18. Accounts

Redwire can log you in to a different Minecraft account without closing the game. Add your accounts once, then switch between them from the server browser in a couple of clicks.

18.1 Opening it

From the Server List, click ACCOUNTS in the row of buttons along the bottom.

The account you are currently playing as is shown at the top of the server list too, beside the heading — so you can check who you are about to join a server as without opening anything.

18.2 The screen

Three sections:

The skin preview

The model turns slowly on its own. Click and drag it to turn it yourself — left and right spins it all the way round, up and down tilts it. Let go and it carries on spinning from wherever you left it.

Two buttons sit down the right-hand side:

The skin is fetched the first time you select an account, so it may show a default skin for a moment and then become the real one. Offline accounts have no skin to fetch and always show the default one Minecraft would give that name.

Capes

Under the model is a strip of every cape that account owns. Click one to put it on the model; click OFF at the start of the strip to take it off again. If the account has more capes than fit, the strip scrolls.

This is a preview only — it does not change which cape the account actually wears. That is set on your Minecraft profile, not from here.

Capes only appear for accounts Redwire has signed in to. Minecraft only tells you which capes an account owns when you ask as that account, so the list needs its access token. Microsoft and Session accounts have one; cracked and generated accounts have no account behind them at all, so there is nothing to ask about.

18.3 The four kinds of account

Pick the kind along the top of the Accounts panel, then fill in what it asks for.

Microsoft

The normal one. Click LOGIN WITH MICROSOFT and your browser opens at Microsoft’s sign-in page. Sign in there, and the tab will tell you when you can close it.

Redwire never sees your password. It is typed into Microsoft’s own page, and what comes back is a token. Redwire stores the long-lived half of that token so you do not have to sign in again every time.

The Microsoft sign-in page will not say “Redwire”. It names another project, because Redwire uses that project’s public application registration rather than one of its own. This is normal for Minecraft mods and it does not give that project access to your account — but it does mean the name on the consent screen is not the one you were expecting, and it is better to know that in advance than to be surprised by it.

Session

For a Minecraft access token you already have. Paste it in and click ADD SESSION.

This is the short-lived kind of token — it typically stops working after about a day, and there is no way to renew it, so the account will need adding again. Use Microsoft unless you have a reason not to.

Cracked

A username and nothing else. Type it and click ADD ACCOUNT.

This works on servers running in offline mode (“cracked” servers) and nowhere else. An online server will refuse it, because there is nothing to check the name against. Names must be 3–16 characters, letters, numbers and underscores.

Generated

The same as Cracked, but Redwire invents the names. Set how many you want and click GENERATE — up to 50 at a time.

They are listed separately from the ones you typed, so you can filter them out or clear them without touching your real accounts.

18.4 Switching account

Select a row and click USE ACCOUNT at the bottom, or USE on the row itself, or just double-click the row. The row turns green and reads ACTIVE once it is done.

The first row is always Default Minecraft — the account you launched the game with. It cannot be removed, and it is always there to switch back to.

Switch before you connect, not after. A server is told who you are when you join and is never asked again, so switching while you are on a server changes nothing about that connection. Leave the server first, switch, then join.

If you switch and cannot talk on the server, that is worth reporting — Redwire rebuilds the chat signing key when it switches, and a server refusing your messages means that did not work.

18.5 Finding and ordering accounts

Along the top of the Account List:

• Search nickname — filters the list as you type.
• The type dropdown — show everything, or only one kind of account.
• The sort dropdown — Manual, Alphabetical, or Last Used (most recent first; accounts you have never used sort to the bottom rather than the top, because “never” is not “a long time ago”).

Default Minecraft always stays at the top, whichever sort is chosen. It is the way back to your launcher account, so it never moves out from under you.

Reordering by hand

Drag a row up or down to put it where you want it. A red line shows where it will land.

Dragging while sorted by Alphabetical or Last Used switches the sort to Manual and keeps the order you just made — otherwise the sort would immediately undo the drag, and the work would vanish.

18.6 The list buttons

A check needs the internet. An account that could not be reached is left alone rather than marked expired — so a dropped connection cannot make CLEAR EXPIRED delete accounts that were perfectly fine.

Cracked and generated accounts are never checked. There is nothing to check them against, so they show no status at all.

The copy button copies a live credential. Anyone who has that token can play as you until it expires, without needing your password. Treat it exactly like a password.

18.7 Where accounts are stored, and how safely

Two files, both in your Redwire folder:

The tokens are encrypted; the names and UUIDs are not, so you can still open the file and see which accounts are in it.

Be clear about what that encryption is worth. The key lives next to the data, and Redwire has to be able to read it unattended. So:

• It does protect you if accounts.redwire alone gets out — pasted into a bug report, uploaded with a modpack, picked up by a backup that only took that file. That is the realistic accident, and it is the one this stops.
• It does not protect you from someone who takes both files. Nothing that unlocks itself can.

Redwire restricts accounts.key to your user account where the filesystem allows it. If it cannot create the key at all, it says so on the Accounts screen and saves the tokens unencrypted rather than losing them silently.

Both files move together when you change the Redwire directory in Settings. Moving accounts.redwire on its own to another computer will leave its tokens unreadable — the key is what opens them.

18.8 When something goes wrong

“Could not start the sign-in listener.” Redwire listens on port 9675 for Microsoft to redirect back to. Something else has it — most likely another mod doing the same thing, or a previous sign-in that is still open. Close the other one and try again.

The browser did not open. Some Linux setups have no default browser set. The sign-in is already waiting; nothing is broken, but Redwire cannot hand you the link if it could not launch anything.

“This Microsoft account does not own Minecraft: Java Edition.” Exactly what it says. Game Pass accounts have to launch the game once through the official launcher before this works.

“This account has no Xbox profile.” Sign in at xbox.com once to create one, then try again.

“Token rejected.” A session token that has expired. There is no way to renew one — use Microsoft instead.

An account works but the skin is wrong. Skins are fetched from Mojang and cached by Minecraft itself. Restarting the game clears it.