How to install SEUS shaders for Minecraft 1.20

Minecraft shaders come in many different forms to accomplish various visual styles. Among the collection of shaders available to players, Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) is one of the most well-known. This shader pack creates gorgeous water, sky, and light graphics while keeping the core aesthetic of the game intact.

As SEUS has developed, the creators of the popular Minecraft shaders have formed many new variants of it that take advantage of different technologies. There is a shader pack spin-off that uses RTX graphics rendering, and also download links for legacy SEUS versions and the new "renewed" rebuild.

If you want to utilize these wonderful and vibrant shaders, you'll need a little help from shader-compatible mods like Optifine or Iris.

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Installing Optifine or Iris for Minecraft 1.20

Unfortunately, Minecraft's graphics rendering engine doesn't have native support for shaders. The good news is that two of the most accessible mods can be installed in just a few moments and will then allow you to install SEUS' shaders without much effort.

By using either the Optifine or Iris mods, you can install third-party shaders and adjust them as needed.

How to install Optifine for Minecraft 1.20:

1. Head to the URL https://optifine.net/downloads and select the download or mirror link that corresponds to your currently-installed version of the game. If the version you need isn't ready yet, you may need to wait a while for the Optifine developers to catch up to the latest version. For example, the Optifine update for version 1.20.1 is currently only available for its pre-release snapshots.
2. After selecting the download link, you'll be brought to an advertisement page. Wait a few seconds and then click the skip button in the top right of the window.
3. Click the download link one more time and you should receive a .jar file.
4. Run the .jar file to open the installation wizard. After completing the prompts in the wizard, you should now be able to open the Minecraft Launcher and select the Optifine version of the game to the left of Java Edition's play button.

How to install Iris for Minecraft 1.20:

1. Head to the URL https://irisshaders.dev/download and press the button for downloading the universal .jar file.
2. Like the Optifine installation, run the .jar file to enter the installation wizard.
3. In Iris' installation wizard, you can select your version of the game and whether you'd like to install Iris Shaders directly or the Fabric mod loader as well. Either one will work perfectly fine, but simply click through the installation wizard and ensure all the file locations are correct.
4. After the program completes its process, you should be able to find Iris or Fabric in the launcher for Java Edition by picking the installations to the left of the play button.

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How to Install SEUS Shaders for Minecraft 1.20 Using Iris or Optifine

With either Iris, Fabric, or Optifine installed, you can finally set up the SEUS shaders that you've been waiting for. Installing SEUS should be considerably easy even compared to the Optifine/Iris setup process, so you can spend less time worrying about files and folders and get into the game.

Installing SEUS for Minecraft 1.20:

1. Head to https://www.sonicether.com/seus/ and scroll down the page to select the version of the shader pack you'd like to use. It may also be worth taking a look at which shader will work best depending on your hardware limitations. SEUS Renewed tends to be the option of choice for a wide swath of players.
2. On the next page, tick the box that states that you've read the shader's EULA and click the download button. You'll receive a .zip file as a result.
3. Extract the .zip file you've acquired. This can be done on most Windows machines by default, but there are also programs such as WinRAR or 7Zip that can perform this task.
4. Either move or copy/paste your unzipped SEUS folder and place it in the shaderpacks folder within your game's root directory. By default, the root directory for the game on Windows is found at C:\Users\ExampleUserName\Appdata\Roaming\.minecraft\shaderpacks. For MacOS users, the root directory should be located at ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/shaderpacks instead.
5. Once the unzipped SEUS file is placed in the shaderpacks folder, you should be able to open the Optifine/Iris/Fabric version of the game via the launcher.
6. Lastly, enter a game world or multiplayer server, open the main menu, select options, then video settings, then shaders. All that's left to do is to select the SEUS shaders from the list and press done. SEUS should load into the game accordingly.

Downloading shaders may be a bit trickier than most mods these days, but once you have them installed, all that's really required is to download and use the same process to implement updates. Fortunately, SEUS stays up to date rather quickly.

As long as you keep your Optifine/Iris/Fabric/SEUS updated in lockstep with new Minecraft releases as much as possible, there shouldn't be any issues for the foreseeable future.