Picture this: you boot a heavily modded game with Sodium installed. Connected textures should trace brick lines across every wall, and grass should slope cleanly up the hillsides. Instead, flat broken patches show up wherever a visual mod tried something clever. That symptom points at the Fabric Rendering API, a rendering layer that a whole family of mods depends on, one that Sodium used to leave out entirely. Indium was built to supply it alongside Sodium's optimizations, and this post covers who still needs it today, because the answer changed.

Which Mods Need Indium

Any mod that uses the Fabric Rendering API needs something implementing it in the background while you play with Sodium. The official page names several you have probably met in pack folders: Continuity for connected textures, LambdaBetterGrass for smoother grass edges, Campanion, Bits and Chisels, and Packages. Some of those mods limp along with no implementation at all, but their textures and models come out broken instead of the fancy effects the pack promised.

The full stack reads like a relay. Fabric API, the library most packs already carry, provides the rendering API itself. Without Sodium in the picture, that is all you need, because Fabric API ships a built-in reference implementation called Indigo. The moment Sodium loads, Indigo turns itself off, which leaves API support hanging. That is the exact hole Indium fills. Developer comp500 ported Indigo's job into a form that runs alongside Sodium, so packs keep the optimization pass and full rendering API support at the same time. It is an addon, not a replacement. Sodium stays installed exactly where it was.

Sodium 0.6.0 Made It Obsolete

Here is the part most readers care about. When Sodium hit 0.6.0, it began supporting the Fabric Rendering API natively, and Sodium's release notes put it plainly: the built-in support makes mods like Indium no longer necessary. Compatibility with the new line does not exist either. Pair old Indium with a Sodium 0.6 build or newer and the game crashes on launch, so the correct move is removal, not a re-download.

Legacy packs still running the Sodium 0.5 line are a different story. There, Indium remains the working bridge that rendering API mods rely on, and the older builds it targets have not been given a native replacement. The final release landed in February 2025. Roughly 46 million downloads over its run tell you just how many packs leaned on this little bridge while it was the only answer.

How to Install Indium

Everything below happens on your own game client, because this is a client-side rendering tool.

Set up a mod loader if you have not already. Indium runs on the Fabric loader, and Quilt is supported as well.
Install Fabric API. It provides the rendering layer that this whole arrangement depends on.
Install Sodium. Indium is an addon for it rather than a replacement, and it does nothing on its own.
Download the matching Indium build from the official project page or the download table on this page, pairing it with the game version and the Sodium branch your pack actually runs. Mismatched pairings are the usual source of launch trouble.
Drop the file into your mods folder, launch the game, and confirm it shows up in the mod list.

If the game refuses to start because Sodium is a 0.6 build or newer, do not hunt for fixes. Remove Indium and let the native support take over. Shader users get one extra caveat from the developer: Iris may not always line up with the latest Indium release, so take rendering glitches in that combination to the shader's own support channels.

Indium FAQ

Is Indium still maintained? Not in any active sense. The final release arrived in February 2025, and the project's core purpose now ships inside Sodium itself. Treat it as a retired utility that still earns its place on older builds.

Does Indium work on servers? No. It is a client-side mod, and the project details mark the server side as unsupported. A server neither needs nor expects a copy in its mods folder, because all the relevant rendering happens on the player's end.

Does Indium have any settings or a config file? No. The mod ships as a pure drop-in with no documented config options and nothing to tweak in game. You install it, and it simply works.

Does Indium increase FPS? No. The developer describes its performance impact as negligible, and it never beats plain Sodium on frame rate. If a pack runs heavy, the mods leaning on the rendering API are the ones to watch.

If this guide helped you sort your pack, the complete mod installation walkthrough covers the wider process, the lightweight loader setup guide gets the loader itself running, and the shader installation guide handles the shader side. Good luck, and may your connected textures stay intact.