How to Fix Sodium Not Working or Crashing

If Sodium is installed but you see no performance gain, or the game crashes on startup, work through these checks in order.

Confirm it is actually loading

Open the mods list from the main menu. Sodium should appear there. If it does not, the file is in the wrong folder or the wrong mod loader — Sodium is built for a specific loader and will not run on a different one. If it appears but the Video Settings screen looks like vanilla, another mod is overriding the renderer.

Common conflicts

• Shader or graphics overhaul mods that replace the renderer will fight with Sodium. Disable one or the other.
• OptiFine-style mods are a frequent cause of black screens and crashes when combined with Sodium.
• Outdated companion mods for chunk loading or entity rendering can break after a Sodium update.

Reading the crash log

Find the crash report in your game directory's crash-reports folder. Look for the line naming the mod that was active when it failed. If Sodium is named alongside another rendering mod, that pairing is your problem.

If it loads but stutters

Lower your render distance slightly, then raise it back — Sodium recalculates chunk data when this changes. Also check that your allocated memory is not maxed out; Sodium reduces memory pressure but cannot fix an under-allocated instance.