What Minecraft Mods Do YouTubers Use in 2024? The Top Mods for Content Creation

Minecraft remains one of the most popular games for content creation on YouTube over a decade after its release. But vanilla Minecraft only goes so far – mods are what enable YouTubers to produce endless styles of entertaining Minecraft video content.

So exactly what Minecraft mods do YouTubers use in 2024? Across the spectrum of popular Minecraft YouTubers, the top 5 most utilized mods and modpacks are:

1. Optimization Mods: OptiFine, Sodium
2. Gameplay Enhancements: Pixelmon, Crazy Craft, RL Craft
3. Decoration: Chisel, MrCrayfish‘s Furniture
4. Utility: JourneyMap, Just Enough Items (JEI)
5. Modpacks: MC Eternal, All The Mods, Valhelsia

Now let‘s explore some of the most impactful mods for Minecraft content creation in more detail.

Optimization: Boosting Performance for Smooth Video Capture

Recording and editing Minecraft requires solid game performance and stability. Two essential mods provide the optimization that YouTubers rely on:

OptiFine

Over 300 million total downloads makes OptiFine one of the most popular Minecraft mods ever created. It significantly improves frame rates, enables shader packs, and provides customization options that you can‘t find in the base game.

YouTubers like Dream and GeorgeNotFound use OptiFine in nearly all of their videos. The performance benefits are just too good to pass up, especially when recording intense scenes or multiplayer collaboration.

Sodium

A lightweight alternative to OptiFine that focuses strictly on boosting FPS by up to 400% higher. It‘s become the favorite pairing with OptiFine for additional performance gains.

Popular technical Minecraft YouTuber Mysticat relies on Sodium+OptiFine in his videos to showcase complex redstone contraptions and farms without lag interfering. The buttery-smooth frame rates simply make for better video quality.

Gameplay Enhancements: Endless Content Possibilities

Mods that add extensive gameplay changes, blocks, mobs, and more enable boundless content possibilities. Some of the most popular gameplay enhancers used by YouTubers include:

Pixelmon

This Pokémon mod with over 130 million downloads transforms Minecraft into a Pokémon universe. Capture your favorite mons, level up and battle trainers or run your own Pokémon Gym.

Beloved Youtuber PopularMMOs has created over 500 Pixelmon videos amounting to over 2 billion views. Other Pokémon mod fans like ItsRitchieW also leverage Pixelmon across multiple series to appeal to their audiences.

Crazy Craft

Featuring over 150 mods bundled together, Crazy Craft transforms Minecraft into an action-packed fantasy world brimming with magic, exciting mobs and weapons, and endless adventures.

Multi-million subscriber Minecraft veteran SSundee has created over 185 Crazy Craft videos enjoyed by tens of millions of viewers. The outlandish mod mashup lends perfectly to SSundee‘s loud, goofy and unfiltered style of comedy gameplay commentary.

RLCraft

If you‘re seeking brutal challenges that crank Minecraft difficulty to the extremes, look no further than RLCraft. This modpack features dehydration, temperature effects, corpse looting, dangerous mobs galore and more ways to meet an untimely death around every corner.

YouTuber ForgeLabs has forged tremendous popularity over the last couple years thanks largely to his extensively modded hardcore survival series. He taps into the masochistic thrill-seeking niche by daring to survive against ridiculous odds using modpacks like RLCraft. Suffice to say, many failures and deleted worlds preceded his current successful runs.

Decorating & Customizing with Style

Every great build needs style and polish. Two "must-have" mods used by popular Minecraft builders and interior design YouTubers include:

Chisel

With over 30 million downloads, Chisel opens unlimited avenues for customization via variants of almost every vanilla Minecraft block plus many modded blocks. Easily carve stone blocks into polished versions, craft aesthetic metal pipings, and more.

Talented builders like WiederDude utilize Chisel across construction projects to add finer details that impress viewers and make builds stand out. Other decorative block mods get used in combination with Chisel as well.

MrCrayfish‘s Furniture Mod

This iconic mod remains a staple for furnishing interiors after over a decade in development. With 87 million downloads total, the latest 1.16+ version packs over 80 modern-style furniture items like cabinets, tables, electronics, kitchen appliances, and more.

Long-running YouTube series like CrazyCraft by Kehaan feature prominent use of MrCrayfish‘s furniture pieces to spruce up bases with functional and aesthetically pleasing decor. Such attention to detail is what separates exceptional builders from the rest.

Utility Mods: Maps, Waypoints, Recipes and More

Utility mods give content creators vital quality-of-life improvements for efficiently navigating worlds, looking up recipes, and gathering intel.

JourneyMap

A feature-rich mapping and radar utility for tracking coordinates and setting waypoints in-game. YouTubers rely extensively on JourneyMap to orient themselves, especially when exploring dense modpacks or vast custom worlds.

Helpful data overlays provide biome info, light levels, and cave mapping which many YouTubers showcase directly in their videos. Popular modded survivalist ChosenArchitect names JourneyMap as one of his "must-have mods" for effective navigation.

Just Enough Items (JEI)

This handy recipe viewer and item index mods proves invaluable when dealing with complex crafting chains, or simply looking up what something does in unfamiliar modpacks. Any professional YouTuber producing heavily modded Minecraft content keeps JEI close by for easy informational look-ups while recording.

JEI integration gets bundled in most major modpacks like All The Mods and MC Eternal nowadays due to its ubiquity. Specific mod spotlights also rely on the detailed registry data JEI provides on new items and blocks added by mods under review.

Massive Modpacks: All The Mods, MC Eternal and More

For even greater variety, many YouTubers choose gigantic mega modpacks that bundle 100-400+ mods together for kitchen sink-style modded experiences. Some current favorites include:

All The Mods

The flagship kitchen sink modpack maintained by the ATM Team regularly sees updates with 200-400 mods from both mainstream and lesser-known creators. Multiple official spin-offs like All The Magic cater to niche styles as well.

Veteran ATM players like chosenarchitect and iskall85 have produced over 1000+ videos between them in various ATM packs. Given the endless possibilities, they continue churning out daily content across multiple series branches and modded servers.

Iskall85‘s Omega Mode series in particular showcases proficiency using even obscure mods from the piles included to accomplish ever-greater automated tech and building feats season after season.

MC Eternal

This leading quest-based pack expertly balances magic and tech mods along with exploration, battles, farming, and more. Deep progression pathways with over 275 mods gives players like chosenarchitect tremendous mileage, resulting in over 250 videos and counting delving through everything MC Eternal has to offer.

The structured quest guidance helps less experienced mod players ease into complex mods as well. Popular Minecraft couple LDShadowLady and Smallishbeans leveraged MC Eternal for an enjoyable intro to serious modded Minecraft after years playing mostly vanilla and recorded hilarious struggles getting overwhelmed by deadly monsters along the journey.

Valhelsia 3

For players preferring a streamlined, performance-focused experience, Valhelsia 3 makes an excellent choice. With a slim, curated set of just 90 mods, the third iteration provides the most stable and optimized Valhelsia release yet for buttery recording performance.

Various HermitCraft members including GoodTimesWithScar chose the lightweight Valhelsia 3 modpack for their modded Season 9 server. The focused selection of decoration, magic, industrial and utility mods perfectly suited the community‘s preferences for reliable, high FPS building fun.

Now in 2024 the Minecraft modding scene remains as thriving and innovative as ever thanks to the endless creativity of the community. Based on download stats from leading mod distribution platform CurseForge, here‘s a snapshot of some of the currently trending mods and modpacks seeing widespread usage among YouTubers today:

• Most Installed Mods Overall: OptiFine, JourneyMap, Just Enough Items

• Top 5 Mods of 2022:

  1. Flywheel – Server performance (5.3 million downloads)
  2. Xaero‘s Minimap – Mapping (4.5 million downloads)
  3. Architectury API – Framework for mod compatibility (12.6 million downloads)
  4. Advancement Plaques – Display achievements (4.4 million downloads)
  5. Cloth Config v6 API – Centralized mod config system (20.3 million downloads)

• Most Popular Modpacks:

  1. RLCraft
  2. All the Magic: Ars Nouveau
  3. Better Minecraft [FORGE]

As you can see, mods and modpacks take the Minecraft experience to an entirely different level. YouTubers leverage mods in creative ways to produce endless engaging video formats – like intense modded survival challenges, wacky roleplaying series, mod reviews and spotlights, modded SMP collaborations, and more.

With hundreds of thousands of available mods and modpacks out there to choose from, the possibilities stay endless. As the tools for creating mods become increasingly accessible even to novice users, expect even more high-quality mods flooding the space throughout 2023 and beyond. Exciting times lay ahead as this vibrant mod community continues churning out ever-more creative ways to customize personal iterations of the game we love.