Java Edition is planned but has not appeared in any development version. The Minecraft RTX on a Mac page is written for that search specifically.

What ray tracing means in Java Edition

Java Edition has no ray tracing of its own. Everything you have seen traced in Java came from a shader pack, written in GLSL for an OpenGL loader. The best known is SEUS PTGI, Sonic Ether's path-traced global illumination, which its own site distributes for OptiFine and lists at HRR Test 2.1, dated 17 December 2020, now free. Two things stand between it and a Mac. OptiFine's download page has no build for 26.2 or 26.3, and the Iris project's driver page notes that SEUS PTGI HRR 2.1 does not work on AMD because of NVIDIA-specific code, before it gets to the fact that Iris lists Apple Silicon as not supported at all.

So on a Mac, on a current Minecraft, the path-traced Java packs are out of reach, and the packs that do load through Iris do their lighting with shadow maps and screen-space tricks, not rays. The SEUS PTGI on a Mac page compares what PTGI does with what Rockstar Shaders does, bounce by bounce.

How Rockstar Shaders traces on a Mac

The game runs on Vulkan, which on macOS is MoltenVK, a layered implementation of Vulkan on Metal. MoltenVK's extension list has no Vulkan ray query or ray tracing pipeline extension, and the mod expects that: at start-up it logs that there is no VK_KHR_ray_query on this driver and that it is using screen-space and ray-marched reflections for the Vulkan side. The rays come from somewhere else. Inside the jar is a Metal side-car, a native library and a Metal shader library, and MoltenVK's VK_EXT_metal_objects extension hands the Metal device across so the side-car can trace on the same GPU, in the same frame.

It traces through the game's own chunk vertex buffers, so what it sees is the world the game is drawing, and leaves are alpha-tested through an intersection function that reads the exported block atlas, so light comes through a canopy where the texture has holes. Six gates have to pass for the side-car to come up, from the Vulkan backend being active to a self-test; the log line Ray tracing: ready means they did. The Vulkan on a Mac page covers the backend itself.

What is traced, and what is not

Traced by the side-car: the sun, for exact shadows; sky visibility, how much open sky each surface can see; one bounce of global illumination; the sky and sun visibility of every fog cell, which is what keeps enclosed spaces from looking veiled; and reflections for water, metal and ice, one mirror ray per water pixel with roughness cone jitter, block and sky light at the hit, and the clouds along the reflected ray.

Not traced: the rest of the frame is a deferred renderer. Four cascaded shadow maps in a 4096 or 2048 atlas still exist and still draw the near shadows, with stained glass tinting sunlight through them; ambient occlusion is GTAO on screen; contact shadows are a screen-space march; a screen-space reflection pass covers what the screen already shows and the trace covers what it does not. Dynamic lights from a held torch cast no shadows. Glass panes do not request a traced reflection by default. It is not a path tracer, and I do not call it one. Two features are wired but unproven: the first-person player's own shadow does not appear yet, and the player in traced water reflections has not been shown in a capture.

What it costs, measured

All on one machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB. At the sunset bay pose, everything on took 27.9 ms a frame. Ray-traced shadows off, 29.7. Ray-traced reflections off, 29.3. Ray-traced fog off, 29.3. All three off, 29.5. Every fallback costs more than the trace it replaces, so the ray tracing switches are the wrong ones to reach for on a slow day. At 1706x1966 the Metal shadow and sky traces take 3.8 ms outside the GPU timers and the traced reflection resolve 1.4 ms inside them, out of a 46 ms frame in which the water surface alone is 8.7 to 8.9.

Without the side-car, on a machine where one of its gates fails, the mod still loads and renders, but the traced shadows, sky visibility, bounce, water reflections and fog occlusion are gone and enclosed spaces look veiled. That is the state an Intel Mac would be in if it ran at all, which is why Intel Macs are not supported. The Apple Silicon page has the rest of the frame budget.

The settings and the log lines

Three restart-only toggles control the traces. On the Lighting and Shadows page, Ray-traced shadows traces the sun for exact shadows and fog sky-occlusion, and Ray-traced fog traces sky and sun visibility for the fog's froxels. On the Reflections and Materials page, Ray-traced reflections traces reflection rays for water, metal and ice. Shadow maps is the rasterized cascade, and its tip says the ray trace stands in when it is off. All are on by default and each says Restart to apply.

The front page of the settings has a Ray tracing: row whose tooltip is the current status and the config file path. In logs/latest.log, search for RockstarShaders: a working side-car prints Ray tracing: ready with its self-test result, and a failed one prints Ray tracing unavailable with the reason, which is one of a fixed list, from the Vulkan backend not being active to the exported Metal device not supporting ray tracing. The Lighting and Shadows, Reflections and Materials and troubleshooting pages take each of these further.

Which Macs

Apple Silicon, M1 or later, is the target. Apple's Metal feature tables list ray tracing in compute and render pipelines from the Apple6 GPU family, and the M1 is Apple7, so the API the side-car needs is on every Apple Silicon Mac; Apple's M3 announcement says the M3 family brought hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Mac for the first time. The side-car's own gate is that the Metal device reports ray tracing support. It has been tested on one machine, an M4 Max with 48 GB, and the release notes say an M1 will be slower. Intel Macs are not supported. Windows and Linux are not supported and not tested; the side-car is a macOS library.

Download free (1.0.0) Modrinth (pending)Minecraft 26.3, Fabric, macOS on Apple silicon. Install guide. Releases and bug reports on GitHub.

About the author. Ryleigh Newman wrote Rockstar Shaders and every page on this site. Facts about other packs and programs come from their own sites, with the date they were read. More about the project.

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Questions

Can you get ray tracing in Minecraft on a Mac?

Not Minecraft's own. Bedrock's ray tracing needs 64-bit Windows and a DirectX ray tracing GPU, and Bedrock Edition is not released for macOS. On Java Edition, Rockstar Shaders traces sun shadows, sky visibility, one-bounce GI, water and metal reflections and fog occlusion on Metal, on Apple Silicon Macs, in alpha.

Does Minecraft Java Edition have ray tracing?

Not built in. Java's ray tracing has always come from shader packs, such as SEUS PTGI for OptiFine, and there is no OptiFine for 26.2 or 26.3. Rockstar Shaders is a mod with its own renderer that adds Metal ray tracing to Java 26.3 on a Mac.

Do I need an M3 or M4 for the ray tracing?

Apple's Metal tables put the ray tracing API on every Apple Silicon Mac, from the M1 up; the M3 was the first with dedicated hardware for it. The side-car needs a Metal device that reports ray tracing support. It has only been measured on an M4 Max, and an M1 will be slower.

Is Rockstar Shaders a path tracer like SEUS PTGI or Minecraft RTX?

No. It is a deferred renderer with cascaded shadow maps, GTAO and screen-space reflections, and a Metal side-car that traces sun shadows, sky visibility, one bounce of GI, reflections for water, metal and ice, and fog occlusion. It does not path-trace the whole image.

Does turning the ray tracing off make it faster?

No, on the one machine measured. Everything on was 27.9 ms a frame; shadows off 29.7, reflections off 29.3, fog off 29.3, all three off 29.5. Each fallback costs more than the trace it replaces. Lower Render scale instead.