Sodium Extra Mod | More Graphics Settings for Sodium

You fall into a lava lake and the screen fills with fire particles, bubbling animations, and a wall of orange fog. Vanilla gives you almost no say over any of it. Sodium Extra fixes that. It is a companion mod for Sodium that adds the eye-candy settings Sodium does not ship yet, plus visual bug fixes and extra performance options. Around 92 million downloads later, it is one of the most established addons in the Sodium ecosystem, and it is still actively maintained, with the latest release in July 2026.

The eye-candy toggles Sodium leaves out

Sodium's job is speed. Sodium Extra's job is giving you a say in what gets rendered at all. The settings split into clear groups, and each group targets a different slice of the screen.

Animation settings let you switch off fire, water, lava, and block animations. A churning lava lake stops eating rendering time the moment you tell it to sit still.

Particle settings go further than vanilla ever did. You can control every type of particle, including the ones other mods spawn, which matters once a modpack starts throwing a dozen effect systems at the screen at once.

Detail settings handle the sky itself: stars, the sun and moon, weather, and more. Render settings cover fog, static entities, and other miscellaneous rendering you may not want.

Every toggle is yours. Turn the stars off for a cleaner night sky, or strip particles out for a calmer view.

Performance options and quality-of-life extras

Not everything here is about looks. The extra settings group adds an FPS display, a coordinate display, toast notification controls, cloud options, and more. Small things, but they save you from installing a separate HUD mod for basics like coordinates.

The project also calls out visual bug fixes and performance options that are not yet available in Sodium itself. That is the quiet value here: it smooths out visual bugs the base mod has not addressed yet, alongside options that trim rendering work.

To be clear, Sodium Extra does not replace Sodium. You install Sodium first, and this mod builds on top of it.

Protected gameplay fog on multiplayer servers

One feature deserves its own explanation: protected gameplay fog. These controls cover the fog tied to real gameplay effects, like blindness, darkness, lava, powder snow, and water.

Fog is not pure decoration. Blindness fog and lava fog change what you can see, which changes how you play. That is exactly why these controls are protected. On a normal multiplayer server, they stay vanilla unless the server explicitly authorizes them. Server owners do that with a server resource pack and the Greenlight client mod, and players need Greenlight installed too.

In singleplayer, the choice is simply yours. Adjust water fog for visibility or leave everything vanilla, with no server policy in the way.

How to install Sodium Extra

1. Install Sodium first. Sodium Extra depends on it and will not load without it. If you are new to modding, our guide on how to install Minecraft mods covers everything from folder locations to loader setup.
2. Download the Sodium Extra jar from the download table on this page. Builds exist for Fabric, NeoForge, and Quilt, so pick the one that matches your loader. Still choosing? Those guides cover each loader's full setup.
3. Drop the jar into your mods folder, right next to Sodium.
4. Start the game and confirm Sodium Extra shows up in your mod list.
5. Load into a world and open the new settings categories. Work through animations, particles, details, and render options until the game looks and runs the way you want.

Keep in mind that Sodium Extra is a client-side mod. Every player installs their own copy, and servers do not run it.

Sodium Extra FAQ

Do I need Sodium installed for Sodium Extra to work? Yes. The project's own FAQ says it directly: you need Sodium, and this mod builds on top of it. Install Sodium before you add Sodium Extra.

Does Sodium Extra work on multiplayer servers? It is a client-side mod, so servers do not run it. The one exception to keep in mind is protected gameplay fog, which stays vanilla on normal servers unless the server authorizes it through a resource pack and the Greenlight client mod.

Will Sodium Extra improve my FPS? Treat it as a settings mod, not a performance patch. Its performance options and visual bug fixes help, and cutting animations, particles, and detail rendering reduces the work your machine does. Actual gains depend on your hardware and how many toggles you flip.

Can I add Sodium Extra to my modpack? Yes. It is free and open source under the GNU LGPL v3 license, and the developer allows modpack inclusion as long as you provide attribution.

Sodium Extra hands you the dials that vanilla and Sodium leave untouched, and you decide what stays on screen. If you want to push frames even further after tuning it, our Lossless Scaling guide covers a separate FPS boost tool.