Installing Mods

After downloading a mod (e.g. from the Mod Releases forum) you usually have a .zip archive. In order to get the mod running in you have to unpack it in one of the folders where Minetest looks for mods. This depends on what Minetest version you have installed.

Make sure that you rename the folder to the modname (e.g. rename PilzAdam-carts-70cc4f4 to carts). You can find the modname in the title of the forum topic.

If one of the below mentioned directories does not exist, create it.

Install directory (Minetest 0.4.7 and later)

In 0.4.7 and later the mods are installed globally and enabled per world.

The common place to install them is $path_user/mods/. That is minetest-install-directory/mods/ in the official windows releases and RUN_IN_PLACE versions on Linux and ~/.minetest/mods/ in globally installed Minetest versions.

After extracting the mod there you need to enable it for your world. This can either be done in the GUI by clicking on "Configure" in the world selection, or by adding load_mod_<modname> = true in the world.mt file in the world directory.

Note that new installed mods are disabled for all worlds by default, so you explicitly need to enable them.

Install directory (Minetest 0.4.6 and earlier)

In 0.4.6 and earlier the mods are installed game specific, that means that you install the mods for every world that runs the "minetest" game or the "dwarves" game.

The common place to install them is $path_user/mods/<gameid>/ (<gameid> is minetest if you run minetest_game). That is minetest-install-directory/mods/<gameid>/ in the official windows releases and RUN_IN_PLACE versions on Linux and ~/.minetest/mods/<gameid>/ in globally installed Minetest versions.

The mod will be loaded in every world that runs the game with the gameid <gameid>.

Additional install directories (all Minetest versions)

Other places to install mods are world-directory/worldmods/, $path_share/mods/ and $<path_user, path_share>/games/<gameid>/mods/.

Note that users should generally install mods in the normal install directory and not in the additional ones.

Example structure

In this example the mods "carts" and "tnt" are installed:

    mods/
    ├── carts/
    │   ├── depends.txt
    │   ├── init.lua
    │   ├── functions.lua
    │   ├── README.txt
    │   ├── textures/
    │   │   ├── carts_top.png
    │   │   └── ...
    │   └── models/
    │       ├── cart.x
    │       └── ...
    └── tnt/
        ├── init.lua
        ├── depends.txt
        ├── README.txt
        ├── textures/
        │   ├── tnt_side.png
        │   └── ...
        └── sounds/
            ├── tnt_explode.ogg
            └── ...