Xaero’s Minimap Mod for Minecraft
Introduction
Xaero’s Minimap is a feature-rich mod for Minecraft that enhances navigation by providing a highly customizable minimap. This minimap is displayed in a corner of your screen and shows the nearby world terrain, players, mobs, and entities, all while maintaining the classic look and feel of vanilla Minecraft.
Key Features
- Vanilla Aesthetics: This minimap is designed to blend seamlessly with Minecraft’s original graphics, making it feel like a natural part of the game.
- Rotating and Shaped Minimap: Xaero’s Minimap is renowned for being the first rotating, square minimap available for Minecraft. There are also options for circular minimap shapes and the ability to lock rotation, displaying a direction arrow instead.
- Customizable Display: The minimap can show players, mobs, and items as colored dots or icons. You can adjust the size, position (down to a single-pixel shift), and zoom level, along with many other settings.
- Block Color Modes: Choose from Vanilla (employs Minecraft’s own map colors) or Accurate (matches block textures and biome colors). An extra option enables biome colors within Vanilla mode.
- Dynamic Map Enlargement: Use a dedicated key binding (Z by default) to temporarily enlarge the minimap, with options to center it or zoom out fully.
- Advanced Terrain Rendering: Map shading can be customized using “Terrain Depth” and “Terrain Slopes” settings for more detailed visualization.
- Cave Mode: The minimap works above and below ground. Cave mode activates automatically, even inside buildings if the roof size is sufficient. You can choose the “solid roof” detection size for more accurate activation.
- Waypoints: Create nearly infinite waypoints to mark important locations. Waypoints appear both on the minimap and in the game world. You can teleport to waypoints (with permission), hide or unhide specific waypoints, and organize them into sets for easy management.
- Waypoint Management:
- Local and Global Waypoints: Local waypoints only appear within a set draw distance, while global waypoints are always visible.
- Waypoint Sharing: Waypoints can be shared with other players through the in-game chat.
- Deathpoints: When you die, a special skull-shaped waypoint is created. Old deathpoints become regular waypoints, but this can be disabled.
- Chunk and Entity Overlays:
- Chunk Grid: Toggle a grid to see chunk boundaries.
- Slime Chunks: Display slime-spawnable chunks with an overlay.
- Custom Light Overlay: Highlight blocks within custom light levels (default identifies mob-spawnable blocks).
- Entity Radar: View all nearby entities:
- Players as white dots or heads.
- Mobs as yellow dots (with customizable colors for hostile and friendly types).
- Items as red dots.
- Other entities (like arrows or item frames) as purple dots.
- Entity names can be shown on the minimap.
- Additional Display Info:
- Coordinates, biome information, light level, in-game time, and camera angles can all be shown under the minimap (enable these in the settings).
- Customizable key bindings for zoom (I and O by default), waypoint management, and more.
- Language Support: The mod has been translated into multiple languages.
- Multi-World Detection: Separate “sub-worlds” for different server worlds means accurate waypoint management per world.
- Integration: Compatible with Xaero’s World Map. By default, it uses textures generated by the World Map, improving performance when both mods are installed.
- Mod Editions: Available in Full and Fair-Play editions. Fair-Play disables entity radar and cave maps for a more balanced PVP experience.
Customization and Settings
- Move and resize the minimap anywhere on your screen.
- Configure access: Restrict minimap visibility to when a specific item (like a compass) is equipped or in your hotbar.
- Potion effect restrictions: Servers can use special effects to limit minimap features, such as entity radar or waypoints.
- Toggle display of waypoint coordinates and server addresses for privacy or video streams.
- Hundreds of settings for fine-tuning the minimap experience—open mod settings with Y in-game to explore all options.
Usage Tips
- Press B to create a new waypoint.
- Press U to open the waypoints list and access more management tools.
- Use Z to enlarge the minimap for a better view. Adjust enlargement behavior in settings.
- Customize key bindings and other preferences directly from the vanilla controls menu.
Conclusion
Xaero’s Minimap mod adds powerful navigation features to Minecraft while respecting the game’s original aesthetic. With deep customization options, robust waypoint management, entity radar, and extensive integration with the game’s mechanics, it stands out as a top choice for players who want more information at their fingertips without sacrificing the look and feel of vanilla Minecraft.
Screenshots
- If you don’t know how to use Minecraft Mods, please click to view the Mods usage tutorial.
