Do You Need Indium If You Only Use Sodium?

When Indium Is Unnecessary

If your mod list contains only Sodium and no mods that rely on the Fabric Rendering API, Indium provides no benefit. It will not boost framerate, reduce memory use, or change visuals. Sodium alone already handles vanilla-style rendering efficiently.

When You Should Keep It

1. Check whether any of your installed mods use the Fabric Rendering API. Common categories include mods adding custom-connected textures, custom fluid rendering, non-standard block models, or custom entity render layers.

2. If you have any such mod, keep Indium. Removing it will cause those mods to render incorrectly under Sodium.

3. If you have none, Indium is harmless but pointless. Leaving it installed costs essentially nothing, so removing it is optional.

4. Do not remove Indium to "free up performance." Its impact is negligible, and removing it risks breaking other mods.

5. If you are unsure, keep it. The failure mode of missing Indium (broken visuals) is worse than the failure mode of having it unnecessarily (nothing).

A simple rule: Sodium plus any rendering-API mod means you want Indium. Sodium alone means you do not need it, but it will not hurt.