1. Getting Started

This page takes you from nothing installed to a working Redwire window.

1.1 What you need

Redwire is a client-side mod. It runs on your computer only. You do not install it on a server, and a server does not need to have it for you to use it.

1.2 Installing

1. Install Fabric Loader for Minecraft 1.21.11. Any launcher works — the official Fabric installer, Prism Launcher, MultiMC, ATLauncher. Create a 1.21.11 instance with Fabric.
2. Find the instance’s mods folder. In Prism Launcher, right-click the instance and choose Folder, then open minecraft/mods. If the folder is not there, create it.
3. Put fabric-api-<version>.jar in that folder. Download it from Modrinth or CurseForge, making sure you take the 1.21.11 build.
4. Put redwire-0.11.2.0.jar in the same folder.
5. Launch the game.

If Minecraft reaches its main menu and the menu looks unfamiliar — dark, red-accented, with a wide REDWIRE logo instead of the Minecraft one — the mod is loaded and working. That menu is Redwire’s; see The Minecraft Menus.

Only one copy at a time. If you update Redwire, delete the old jar from mods first. Two versions in the same folder will refuse to load or behave unpredictably.

1.3 Opening the Redwire interface

Press Right Shift.

That is the only thing you need to remember. It works:

• on the main menu,
• in singleplayer,
• on a server,
• and on top of an open chest, furnace or any other container screen.

Press Right Shift again, or Escape, to close it.

Right Shift is also the key you use to type capital letters. Redwire knows this: while your cursor is in any text box — inside the interface, or in a search box on one of the re-styled Minecraft menus — Right Shift behaves as a normal shift key and does nothing else. You only lose the shortcut while actually typing.

If Right Shift is already in use for something else, or you would rather use a different key, you can change it in two places — Redwire’s own Settings → Keybinds → Open Redwire, or Minecraft’s Options → Controls, under the Miscellaneous category. Both edit the same binding, so they can never disagree. See Keybinds.

1.4 The first thing you see

Redwire opens on the Dashboard. The window has three fixed parts that never change, whichever page you are on:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  REDWIRE logo   │        top bar: live status boxes                  │
├─────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                 │                                                    │
│   Dashboard     │                                                    │
│   Packet Tools  │                                                    │
│   Scanner       │                  page content                      │
│   Remote Control│                                                    │
│   Scripts       │              (changes per page)                    │
│   Text Vault    │                                                    │
│   Client Tools  │                                                    │
│   Settings      │                                                    │
│                 │                                                    │
└─────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

• The sidebar on the left lists the eight pages. Click one to switch to it.
• The top bar shows a few live values that are useful everywhere — your connection, and the Remote Control session if you have one running.
• The content area is the page itself.

Your page selection and everything you had scrolled or typed on a page is remembered while the game runs, so closing and reopening the interface puts you back where you were.

1.5 A five-minute tour

Try these in order. Nothing here changes anything permanently.

1. Look at the Dashboard. Join any server, open Redwire, and look at the boxes across the top. They tell you the server’s address, its version, what software it runs, your ping and more. In singleplayer most of them read N/A — there is no server to describe. → The Dashboard

2. Turn on a Client Tool. Go to Client Tools, find Fullbright in the Render category, click it, and click its Enabled switch. Close Redwire. The world is now lit as if it were noon, wherever you stand. Switch it off the same way. → Client Tools

3. Record some traffic. Go to Packet Tools, and on the Packet Logger tab click Start Logger. Close Redwire, walk around for a few seconds, then reopen it. The table is now full of the network messages your client and the server have exchanged. Click one to see what is inside it. → Packet Tools

4. Make the interface yours. Go to Settings → Appearance and try a different Theme, or drag Transparency up so you can see the game through the window. → Settings

1.6 Where Redwire keeps your files

Everything Redwire saves — your settings, your tools, your scripts, your text files, your saved packet logs — goes into one folder:

<your Minecraft instance>/Redwire/

You can move that folder anywhere you like from Settings → General → Redwire Directory, and Redwire will take its contents with it. See Files and Folders for the full layout and how to back it up.