Xaero’s Minimap Mod for Minecraft
in mods
By Nathan Young
Overview
While traveling throughout your Minecraft world, there are many regions that remain unexplored and could contain useful items or the perfect spot to make a base. Locating these can be challenging without knowledge of the coordinates or prior experience in the area. By default the game has maps, but their range is limited and requires resources to create them. Xaero’s Minimap, a Minecraft mod, solves this by automatically displaying a map in the corner of your screen. It can be tweaked to show specific entities, add waypoints, and much more. These features are great for new players and veterans alike, providing a redefined experience. In this Apex Hosting resource, we will show you how to install and get started with Xaero’s Minimap.
Installation
The Xaero’s Minimap mod is required on the client, but completely optional on the server’s end.
Launcher
- Head towards Xareo’s Minimap Curseforge page, then click Files.
- Scroll down until you locate the type and version of the mod you want to download.
- Once you found it, click the mod’s file Name and press Download.
- Afterward, find and drag the mod into your launcher’s
mods
folder.
Note: If you need additional help installing mods on your launcher, then review the Fabric or Forge tutorial depending on your setup. - Launch Minecraft when the mod is inside of your client to confirm it works.
Server (Optional)
Make sure you make a copy of the downloaded mod or obtain it again for the server-side installation.
- Head to your Apex server panel and in the top left, press FTP File Access.
- Login with your password and navigate into the
mods
directory. - Near the top left corner, click Upload and drag the JAR files into the respective area.
- Wait for the mod(s) to reach 100%, then return to the main panel to Restart the server.
- Once everything loads, join your newly modded Minecraft server to verify it works.
Getting Started
The Xaero’s Minimap mod was released in 2017 by xaero96 on CurseForge, which obtained over 37 million downloads. The mod supports Minecraft Forge 1.7.10 to 1.19 and Fabric 1.14.4 to 1.19 versions and is mainly client-sided, but can be installed on the server too. There are tons of settings and features for you to use in-game, such as slime chunks, death waypoints, custom map information, and a lot more. You can customize almost anything from the mod by pressing Y once loaded in the game. We’ll be focusing on the main options that will be best for you and your players.
Minimap
As the mod’s title suggests, the main function is a minimap that allows you to see a top-down view of your player’s position. This is extremely useful when looking for other bases, players, mobs, biomes, or to view your structure layout when building. It’s a very popular feature that is typically used in modpacks such as Better Minecraft or Valhelsia. Some players may even see the minimap mod as an essential to their modded gameplay experience.
Map Settings
The map’s design can be entirely controlled in-game when you press Y on your keyboard. You’ll want to select the View Settings button to start tweaking the size of the map, its shape, zoom-scale, frame color, among other things. There is no right or wrong way of setting up your map because it’s all subjective to what you want. Otherwise, you can use the default map design without doing anything in the settings. In our screenshot, we highlighted the important details to focus on when editing the map.
Information Settings
There can be a list of information beneath the map in-game that’d display your coordinates, the current biome, dimension, and game time. You can view all these options by selecting the Information Settings button from the mod’s menu. You can add more if you want, but those are the main ones most players use from the Xaero’s Minimap mod. Although, you get to decide which options to use while editing your map’s design.
Map Position
In some cases, you don’t want the minimap on the left-side of your screen. Luckily, you can control this through an easy-to-use GUI from the Change Position option in the menu. Simply left-click and drag the map where you want, then press Confirm. It’s encouraged to keep the map somewhere at the top of your screen, because having it closer to your hotbar may block some of your vision.
Entity Radar
Another great tool to use for your minimap is tracking players and all mobs, especially if you’re hunting sheep to build a bed or collect leather from cows. You may change the color of specific mobs to help you better track them, increase the nametag of them, and view underground mobs to assist you in finding hostile mobs for potions or experience orbs. You can enable and customize that from the Entity Radar Settings in the menu when press Y in-game. There are more options for entity control in the map, but by default it should suffice for most players.
Radar Settings
The exact settings for the main functionality are the dot sizes, name scales, always rendering them, and the amount of entities it can load on the map. You might notice other options, but it’s advisable to leave them alone unless you want to start testing what works best for you.
The second page of the settings have the height limit for tracking the entities and a scale to indicate depth distance. Those are the main ones to focus on, which helps reveal more information about your mobs. Everything else from the menu is minor or barely noticeable in-game.
Entity Category Settings
Advanced users may want to fully control which type of entities are displayed on the map. For instance, you can edit the dot’s color, show head icons for the mobs, and other settings relating to the previously mentioned ones above. Unfortunately, due to the large number of settings we cannot go through them all. If you don’t want to tweak all of them, then you may focus on the top options since those are most useful to players. However, if you do change other settings and wish to revert them to default then click Reset Defaults in the top left.
Waypoints
Waypoints is by far the most useful feature to the Xaero’s Minimap mod because it allows you to keep track of your bases, mines, portals, or anything else. It’s even cross dimensional if configured that way! That means you don’t have to keep worrying about coordinates or in-game indicators of where you are or the location you’re trying to reach. However, you can teleport directly to your desired spot through the mod’s GUI menu.
Creating a Waypoint
In order to use the waypoint system, you’ll first need to create them in the menu. You can get started by pressing U on the keyboard in-game, then clicking Add/Edit and inputting the name of the point. You may also change the color for it, the exact coordinates, and the initials among other aspects. The name, color, and initials for the waypoint are the main settings you want to focus on when creating it. Of course, you can always play around with the other options if you want.
Teleporting
You can even teleport to any waypoints or “deathpoints” by opening the menu and selecting the point, then pressing Teleport (T). It doesn’t matter how far away you died or where your base is located, you have the ability to instantly transport to those coordinates. This can be perceived as an over-powered feature, but is quite the tool for your gameplay.
Death Waypoints
If you die in a far away place that isn’t close to your base, then it can be pretty annoying to travel the long distance to obtain your loot. That’s especially true if you don’t remember the exact location you died. Fortunately, when you die in-game the waypoint system automatically creates a “deathpoint” that you may walk towards. This can be a huge help to you and other players if you’re enjoying a difficult modded server with many hostile mobs or it can offer an easier gameplay experience so you never lose your death’s location.
Waypoint Settings
By default, the waypoints and deathpoints are enabled but can be edited to your liking. You can access these options by pressing Waypoint Settings from the mod’s menu in-game. The main ones you want to key in on are the icon/name/distance scales, distances to all points, and if they always appear in-game. Normally, you wouldn’t have to tweak any of these settings unless you had a different design in-mind
There are more options if you click Next in the bottom right of the screen. These settings control cross-dimensional teleportation, the maximum waypoint render distance, among other things. Again, it doesn’t need extra configuration for most players since it works perfectly without editing them.
Continuing onward to the next page, you’ll find designer settings such as the compass display on the minimap, its colors, the scale of them, and others. The focal point here would be the compass, since that helps navigation and keeping you aware about which direction you’re facing in-game. Besides that, there isn’t much else to review unless you want to test things.
Conclusion
The Xaero’s Minimap mod allows you and other players to easily track your world and its entities, creating a smoother gameplay experience. Whether you teleport to waypoints or search for mobs, this mod is a powerful tool that anyone can use. There’s a lot of options to view and edit, but after installing the mod it can be used without prior configuration. Although, it’s completely customizable and is configured in-game without the hassle of editing files. We hoped this guide helped you install and use the Xaero’s Minimap mod for your Minecraft world.