Launcher version history

The Minecraft Launcher has been in constant development since April 18, 2013. During those years, it has had three major versions: the first one written in Java which received updates from April 18, 2013, to June 21, 2018, the second one written in C++ which was originally released on October 26, 2016, the third one was released on September 9, 2024, and has continued to receive updates.

The Legacy Minecraft Launcher was discontinued on March 10, 2022. While it can still be downloaded, the launcher won't be able to install itself as the launcher.pack.lzma file required by the launcher is no longer available for download. This means that official support for Minecraft on Windows XP and Windows Vista was also discontinued as the new Minecraft Launcher can't run on these versions of Windows.

The discontinued Minecraft Dungeons Launcher uses the same versioning system as the Minecraft Launcher.