Vanilla Refresh Mod | Quality of Life Expansion

Vanilla Refresh is a quality of life expansion that layers small, vanilla-friendly improvements on top of the base game instead of reinventing it. The Minecraft quality of life mod covers everything from how you sit and climb to how XP orbs and the Wither behave, so singleplayer and servers both feel a little more polished.

What Vanilla Refresh Adds to Minecraft

The mod ships 30-plus features you can toggle individually, so you keep the ones that fit your world and switch off the rest. A few stand out as the ones most players install it for.

Sit, Climb, and Track Your World

Drop Ladder lets you extend a ladder downward and hang midair by pressing sneak while climbing. Player Sitting is the headline feature for a lot of servers. Face straight down with an empty hand, crouch, and right-click to sit on any block, which is handy for roleplay builds and communal spaces.

Subtitles on Biome Discovery shows the name or category of a biome the first time you walk into it, so you actually notice when the world around you changes.

Daycounter tracks how many days have passed on the server and flashes the count at the start of each day, with milestone animations on days like 100 and 200.

Smarter Combat, Mobs, and the HUD

Mob Health Display puts the health of nearby creatures above your hotbar, which makes fights and ranching a lot easier to read.

Homing Experience Orbs sends XP straight to the player who earned it, so orbs from a distant ghast no longer vanish into lava.

Better Armor Stands gives stands arms and pose swaps triggered by a nearby lever, with a couple of poses built for hanging items on walls. Pair that with an invisibility potion and you get clean floating displays.

Spectator Ghost and Spectator Actions renders spectating players as a faint white particle effect that non-spectators can see, and adds a clickable UI to jump to a random player or exit spectator mode.

Tips drops a possibly helpful Minecraft tip into chat every 10 minutes, covering everything from crafting recipes to lesser-known mechanics.

Player Statistics surfaces server-tracked events like blocks mined, mobs killed, and items crafted through /trigger stats, and the Tab Display and Belowname Display options let you show those stats on the player list or under each name.

Wither Drops Head turns the Wither fight into a proper trophy run. Defeat the boss and it drops its head as a collectible, so your win is something you can place on display.

The Rest of the Feature Set

There is still more to Vanilla Refresh. The full list below covers the remaining tweaks, including equipable banners, looping jukeboxes, custom block animations, death sound effects, a totem that saves you in the void, griefing gamerules, crops XP, better lodestones, readable clocks, party cake, anvil ungrinding, echo shard silence, and more.

Show Features

• Player Sitting: Sit anywhere by facing straight down, crouching and right clicking. Your hand slot must be empty.
• Mob Health Display: Displays the health of a mob near you above your hotbar
• Equipable Banners: To equip a banner, triple click sneak whilst holding a banner. Your head slot must be empty
• Homing Experience Orbs: Killed a ghast from a far distance? Those orbs will come striaght back to you
• Extra Loyal Tridents: If your (loyalty) trident falls into the void, it'll bounce straight back up and aim back to you without a hastle
• Better Armor Stands: They now have arms, and if you power a lever near them it'll swap their pose, with some poses inspired by bedrock edition. Poses 2 and 3 can be used to hang items on walls, using a invisibility potion to hide the armor stand.
• Player Statistics: Using /trigger stats players will be able to view a variety of server tracked stats
• Looping Jukebox: Discs inside a jukebox will play on loop so you dont have to reinsert it everytime you wanna relisten to a disc
• Drop Ladder: Press sneak whilst on a ladder to extend its length down and hang midair
• Custom Block Animations: Blocks including Enchanting Tables, Brewing Stands, Beacons, Wither Skeleton Skulls, Dragon Eggs, and Jukeboxes wil have improved block animations.
• Death Sound Effects: Plays a sound effect globally to all players on your death. Set to play a sound based on how you died, or to a set sound.
• Totem Works In Void: Falling into the void with a totem in hand/offhand will enter you into a sort of float mode till you reach land
• Wither Drops Head: Upon defeating the Wither, it'll drop its head as a trophy to show off your win
• Subtitles on Major Events: Major actions like summoning the wither will display a dramatic title on screen
• Subtitles on Biome Discovery: When finding a new biome, it'll display the name/category name as a subtitle
• Daycounter: Counts the days of the server and displays them at the start of each day
• Griefing Gamerules: Within the settings menu, toggle in antigrief whether you want TNT enabled or disabled
• Crops XP: When breaking crops, wheat, pumkins, nether wart, etc, you'll have a chance of receiving a bit of experience
• Low Health Sound: If you take damage at low health a heartbeat sound will play once
• Better Lodestones: - Drop a named paper ontop of a lodestone to name it. Change the color of the text with dyes as well. Dropping an enderpearl ontop of the lodestones will create an instant waypoint, which can be teleported to instantly via ender pearls within 96 blocks.
• Tab Display: - Allows you to display stats on the player tab list
• Belowname: Display - Allows you to display stats below the player name OR cycle all their stats
• Path Sprinting: - Paths now give you speed as an incentive to place paths around your towns
• Tips: Sends out a chat message every 10 minutes will a possibly helpful minecraft knowledge tip
• Viewable Gamerules: Use /trigger VanillaRefresh_gamerules in chat to see the gamerules and vanilla refresh features the server you are on has configured!
• Stands and Frames Invisibility: Throw an invisibility potion on an armor stand or item frame to make it invisible, use a splash water bottle to make it reappear!
• Recovery Coordinates: Makes the recovery compass show the coordinates and dimension where you died
• Readable Clocks: Holding a clock will show day you're on and time. Put it up on an item frame to see the time without needing to hold it.
• Party Cake: Make your cakes more surprising by dropping a firework on them making them explode with confetti when eaten (no griefing)
• Join/Exiting Sound Effects: Plays a notification sound when someone joins or exits the game
• Better Baby Zombies: Halves the health of baby zombies but makes them more excited (Jumps more, and slightly faster)
• Anvil Ungrinding: Accidentally made more deepslate tile stairs then you'd ever need? Place an anvil on top of it to convert it back into Cobbled Deepslate. This works for many other blocks like blue ice, stone bricks, and stripped logs.
• Echo Shard Silence: Drop an echo shard ontop of a mob to silence it. You can get that echo shard back by either killing the mob, or placing water ontop of it.
• Spectator Ghost: Gives players in spectator mode a white effect particle visible to non spectator players.
• Spectator Actions: When entering spectator mode, you'll be given UI actions that can be clicked to spectate a random player or exit spectator mode
• Time Offset: You know how the Minecraft Day oddly starts on day 0? Vanilla Refresh adds +1 so that when you first create the world, you're on day 1! On existing worlds, your world will have +1 day added.

A second set of features ships disabled by default because they change balance or can be noisy on busy servers. Flip them on if you want soul links, dragon elytra and egg drops, looping jukeboxes, tips, or the joke exploding blast furnace.

Show Features (Disabled by Default)

• Soul Links: Similar to a type of grave. Souls will store your XP and Items via a soul you drop on death, simply get close to the soul and your items will return to you and 80% of your XP levels. Souls cannot burn in lava, and if it will in the void it will make an attempt to tp to the highest point of land it can. If not, teleports to y 96
• Enderdragon Drops Elytra: Makes the dragon drop elytra on each kill, animated with a pretty epic particle animation.
• Renewable Dragon Eggs: Makes the dragon drop a dragon egg on each kill, not just on its first kill, also animated with a pretty epic particle animation.
• Death Stats: On death, your death count and time since last death will be announced
• Local Death Sound Effect: Sound effect that plays locally to players who have died
• First Join Chat Message: Lets players know when a member who has joined for their first time joins, along with their member join order number.
• Dynamic Optifine Lighting: (Buggy and may cause lag) Makes torches emit light in your hand on the serverside
• Exploding Blast Furnace: Disabled by default- for a good reason. This is a joke feature, unless you do actually want exploding blast furnaces lol

How to Install Vanilla Refresh

Vanilla Refresh is a standard mod install. Pick the loader your pack already uses, whether that is Fabric, Quilt, or a Forge-family loader, then drop the mod jar into your mods folder and launch the game. If you are starting from scratch, the general Minecraft mod install guide walks through the full setup.

On a server, the same jar goes into the server mods folder. Most features are purely client-side visual or server-side gameplay, so they work without every player needing the mod installed, though a few (like player sitting animations) are only visible to others who also run it.

Compatibility and Performance

The mod is lightweight by design. Features are individually toggleable through gamerules and the in-game settings menu, so you can strip out anything that conflicts with another datapack or mod. Use /trigger VanillaRefresh_gamerules in chat to see exactly what the server you are on has configured.

It plays nicely alongside other vanilla-tweak packs. If you want an even broader set of small improvements, it stacks well with mods in the same vein like V-Tweaks.

Vanilla Refresh FAQ

Is Vanilla Refresh safe for a multiplayer server?

Yes. It was built with servers in mind, which is why features like join and exit sounds, the tab and belowname displays, and the day counter are all server-side. Client-side touches like sitting animations just need the mod on the viewer's end to be seen by everyone.

Can I turn features off individually?

You can. Most features map to a gamerule or a settings menu toggle, and the disabled-by-default set is already off out of the box so you opt in only to what you want.

Does it change Minecraft balance a lot?

Not really. The defaults lean toward convenience and flavor, and the balance-shifting options like soul links, renewable dragon eggs, and exploding blast furnaces are off until you enable them.

Where can I see the full feature list and settings?

The project's Vanilla Refresh Wiki documents every feature, its toggle, and the relevant commands.

Is Vanilla Refresh still being maintained?

The latest release landed in May 2026, so the project is actively updated. Check the project page for the current status before large pack updates.