Minecraft Bedrock: Add-ons, Behavior Packs, and Experiments

An add-on is a .mcaddon file bundling one or more packs (a .mcpack is a single pack). There are two kinds:

• A behavior pack is the game logic: new mobs, items, recipes, rules. It runs on the server.

• A resource pack is the visuals: textures, models, sounds. The server offers it to each player when they join and Minecraft downloads it for them.

Your players install nothing by hand, on any device. If you want everyone on the resource pack rather than allowed to decline it, turn on Require Resource Pack in your server's Details settings (players who decline are disconnected).

1. Open your server under My Servers and expand the Mods card. On a Bedrock server the whole catalog is add-ons, so there are no tabs.

2. Check the add-on you want.

3. Press Save changes in the popup at the bottom of the page, then restart your server. Add-ons only load on a server start.

Not in the catalog? Press the request button in the card's title row (next to the search box) to search CurseForge's Addons category and request it. We test it on a real server first, then it appears in your catalog; the flow is the same as for any game: Request a mod. Only add-ons published on CurseForge can be requested; for your own pack, see the hand-install section below.

Removing is the reverse: uncheck, Save changes, restart. The pack's content stops loading once it is gone. If the add-on has already been part of your world, the dashboard takes a safety backup automatically before it saves the removal, so you have a restore point without doing anything.

Some behavior packs are built against Minecraft's beta scripting APIs, and those only run while the Beta APIs experiment is on. With it off, the server starts fine and the add-on silently does nothing, which is the usual cause of "I installed it and nothing happened" on other hosts. Packs built against the stable scripting APIs need no experiment at all.

That one is handled for you: when an add-on is imported we check whether its packs depend on a beta scripting API, and if they do, saving the install switches Beta APIs on. The restart applies both at once.

The other experiments are not automatic. If an add-on's page says it needs Upcoming Creator Features, Furnace Recipe Book, Creator Camera, Voxel Shapes, or Custom Projectiles, turn that one on yourself: expand the Overview card, open Details, and use the checkboxes with the small wand icon. Same place if you ever want to turn Beta APIs on or off by hand; it shows a warning with an Enable experiment button, so confirm, then Save changes and restart.

Two honest notes:

• Experiments take full effect in newly generated chunks. Chunks you already explored may behave unexpectedly after an experiment changes, including when we switch Beta APIs on for an install. Nothing is deleted, but if the add-on is the reason for the world, starting fresh is cleanest: Reset your world.

• On a brand-new world, the first start after adding an add-on that needs experiments takes a little longer: the server generates the world, applies the experiments, and relaunches once on its own. Nothing to do on your side.

Guides for other hosts tell you to upload pack folders and then add entries to world_behavior_packs.json and world_resource_packs.json. Skip all of that for anything installed from the Mods card: the dashboard copies the packs and registers them with your world on every start.

The hand way still works for a pack that is not on CurseForge (one you made, for example). With the server stopped, connect over SFTP and:

1. Put the pack folder (the one containing manifest.json) in /development_behavior_packs/ or /development_resource_packs/ at the server root.

2. Add it to /worlds/<your world>/world_behavior_packs.json (or world_resource_packs.json) using the uuid and version from its manifest.json:

   [{ "pack_id": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000", "version": [1, 0, 0] }]

1. Start the server.

Packs and entries you add by hand are yours: installing or removing catalog add-ons never touches them. Experiments for hand-installed packs you turn on yourself, as above.

Add-ons bought in the Minecraft Marketplace are licensed to the account that bought them and are not handed out as pack files, so no dedicated server, ours included, can load them. That is a Minecraft rule, not something we control. Use add-ons distributed as .mcaddon or .mcpack files instead; that is what the catalog carries, and CurseForge has plenty more.

Also worth knowing: add-ons are for Bedrock servers only. A Java server with Bedrock Crossplay turned on is still a Java server: it runs plugins, not add-ons, and your Bedrock friends join the Java game. See Playing together from Bedrock and Java.

Reach us on Discord or at support@haptic.gg. Include your server name, the add-on's name, and what happens after the restart (a screenshot of the Mods card, or of the red triangle's tooltip if one appears).