Minecraft is a great game that has taken the world by storm, and the only video game in history that has made its creator a billionaire. It has sold more than 122 million copies, making it the best-selling PC game to date. Let's see how to create a portable Minecraft installation on a USB thumb drive, to play on any PC without installation.
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We prepared this guide on Windows 10 Creators Update. It should work on any relatively recent Windows version, Vista, 7, 8.1, and earlier editions of Windows 10.
Also, we have used a bought license for Minecraft. We can't guarantee that the portable Minecraft project will work with a pirated version of the game.
Get a good USB stick and format it to NTFS
If we are going to play portable Minecraft straight from a USB, it's best to have a fast thumb drive. A USB 2.0 model will probably work, but we will have a much better experience if our motherboard and flash drive both support USB 3.0.
Regarding the size, a clean portable Minecraft installation is about 450MB. However, as we keep exploring the practically infinite minecraft world, the megabytes can add up fast.
So, for a comfortable experience, we would recommend a USB stick of at least 8GB. For the guide, we used the 32GB Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0, which is one of the fastest USB flash drives around and comes at a great price.
Most 8GB and 16GB USB drives come with a default FAT32 filesystem. Likewise, most 32GB+ thumb drives come with the exFAT filesystem. Neither is suitable to install the portable Minecraft, so we need to format the flash drive to NTFS.
We just right-click on the drive, select "Format"...
...and choose NTFS on the file system drop-down menu. We can also change the volume label to "Minecraft", but this is optional, and it won't make a difference for portable Minecraft.
Formatting the drive will delete any files we might have on it. So make sure to have copies of anything important on a separate disk.
Create the folder structure
On the now empty thumb drive, we must create a folder with a name of our choice, e.g. "Minecraft Portable". Inside, we need to create two folders "bin" and "data".
Download and "install" Minecraft
We need to visit https://minecraft.net/download/alternative and get the first minecraft.exe file.
Once it downloads, we move it or copy it to the bin folder.
Then, we enter the data folder. Inside, we create a new folder and name it:
.minecraft.
with a full stop "." at the beginning and the end.
This is important because Portable Minecraft needs a ".minecraft" folder, but Windows won't let us create a filename that starts with a full stop.
By adding a second full stop at the end, Windows will automatically remove it, and we will get the correct filename.
What if I already have Minecraft installed?
If we already had Minecraft installed, it's simple to convert it to portable Minecraft. We still format the flash drive to NTFS, create the directories on the USB and download Minecraft.exe.
The main difference is that we copy the existing .minecraft folder from the disk to the USB, instead of creating a new one.
To find the non-portable Minecraft folder, we can press the Windows key + R and at the "Run" window type:
%appdata%
Depending on how many applications we have installed, AppData might have multiple folders. The .Minecraft folder, however, will always be the first, alphabetically.
Having found the folder, we just copy it to the data folder on the thumb drive.
If we were playing Minecraft for a while and there is a lot of data in the .minecraft folder, the copying could take a while, depending on our thumb drive's speed.
Create the batch to start portable Minecraft
Finally, we need to create a batch file to start Minecraft. This batch file will tell the Minecraft executable to use the folders on the USB, and not the HDD.
We open a plain text editor, such as Notepad...
...and copy-paste the following line, including the quotation marks "":
"%CD%\bin\Minecraft.exe" --workDir "%CD%\data\.minecraft"
The first of this commands points to the Minecraft executable on the thumb drive. The second --workdir command orders the executable to use the .minecraft folder we created inside the "data" folder on the USB flash file.
Afterwards, we save the file within the Minecraft Portable folder, along with the bin and data folders.
We can give it a name of our choice, such as "portable Minecraft", or "Minecraft portable", or "launcher". It is important that it has the ".bat" extension, and we have selected "All Files" in the "Save as type".
If we do it correctly, the system will recognise it as a Windows Batch File.
This is the file we will run to start the portable Minecraft.
Portable Minecraft: The first launch
The first time we start portable Minecraft, the PC needs to have internet access. It will download the runtime.
Notice that both the Minecraft executable file and the work directory point on our flash drive, which in the example is (E:).
Then the system will set up the runtime, which can take a while on a slow USB stick...
...and finally prompt for our Minecraft account credentials.
We log in with our Mojang email or username and password, as usual. Finally, we click on Play to start the game.
Since it is the first run, we wait as the system downloads the proper files, straight to the USB...
...and a couple of minutes later, we are on the main menu.
With a good enough USB flash drive, it will be the same as if we played off of the HDD.
Since we run the program once, we can now play offline on any PC with the same version of Windows, no matter which drive letter the USB flash gets, e.g. M: for Minecraft.
It won't even ask for the account credentials anymore; the one time was enough.
Provided, of course, that the PC can run Minecraft in the first place.
Just remember, before pulling out the USB, to do a proper ejection.
We don't want to risk having any data corruption on our worlds and saved games.
Run portable Minecraft on other Windows
The first time we add the flash on another version of Windows than the one we created it, Minecraft will again need internet access to download a new runtime.
After that, we are good to go. Portable Minecraft will not need internet access again to run on Windows 7, and it will still run on Windows 10.
We will also find all of our saved worlds, as we left them.
The possibilities of portable Minecraft
The most important lesson from the portable Minecraft project is that everything we do in the game resides in this single .minecraft folder.
This makes it exceptionally easy to create a full backup. Just make a copy the .minecraft folder.
We can also copy the entire "Minecraft Portable" folder from the USB stick to anywhere on the disk, and we can run Minecraft from there, using the batch file.
Now it's easier than ever to try new mods without risking our main game or take Minecraft with us at a friend's house, for LAN multiplayer.
Going the extra mile: Getting a Minecraft icon for the USB
This is purely aesthetical, and it won't make the slightest difference in the game. Wouldn't it be cool, though, if the USB thumb drive had a Minecraft inspired icon?
We just need to find such an icon on the Internet. A good place to search is Easyicon.net.
We select one we like and download it as a .ico file. Most icons are free for personal use.
We copy the ico file at the root of the USB drive...
...and rename it to minecraft (minecraft.ico if you can see the extensions on your system).
For the last step, we open a new notepad file, copy and paste this text...
[AutoRun] icon=minecraft.ico
...and save it as autorun.inf at the root of the USB drive, with the "All Files" type selected.
Next time we insert the USB, we will get a cool Minecraft icon.
Mind you, though, that some antivirus suites delete the autorun.inf within a USB on sight, because it is a file that a lot of USB-borne malware use.
Will you create a portable Minecraft?
If you found the portable Minecraft project interesting and would like to see more Minecraft-themed guides on PCsteps, leave us a comment.
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Is there anyway I can do this but for Mac? I tried doing this but didn't work for me :(
Because I'm getting my data and minecraft stuff from my PC and trying to play it (portably) on a mac.
Nvm I go it do work
Hi Ruby. What did you have to do differently for it to work on Mac? In case another reader has the same problem.
Actually all I did was download the Mac version of Minecraft instead of minecraft.exe . It oddly worked.
Makes sense. Thank you for your answer.
Great, easy tutorial! Thanks so much!
Hey Ruby,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
Thanks so much for the tutorial. My mom is bring me home a usb drive so I can try it, because on my laptop I don't have enough space to download it on. Thanks so much
Hey Lance,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
I did this and the game won't lunch what do I do?
You may have copied the launcher as "MinecraftLanucher.exe". Try renaming it to "Minecraft.exe" instead
Hi Steve,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
I have done all of the steps and done them over and over again, but the game directory still says it directs to the appdata thing. Help plz?
go to the launcher> edit profile> check the box that says "game directory" and set it to the directory you used on your usb
This will work, but only if the letter of the thumb drive stays the same. On another PC it would be a problem.
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher and with any drive letter.
Hi Nate,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
I could see doing this with a DVD
Since the DVD is a read-only medium, it's pretty much guaranteed to not work for running any kind of portable app, Minecraft included.
Hey, when I went to run the .bat file, it opened, and then closed again almost immediately. What did I do wrong? I copied and pasted the text exactly.
You may have copied the launcher as "MinecraftLanucher.exe". Try renaming it to "Minecraft.exe" instead.
yes this. this is important. make sure the names match everywhere
Hi Willow,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
Did you put minecraft.exe in the bin folder?
try double clicking the minecraftlauncher.exe thats in the bat folder. then it will dowload the folders game_tmp runtime tmp tools and the other folders the game needs
can u play the online servers with portable minecraft or can you only play offline?
Since you have a legitimate minecraft account, there is no reason you can't play online.
it does not work for me, and did every thing correct.
Hi Sam,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
The game crashed whilst initializing game
The game crashed whilst initializing game
Error: org.lwjgl.LWJGLException: Pixel format not accelerated
Is there any way this could be fixed?
Have you tried updating your GPU drivers?
https://help.mojang.com/customer/en/portal/articles/928791-problematic-frame-or-pixel-format-not-accelerated
Thanks, work perfectly.
The minecraft installer won't let me change the install folder for some reason.
Hi Kendrick,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
The guide works only for the old minecraft.exe launcher. The newer one fails and is setting a .minecraft folder in C:.
Hi Glembo,
We have updated the guide so it works with the latest Minecraft launcher.
you forgot to inform people that the name of the launcher has to match the name in the .bat file. instead of blindly copying and paster must check that they both say "minecraft.exe" or "minecraftlauncher.exe"
after it has finished setting up runtime, the launcher goes black and even after a while nothing... Launcher is still completely black. Anything I could do?
I got it working. I did everything correctly but needed to fix one unlisted thing
Hi Veso. Thank you for your input. If you share what you did to make it work, I can update the guide for the rest of the readers.
Yes, please do, I would like to move my son's Minecraft game to the sdcard on his laptop to make room on his tiny (32gb) c drive.
Hi Venetta,
We have updated the guide for the latest Minecraft version.
Why the NTFS reformat?
Fat32 does not support files larger than 4GB, and exFAT might not be compatible with older Operating systems, so NTFS is the most compatible solution to support multiple different PCs.
hey. i'd like to ask, after following this portable guide, can i make like a backup RAR archive of this just in case i, like, make a mistake when installing this like mods to it?
Hey Alisa,
Sure, you can do this. It's a gread idea before experimenting with mods.
if you sync these files with google drive google will automatically back them up for you
The game directory could not be created.
The game directory could not be created.
The game directory could not be created.
What can i do???
IT DOES`ENT WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And DONT TELL ME that you updated the the guide to the new launcher cause I did this after you updated the guide
make sure the name of your .exe matching the name in the .bat file for example if one says "minecraft.exe" and the other says "minecraftlauncher.exe" it will get confused. so change the name of one or the other so they match
sry for the caps lock, just a bit mad
Well, if you give us some more information about what is the problem, we might be able to help you. Do you get a specific error message?
there is no error, it just open`s the launcher with the default location, I also tried adding --lockdir and it did the same.
When we have time, we will look into this, and update the guide.
The Multiplayer doesn't work any ideas ?
Tanks to Angelos Kyritsis
Is it necessary to have java installed for the latest version of minecraft? If so is there a way to make that portable? So that way you'd be able to run Minecraft from a USB using a java installation on that same USB rather than having to rely on the system drive to have an installation of java.
I think java is built into the games code these days. instead of being required separately. try the tutorial and see if it works for you
does anyone remember the way to make it silent or hidden. the command prompt will make people think you're up to no good
you can use this to make it run silently in the background without the popup window. not recommended cause if any of the files or locations change you'll need to update the shortcut. let me know your thoughts on it
C:WindowsSystem32wscript.exe F:MinecraftPortableminecraftportable.vbs F:MinecraftPortableminecraftportable.bat
Heres an alternative version of the .bat file try it out
start "" "%CD%binMinecraftLauncher.exe" --workDir "%CD%data.minecraft"
Minecraft