Emerald

May 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

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Emerald

Emerald is a cross-platform Minecraft launcher built with Uno Platform and C#.

Screenshots

Features

Legend: ✅ fully supported, 🟡 partially supported, ❌ not yet supported

Game Management

Capability	Status	Notes
Multi-instance Minecraft profiles	✅	Multiple game profiles are persisted and managed.
Custom profile folder names	✅	You can add more than one game into the same folder.
Version selection	✅	Supports all versions provided by Mojang.
Global Minecraft settings	✅	File-backed global settings with autosave behavior.
Per-game settings overrides	✅	Profile-level override model is implemented.

Mod Loaders

Capability	Status	Notes
Vanilla	✅	Supported in launcher flow.
Fabric	✅	Routed via installer pipeline.
Forge	✅	Routed via installer pipeline.
NeoForge	✅	Routed via installer pipeline.
Quilt	✅	Routed via installer pipeline.
OptiFine	🟡	Routed via installer pipeline. WIP.
LiteLoader	✅	Routed via installer pipeline.

Capability	Status	Notes
Microsoft account sign-in	✅	---
Offline account support	✅	***
Ely.by account support	✅	***

*** We do not encourage you to use other login methods without having a legal copy of Minecraft.

Store Support

Capability	Status	Notes
Mods	✅	---
Shaders	✅	---
Resource Packs	✅	---
Modpacks	✅	Full support for Modrinth .mrpack files.
Modrinth content browsing/details	🟡	Present, Does not exactly match/auto download versions.
Modrinth install/remove tracking	🟡	Install/remove tracking exists; UX/workflow still evolving.

Releases

Emerald is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Stable Releases

You can download the latest stable release from GitHub Releases. See the Installation instructions below for platform-specific setup.

Nightly Builds (GitHub Actions)

Nightly preview builds are distributed through GitHub Actions CI artifacts.

Open CI Build & Artifacts.
Select a recent successful run on main.
Download the artifact for your platform.

Installation

Windows

Emerald is distributed as a signed MSIX package. If this is your first time installing Emerald, you must trust the signing certificate:

Download the .cer certificate file from the release assets.
Right-click the .cer file and select Install Certificate.
Choose Local Machine, place it in Trusted People (If installation didnt work then try Trusted Root Certification Authorities ), and confirm.
Once trusted, you can download and run the .appinstaller file for automatic updates, or download the offline .msix/.appxbundle for your specific architecture.

macOS

The macOS build is currently not notarized. Gatekeeper will block it by default. To run Emerald, you must remove the quarantine attribute for every new binary you download. Open Terminal and run:

xattr -cr /path/to/Emerald.app

Linux

Emerald is distributed as a Snap package (x86_64 and ~~arm64~~). Currently, the .snap file needs to be installed in classic dangerous mode. Run the following command in your terminal: Bash

sudo snap install ./emerald_*.snap --dangerous --classic

Building From Source

Prerequisites

Git
.NET 10 SDK (preview channel supported)

Optional for local Windows packaging workflows:

Visual Studio 2022 / Build Tools with Windows SDK components

Clone

git clone https://github.com/RiversideValley/Emerald
cd Emerald

Build

dotnet restore Emerald.slnx
dotnet build Emerald.slnx

Tests

dotnet test Emerald.CoreX.Tests/Emerald.CoreX.Tests.csproj

Windows Signed Packaging

Windows packaged builds now use signed MSIX output.

Setup and local publish instructions: docs/windows-signing.md

Codebase Structure

Maintained solution (Emerald.slnx):

Emerald/ - Uno app shell, UI, pages, controls, and composition root
Emerald.CoreX/ - launcher domain/runtime/services (accounts, installers, logging, settings)
Emerald.CoreX.Tests/ - active CoreX regression tests

Legacy projects (Emerald.App/, Emerald.Core/) are retained for history and are not the primary active architecture.

Contributing

License

Licensed under the Nightshade Vexillum license as stated in LICENSE.md.