Save energy with the Frames Per Second limiter feature

Energy-conscious Minecrafters rejoice! In today’s Java Edition snapshot, we’re introducing a new Frames Per Second (FPS) limiter feature that reduces the framerate of Minecraft while the game is in certain idle states. The FPS limiter only kicks in when you’re not actively playing the game to improve its power efficiency. 

If you have a gaming PC, it’s probably one of the most energy-intensive devices in your home. Globally, PC gaming uses about 230 terawatt hours of electricity annually – the equivalent of 59 million EU households. In the US alone, gamers consume $6 billion worth of electricity and emit about 12 million tons of CO2 per year – the equivalent of roughly 2.3 million passenger cars. No wonder we call them gaming rigs!

Through this feature, we aim to lower the amount of power your computer consumes when running Minecraft, thus helping decrease the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from gaming while also saving your device from undergoing unnecessary stress.

How the FPS limiter works

The FPS limiter feature limits the maximum framerate of the game in certain situations, controlled by a new video setting, “Reduce FPS when.” This setting has two modes:

• Minimized: Limits the framerate to 10 FPS only when the game window is minimized.

• AFK (Away From Keyboard): Limits the framerate to 30 FPS when the game has not received player input for over a minute. After a total of 10 minutes of no input, the framerate is further reduced to 10 FPS. It also limits the game to 10 FPS when it’s minimized. AFK is enabled by default when you install the snapshot, but you can switch to Minimized afterwards.

Unlike the existing FPS limiter setting, which caps the framerate at all times, this new feature allows you to save energy in specific scenarios when you don’t need the game running at the highest fidelity. You can still leave your framerate uncapped in the global setting for maximum performance and set it to reduce the frame rate only in specific situations. This way, depending on your hardware, you should see a notable reduction in power consumption while you passively farm resources overnight, get sidetracked while grabbing a snack, or go down a wiki rabbit hole. 

Keeping sustainability in mind

As a gaming studio, we are conscious of the impact our products have on the environment, not just while we’re making them but also when you’re enjoying them for years after they’re released. Protecting our environment is a cornerstone of building a better world, and we don’t just want to educate on sustainable living – we want to empower you to reduce your impact through changes we make to Minecraft. This new feature is part of that effort, and through it we hope to reduce our game’s impact on the environment.

We want your feedback!

For now, the FPS limiter is only available for testing in Minecraft: Java Edition snapshots. To install a snapshot, open the Minecraft Launcher and enable snapshots in the "Installations" tab. Remember that snapshots can corrupt your world, so make sure you back up and/or run them in a different save folder from your main worlds. 

Please share your feedback and report any bugs you may encounter when enabling the new FPS limiter. We’re very excited by the potential impact of this feature, and we hope you’ll put it to good use when farming unreasonable amounts of slime.