What is Minecraft OptiKai? All you need to know about new Optifine alternative

OptiFine is one of the most famous Minecraft mods. Seen as the gold standard of mod for many years, shaders, connected textures, and other visual quality-of-life changes wouldn't be possible without it. However, there's still yet to be any sort of official Optifine release for 1.21, despite the update having dropped months ago.

That's where OptiKai comes in. This is an unofficial spinoff of OptiFine that's been given the blessing of sp614x, the only OptiFine developer, to fill in until he can return to work. Everything you need to know about OptiKai can be found detailed below.

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All about Minecraft's new OptiKai mod

What is OptiKai?

It's no secret that OptiFine has been lagging behind when it comes to releases. As previously mentioned, there's still no Minecraft 1.21 release, despite the update having dropped already. According to the mod's official X page, this is due to sp614x taking some time out.

However, for the last several versions, one of OptiFine's admins, LoudIris, has been developing unofficial versions of the Minecraft mod with the main developer's blessing. Out of respect, these versions have been limited to snapshots and pre-release candidates, to avoid drawing attention away from the main mod and its releases.

To ensure there's still some sort of OptiFine available until the main developer can return, LoudIris has stepped in and has made unofficial releases for both 1.21 and 1.21.1. To help keep these installations separate from the official mod, they've been named OptiKai, after LoudIris' pet cat.

Essentially, OptiKai is a third-party version of OptiFine that's been given the official blessing to continue development until the latter can return. Note that the final announcement post states that Minecraft shaders are currently not working, meaning you'll want to stick with Fabric and Iris.

Additionally, keep in mind that this is — as stressed by the OptiFine X account — an unofficial release and shouldn't be considered the same as OptiFine. There will be issues and bugs present that might not exist in normal releases of the mod.

Therefore, they have stressed that players shouldn't submit bug reports for things they encounter while using OptiKai. These bug reports won't be useful for OptiFine as they're different mods.