How to Change Minecraft's Location & Directory (2023)

mklink /D "%appdata%\.minecraft" "OutputLocation"

STORAGE INFO: The symbolic link only points to the new location, so if your files are stored on your E drive, then no space should be taken up on your C drive where you have the symbolic link as a pointer. The symbolic link WILL show space that the destination folder takes up under "properties" tab, HOWEVER the actual space on your drive is NOT taken up by the symbolic link, which you can see when looking at storage space of a drive under the "Devices and drives" section of File Explorer.

Bedrock: Unfortunately due to Microsoft Store hard locking the folder for Bedrock edition, it is near impossible to gain administrative privileges of the files. If you need to change the drive, Microsoft Store allows you to change the drive, but not the path, unfortunately.

Thanks to @albertescanes for the following:
PowerShell equivalent:
sl $HOME/AppData/Roaming
New-Item -Path '.minecraft' -ItemType SymbolicLink -Target *desired destination path*

0:00 - Intro
0:24 - Seperate Minecraft Installations
1:12 - Move Minecraft as a Whole

[Hardrockkiller]

Heyo, got a question, say you wanna symlink something other than Minecraft, if the folder is not directly in %appdata%, but for example in appdata / local, would you still put the "cd %appdata%" at the beginning and then have
mklink /D "local\.Foldername"
Or would you simply put "%local%" at the beginning?
For instance, there's an Adobe folder both in Local and in Roaming for me. Exact same name. And both Local and Roaming are in %appdata%

Would it work if you didn't put the %appdata" at the beginning, but instead put the full folder location in the quotation marks instead? For example:
mklink /D

And what about a folder that isn't in %appdata% at all, but somewhere completely different?
Thank you.

[thatoneoctopus]

the fact that mojang hasn't made their game easier to mess with file wise after being out for like damn near 13 years is a disgrace, thanks for the help lol

[Jordan-mfvr]

Understandable and pretty quick (besides the time it takes to copy the minecraft folder). Great tutorial!

[Tiaxy]

Holy heck dude thank you! I never knew that windows had this kind of feature in it and how useful it can be besides changing mc's folder placement. They really should implement a folder changing option in mc itself instead of relying on this, but still better than nothing.
Genuenly thank you for the tutorial and explanation on things and how they work, amazing vid.

[zaccorpseman]

Awesome tutorial, thank you for the help! Performance wise I didn't notice any difference, but I sure feel a lot more relived knowing that Minecraft now isn't gonna top up my C drive at any moment

[perroalv]

yo im having some trouble with this, whenether i try to put the command it says "Cannot create a file when that file already exists." but there's no direct access of .minecraft like in the video, what can i do to solve it?

[plebicite]

So i too have a question, I ran the command promt as administrator, but that would make the appdata folder open in on the admin account. So i was wondering if theres a way to make it open a specific user/accounts appdata instead of just the admin account
EDIT: For anyone else having the same issue i figured it out, Run cmd as admin, but instead of doing %appdata% do this: cd C:\Users\(account name)\AppData\Roaming

[mr.octopi]

Minecraft is mostly reliant on storage, so whenever I played the game, I kept losing frames. I knew it was the storage because I have a 3070 and an i7. It's complicated for no reason, but this worked! I appreciate you sm! Now I'm able to play it with good fps and a smooth experience. Thank you

[Nixo]

Thank you so much sir! Also is it possible to completely make the folder in the F drive permanent and then just delete the folder in C afterwards?

[ghostt]

Just curious this command work somehow with Modrinth launcher because i instal the app on my 1TB ssd but the mods minecraft game every mode i instal it put in appdata C and there its full the app crash after some minute of play game the same because no more memory and i try to move the folder but same as minecraft duplicate a new one there so i cant move it does this command its universal and work with other launcher like this one i say ?

[phrog]

any time I try and open the launcher is just says "the game has crashed" and gives me error code 0x1. the support page it sends me to has almost no information and is completely useless. the official minecraft launcher doesn't work but lunar client does, does anyone have any ideas?

[izayoiigames]

the problem is, is it really make my system drive have more free space?

its just look like a copy folder, when the original folder still have the same file and the same size

[iiMhmudii]

make sure you don't try that command on something more important like Program files or a windows dependent folder (I DID THAT like a year ago and it wasn't fun)
NOTE:
it can still work on some stuff like the whole Local folder if you want (it does NOT work on the Roaming folder though)

[lightbluegaming.]

thank you sooo much, my disc space on C wasnt enough for mc so i just moved over the mc folder to D:\, but mc just created a new .minecraft folder on C:\ so i need to comepletly change the mc location. This made it :D now i can play like mc for another 5 years until the D:\ is too full XD thank you :)

[stupidmonkey]

How do you undo this and change the installation folder back to the C drive?

[GejmronCZ]

I did everything exactly as it is in the video (also in the previous one) and I will create the link, but you can click it, but it gives me an error.
If I click it it says:
není přístupný."
"Název souboru či adresáře nebo jmenovka svazku je nesprávná."

Im Czech...in eng (i used google translator) is this:

is not accessible."
"The file or directory name or volume label is incorrect."

My brother has been doing it for a few months now and it works for him. I don't understand why not me.

[FNFive-seveNN]

I linked it
when I try to open the .minecraft folder in the appdata folder thats linked, it says "Location is not available. The filename.directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect." will this be a problem?

[henry]

TYSM BRO! You Made Me Free Up 10GB Of Space On My C Drive TYSM!

[azamii]

me when the vidio does what it says it will (tysm)

[isekawai]

thx worked and minecraft launcher also recognized all my previouse saves
one thing to note: i have put the file in F/games/.minecraft and first i just wrote only F:/.minecraft
in windows 11 there is no arrow pointing down to show file direction you just need to click the empty row after the file name