Where to Put the Complementary Shaders ZIP File

"Where does the shader file actually go?" is the question behind most failed installations. The answer is a folder called shaderpacks inside your Minecraft folder, and the Complementary Shaders ZIP goes into it exactly as downloaded, still zipped. This guide gives the reliable ways to find that folder, the exact paths on Windows, macOS and Linux, and the placement mistakes that make a pack invisible.

The folder you are looking for

Both Iris and OptiFine read shader packs from the same place: a shaderpacks folder inside the main Minecraft directory (the same directory that contains folders like saves, resourcepacks and mods). If the folder does not exist yet, launching the game once with a loader installed creates it, or you can create it yourself with exactly that name, all lowercase.

The easiest way: let the game open it

1. Launch Minecraft on your Iris or OptiFine profile.
2. Go to Options → Video Settings → Shaders (Iris labels the screen "Shader Packs").
3. Click the button that opens the shader pack folder.
4. A file-manager window opens in the correct folder, drop the ZIP in.

This method never gets the location wrong, including for launcher setups that keep Minecraft in a custom directory. Prefer it whenever it is available.

The exact paths by operating system

• Windows: press Win+R, type %appdata%\.minecraft, and press Enter to jump straight to the Minecraft folder.
• macOS: in Finder use Go → Go to Folder and paste the path; the Library folder is hidden by default.
• Custom launchers (and the "Use custom directory" option) move everything: use the in-game button method, or check your launcher's instance folder for its own shaderpacks directory.

The placement rules

• The ZIP goes in as a ZIP. Do not extract it, the official instructions say so, and extraction is the number-one cause of the pack not appearing in the list.
• Directly in shaderpacks, not in a subfolder. A pack buried at shaderpacks\Complementary\ComplementaryUnbound_r5.9.3.zip will not be found. One exception: an extracted pack folder is recognised by some loaders only when it directly contains the pack's internal shaders folder, another reason to simply use the ZIP.
• Not the resourcepacks folder, not the mods folder. Shader packs, resource packs and mods are three different systems with three different folders.
• One file per style/version is fine. Unbound, Reimagined and older versions can all sit in the folder together; each becomes its own entry in the shader list.

After placing the file

Return to the shader screen (reopen it if it was already open) and the pack should be listed. Select it to apply, full steps are in how to enable Complementary Shaders. Beside your ZIP you may later notice a small text file with a similar name ending in .txt: that is where the loader saves your pack settings. Leave it alone unless you are deliberately moving settings, as described in updating without losing your settings.

How to confirm you have the right Minecraft folder

The paths above are defaults, and defaults stop applying the moment a launcher uses a custom directory, a second drive, or separate instances per game version. Before dropping a file anywhere by hand, confirm the folder in front of you is really the Minecraft folder of the instance you play. It should contain the working folders of that instance, saves with your worlds, resourcepacks, screenshots, and (once a loader has run) shaderpacks itself. If the folder is empty, freshly created, or missing your worlds, you are almost certainly looking at a different instance: an old install, a different launcher's directory, or a new profile that has never launched. The safest resolution is always the same, launch the exact profile you play on, open the shader screen, and use its folder button, because the game opens the folder belonging to the instance that is actually running. This one habit eliminates the single most confusing placement failure: a correctly placed ZIP in a folder the running game never reads, which looks identical to the pack being broken. If you maintain several instances, repeat the in-game check once per instance rather than assuming they share a directory, many launchers deliberately keep them separate so that versions and mods never mix.

Keeping a tidy, understandable shaderpacks folder

Over time the folder accumulates files, and a little naming discipline keeps it readable. A healthy folder for a Complementary player typically holds a small number of items: the current Unbound ZIP, the current Reimagined ZIP, and, once you have changed any option in a pack's settings screen, one .txt file per ZIP, sharing its name, where the loader stores that pack's settings. Older release ZIPs can live there too; each becomes its own selectable entry in the shader list, which is occasionally useful for comparing a new release against the previous one in the same scene. What the folder should not contain is structure: no subfolders wrapping the ZIPs, no extracted copies duplicating a ZIP, and no renamed pack files. Renaming a ZIP breaks its link to its settings file, which is named after the original filename, so a tidiness rename quietly resets a tuned pack to defaults. If the list inside the game ever feels cluttered, the clean-up rule is simple, remove whole pairs (a ZIP and its matching .txt together) for versions you no longer use, and keep the original filenames of everything that stays. The current release files, for reference, are named ComplementaryUnbound_r5.9.3.zip and ComplementaryReimagined_r5.9.3.zip, at roughly 0.53 MB each; a file in your folder that is dramatically different in size or name deserves the ZIP checks before you trust it.

Moving the pack between computers and launchers

Because the placement rule is about a folder rather than an installation, moving Complementary Shaders to another machine is a file copy, not a reinstall of anything pack-related. Copy the ZIP, and its matching .txt if you want your settings to travel, onto the new computer by whatever route you normally use, then place the ZIP in the new setup's shaderpacks folder. Do not navigate by memory on the new machine: its operating system may differ, its launcher may keep instances somewhere non-default, and its folder may not exist until the game has launched once with a loader installed. Use the in-game folder button on the target setup, drop the files in, reopen the shader screen, and select the pack. The pack's broad version support, Minecraft Java 1.7.10 through 1.21.11 and 26.1–26.3 for the current release, means the same ZIP usually serves both machines even if they run different game versions, as long as each has a loader build matching its own version. Only Minecraft Java Edition is involved in any of this; there is no Bedrock location to place the file in, because no Bedrock edition of the pack exists.

Frequently asked questions