What anti-aliasing is and how to enable it in Minecraft

Minecraft has a litany of graphics settings for players to tweak. However, some, like anti-aliasing, require a slightly different approach to activate.

Anti-aliasing is a longstanding computer graphics term that can be found in just about any modern game. It is also used in other computing facets, such as digital art. Regardless, the definition of the mechanic is the same.

Anti-aliasing is a technique used by a computer to smooth the edges of an image by averaging the colors of the pixels at the edge, effectively blurring the jagged edge. It has many different methods, such as FXAA (Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing) and TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing).

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Enabling anti-aliasing for Minecraft on PC

Anti-aliasing smooths the edges of the blocks rendered in-game as well as other things like items (Image via Mojang)

To enable anti-aliasing in Minecraft on PC, it may take a little more work than simply opening up a menu and tweaking the game's video settings.

Minecraft, by default, doesn't enable anti-aliasing on its own. It must be forced by your machine's graphics card (GPU).

Certain integrated graphics cards may not be able to perform this action. However, most Nvidia and AMD brand graphics cards can force anti-aliasing with some control center tweaks. Depending on the GPU, players will likely have a different method for forcing anti-aliasing.

Below, players can find a quick list of steps for enabling anti-aliasing on their Nvidia or AMD GPU:

Enabling anti-aliasing for Minecraft with Nvidia

1. Open the Nvidia Control Panel. Nvidia GeForce Experience may also be capable of automatically optimizing Minecraft to utilize anti-aliasing, so players may also want to check GeForce Experience to see if anti-aliasing is suitable for Minecraft on their hardware. If so, they won't need to worry about configurations and can simply select "optimize."
2. Navigate to Manage 3D Settings.
3. Head to Program Settings.
4. Add the game's executable to your program list. However, before doing so, open Minecraft to make the process easier. Not the launcher, the actual game itself. Once it's on the main menu, you can proceed.
5. Back in the control panel, press the "Add" button in your program settings. Filter the list of available programs to add by "recently used," and Java SE Platform Binary should be at the top or close to it since the game was recently opened. Select this platform binary to add it to the list.
6. Once the binary has been added, select it from the dropdown list and navigate to its settings. There should be a setting called "Antialiasing FXAA," which you should set to. Once this is enabled, the version of Minecraft currently running should anti-alias its in-game rendering.
7. You can now tweak your AA by using the "Antialiasing Transparency" option to increase the blur around edges via sampling. It also doesn't hurt to set "Antialiasing Mode" to "override any application setting" just to ensure that the anti-aliasing isn't inhibited by any background programs.

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Enabling anti-aliasing for Minecraft with AMD

1. Begin by opening the AMD Catalyst Control Center.
2. If there are no tabs on the side of the control center, select "Preferences" and then "advanced view" from the dropdown menu.
3. Once the side tabs are visible, select 3D Application Settings under the gaming tab.
4. Under system and application settings, there should be an "+ Add" button. Click on this.
5. Select your Javaw.exe file. This is usually found in the file path "<Player's disk drive, usually C: or D:>/Program Files (x86)/Java/<jre" the numbers will depend on the version of Java installed. Currently, this file should read jre1.8.0_331>/bin/javaw.exe.
6. Head to the newly-made Javaw.exe tab in 3D application settings and select "override application settings" from Anti-Aliasing Mode.
7. Select the degree of your anti-aliasing. Using multisampling works fine for most cards, and this can be found under Anti-Aliasing Method. You can then select the number of anti-aliasing samples (2x, 4x, 8x, etc.). Higher samples will provide a more concise edge blur. However, players should be aware that using higher samples or processes such as supersampling may cause performance impacts for their graphics card depending on its quality.