7 best Minecraft mods in 2023 (January 2023)

Installing mods is a magnificent way to alter and improve a player's Minecraft experience, and there are near-endless numbers when choosing them. As the new year has arrived, there are more options than ever to enhance the in-game world and gameplay.

Sure, 2023 has only begun, but an enormous number of mods still stand above the rank-and-file options. Some of these options have existed for years and continue to be updated for newer versions of Minecraft. Plenty of mods can vastly improve gameplay with little effort if a player has updated to The Wild Update or its subsequent patches.

There are too many mods to list definitively, but some notable examples are certainly worth looking into.

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Fantastic Minecraft mods that remain top options in 2023 so far

1) Just Enough Items

Just Enough Items is perfect for quickly crafting, brewing, and smelting (Image via mezz/CurseForge)

Inventory management is a harsh reality to accept in Minecraft, and it can be pretty annoying depending on how many items a player is sifting through. Just Enough Items amends this issue by providing the entire catalog of items and blocks that can be found on a convenient list in most menus. Players can even enter the name of a given block/item in a search bar and find what they need, allowing them to quickly and effortlessly complete crafting recipes or perform tasks like smelting or potion brewing on the fly.

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2) JourneyMap

JourneyMap ensures players won't get lost easily (Image via techbrew)

Minecraft worlds are massive places where one can spend countless hours exploring them in any direction. Thus, installing a mod like JourneyMap can help a player from getting lost far from home.

JourneyMap provides a minimap that keeps track of terrain, structures, and more in real time. Players can also open JourneyMap in a web browser and view their world beyond what they immediately see in their minimap.

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3) Waystones

Travel across a Minecraft world in the blink of an eye with the Waystones mod (Image via BlayTheNinth/CurseForge)

Just as getting lost in a massive Minecraft world is common, so is losing plenty of time in transit, moving from one place to another. While teleport commands are helpful, other players look to mods for an answer. Waystones is one of the most prominent mods to facilitate fast travel, providing players with placeable waystones that create a fast travel network between stones.

Additionally, players can craft scrolls or use rechargeable gems to immediately return to their last used stone in the event they need to return to a distinct location in a hurry.

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4) Applied Energistics 2

Applied Energistics 2 brings a new futuristic set of tech into Minecraft's core gameplay (Image via AlgorithmX2)

If players are hunting for a new way to play Minecraft with a heavy dose of futurism, Applied Energistics 2 is one of the best mods to accomplish it. The mod introduces tons of new content focused on the transfer, flow, and transformation of energy to accomplish tasks.

Gone are the days of using basic redstone contraptions, as AE2 introduces auto-crafting using energy, cables, network terminals, wireless signals, and even quantum bridges to vastly expand what a player is capable of managing technologically.

While some redstone creations are astonishing, they require a high degree of knowledge and understanding. Applied Energistics 2 is a tech mod that still has plenty of nuances and a learning curve, but there are countless resources to make the process easier.

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5) Create

Create introduces all-new ways to craft and process materials in Minecraft (Image via simibubi/9Minecraft)

Innovation is a huge part of improving a player's Minecraft skills, and Create allows this to happen with all-new blocks and tools. These implementations improve the ability to automate, build, and decorate thanks to inclusions like furnace engines, gears and belts, tree fertilizers, and the magnificent blockzappers. Through the Create mod, players can build, craft, and process raw materials in ways Mojang never conceptualized.

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6) Cooking for Blockheads

A small example of the new foods offered in Cooking for Blockheads (Image via BlayTheNinth/CurseForge)

Cooking has remained largely the same in Minecraft for years, with only small increments made by a few new foods and the inclusion of campfires. Cooking for Blockheads improves food preparation by leaps and bounds beyond what Mojang has accomplished in the last several updates.

This mod is a functional set of kitchen blocks in-game, complete with a cooking recipe book. The kitchen blocks are fully modular and can be gradually improved to prepare better meals.

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7) Building Gadgets

The titular building gadget in this effective mod (Image via Direwolf20/CurseForge)

Building large-scale projects can be too meticulous for some players' tastes. This is where Building Gadgets come in, providing a collection of tools to building with multiple blocks at once and swapping the two, and gadgets that allow the copy and pasting of structures or outright destroying them.

While the gadgets are fairly intuitive on their own, the developers also provide a helpful wiki if players wish to dive deeper into the nuances of each gadget for the sake of their future building projects.