Arctic Launcher 0.5.0-beta.1

What's new#

Bedrock Edition (Windows)#

• Play Minecraft for Windows from Arctic: start it, switch its version, and manage its worlds, packs and servers (a new Bedrock tab). Worlds import and export as .mcworld.
• Any version, older or newer: switch between every release and Preview build, including the older ones before 1.21.120. Windows installs them with the Store licence of the account that owns the game. Older packages you download are kept, so going back needs no second download.
• Clients: pick Latite or Flarial under Bedrock and it is loaded into the game when you press Play. They are made by other people and downloaded from their own releases; some servers ban modified clients.

Arctic Client#

• Forge 1.8.9 now has the Arctic Client (installed by the launcher into Forge 1.8.9 instances): HUD, menus, notices and cosmetics, with the same settings as the other versions.
• Forge 1.8.9 Performance switch: adds Patcher and Entity Culling from Modrinth (ones you already have are left alone). Patcher's own font renderer and its OneConfig menu key (Right Shift, also Arctic's) are moved aside after its first start.
• Minecraft 1.13.2 is supported.
• Hitboxes shows every entity's hitbox with one click (like F3+B), on all versions.
• Saturation Bar draws your hidden saturation as a gold line on the hunger bar, on all versions.
• Ping Tags show other players' ping in front of their name tag, My name tag shows your own ping, tier and name as others see them, and Find Me in Tab makes your own row pulse.
• Fullbright can skip light calculations. The Performance switch also adds Particle Core and BadOptimizations.
• Shoulder pets and new cosmetics, free for everyone.
• Disconnect screens explain what happened: a timeout, a refused connection or an unknown address each get a plain sentence, and Escape goes back to the server list.

Launcher#

• HTTP proxies (CONNECT) alongside SOCKS5, in the launcher, the CLI and in game.
• Play time per server, world and instance, with a Stats tab, and per instance on the Play page.
• Look for updates on an instance's Mods page, with Update all; optional extra mods per instance, starting with Wavey Capes.
• Recent worlds are backed up before the game moves to a newer version.
• Crash help: explanations name the mod to update when the loader suggests it, mods left over from another Minecraft version, a Fabric Loader that is too old, and a game that stops without writing anything. "Fix it" buttons switch off leftover mods or update Fabric Loader. Crash reports include the launcher log and the exit code.
• Discover: only servers that let any name in are tagged "cracked" (a Microsoft account is the normal case, so "premium" is gone). A few servers got their proper names.
• Skin gallery: a Minecraft collection with the nine default skins.
• Friends: Add a friend is its own card; the privacy settings are a labelled Privacy & profile button.
• Launcher logs: the last five are kept (launcher.1.log is the run before), and a log starts with the date and time.
• Tray: the first time you close the window it asks whether to keep Arctic in the tray, with a plain explanation (also asked in onboarding). A launcher waiting in the tray no longer restarts itself for an update unless you allow it.
• Animations and the glass blur stay off when the graphics driver draws in software (ChromeOS, virtual machines); nothing animates while the window is hidden.

Fixed#

• Offline names can't be lost on the same PC: the key is stored readably, the recovery code is made and kept automatically, and settings, accounts and keys survive a power cut. Concurrent saves of one file no longer overwrite each other.
• A refused Arctic sign-in is not retried every few seconds.
• Bold text with the smooth font on 1.8.9 to 1.12.2 is thickened, not drawn twice a pixel apart (titles looked doubled).
• On 1.8.9 to 1.12.2 the game follows its window after the launcher maximizes it (it could draw a small picture in a big black window).
• Zoom's smooth camera no longer stays on after zooming when OptiFine's zoom had switched it on first.
• Disconnect screens keep the server's colours, and the launcher no longer warns that Entity Culling is for another Minecraft version on Forge 1.8.9.
• Leftover copies of an interrupted launcher update are removed at start.
• The pointer is given back to an open screen (it was hidden after the loading screen in fullscreen, and after Alt+Tab).
• Reconnect goes to the server being joined, not the last one that worked.
• Servers behind Cloudflare no longer hang when joining through a proxy.
• Motion blur on 26.1 and newer shows again and no longer leaves stale frames.
• The cosmetics catalog is requested once when it gets old, not once per frame.
• Forge 1.8.9 starts again (its Mixin service files were missing, and one hook targeted a class Forge loads first).
• "My name tag" has its icon, and the "Send to…" button lines up with the buttons beside it.

Known issues#

• Bedrock support has had little testing on real installs: tell us if installing an older version, switching back or loading a client fails.
• Minecraft 1.13.2 and Forge 1.8.9 are new; report anything odd.
• Waypoints can step instead of gliding while you move.

SHA-256#

Check a download: Get-FileHash <file> (PowerShell) or sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS.txt (Linux).

What's Changed#

• Review server submissions without a MOTD code by @brksfrb in https://github.com/brksfrb/arctic-launcher/pull/2 (opens in a new tab)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/brksfrb/arctic-launcher/compare/v0.4.9...v0.5.0-beta.1 (opens in a new tab)