For vanilla minecraft, the default launcher from Mojang themselves is fine but lacks support for mods (since you have to download those seperately alongside the mods you want to add). However, if you are serious about modding the game: Prism, ATLauncher, Curse Forge are preferred since those have the loaders (Forge, Fabric) integrated.
i like the prism launcher, it allows me to download mods, recource packs, shaders, and even whole modpacks, have multiple instances of my game so i can have diffrent modded versions, and a few other niffy features like a cat button.
The vanilla launcher lets you use mods, shaders, resource packs, behaviour packs
The other launchers support things like mod packs, or they make it easier to install mods
can you have multiple instances through the vanilla launcher?
Yes you can but it’s kind of hidden.
In Prism, it’s super easy to set up an instance, throw in a mod loader, and filter, download, and update compatible mods in the app. It also allows you to choose and configure the Java version easily per instance, view logs, and export instances.
It also has the cat button, which shows a cat :3
Cat button?
Something I learned today: Prism Launcher and MultiMC Launcher (haven’t verified the second) do modify Minecraft’s telemetry, even in Vanilla to not send your user ID and client ID. So if you care about data protection or/and privacy, this is definitely beneficial.
The normal launcher is fine for the average player who plays single player and realms and an occasional SMP. It’s made specifically for them; the average player.
Been a while since I used it, but in retrospect, it felt basic but functional for what it does. The “better” ones, I’d defend they are because they are tinkered to the uses the user wants/needs.
