DonutLauncher does not ship Minecraft. It downloads the game from Mojang the same way the official launcher does, verifies it, and keeps it inside the launcher's own folder so nothing on your system is touched.
What gets downloaded
| Part | Approximate size | Shared? |
|---|---|---|
| Client jar for the version | 25–40 MB | Per version |
| Libraries | 40–120 MB | Shared across versions that use the same ones |
| Asset objects (sounds, language files, textures) | 300–500 MB on first install | Shared by every version |
| Java runtime, when the version needs one you do not have | 40–180 MB | Shared per major Java version |
| Native libraries extracted for this launch | ~10 MB | Per instance |
The asset store is the biggest one-off cost and it is deduplicated: assets are content-addressed files, so installing a second version adds a few megabytes rather than another half gigabyte.
Verification
Every file is hashed while it is written and compared against the SHA-1 in Mojang's own metadata. A file that does not match is deleted and fetched again rather than being kept and hoped for. Downloads resume: if a transfer stops, the launcher keeps the completed files and continues from where it left off.
A corrupt jar or a half-written library is the cause of a large share of "it crashes on startup" reports. Verifying at write time means the launcher can rule that out for you instead of asking you to delete a folder and try again.
Choosing a version
Open the version picker from the Home page, an instance card, or a keyboard shortcut. Three tabs:
- Releases — the versions Mojang supports and mods are built for. The right choice almost always.
- Snapshots — development builds. Interesting, frequently broken, and rarely what a mod expects.
- All — the full historical list, including old alphas and betas.
Versions already installed in the instance you are looking at are marked, so you can tell "download this" from "switch to this".
Mod loaders
A loader (Fabric, Quilt, Forge, NeoForge) is installed on top of a vanilla version, and the launcher picks a loader version compatible with the game version you chose. You cannot install a loader before a game version — the launcher will offer to install the version first, because a loader is defined against a specific one.
Installing a different game version in the same instance replaces the one it was built on. If you want both, make a second instance: that is what they are for, and they share the downloaded libraries.
If it will not download
- Stuck at 0% — check the titlebar's status pill. If it says the backend is unreachable, your internet is down rather than Mojang's; the launcher will resume when it returns.
- Repeated failures on one file — Settings → Storage, Clear caches, then install again. That removes the metadata cache and re-fetches the file list.
- A checksum failure that repeats — something on the network is rewriting responses. A proxy, a school filter or a "gaming optimiser" is the usual cause.