Minecraft: The Launcher

Around version 7, Mojang came out with a new launcher for Minecraft. This new launcher easily manages multiple Minecraft versions and adds "profiles" and "game directories."

Before the new launcher, all Minecraft used a single directory in the user's AppData path. This meant that as you started using the game, creating worlds, adding mods and so on, it would all go in the same directory. Then if you wanted to play a different version of the game, you would still have most of the old stuff. It got very messy.

In the new launcher, we have Profiles. Profiles simplify using Minecraft for multiple different playing environments on a single computer. For instance, if you want to run version 1.6.2 with Flan's Mod, you setup a profile for that. Then if you want to run a different version with different mods, you create a new profile.




To create a profile, click on "New Profile" in the lower left corner of the launcher.



This will bring up the profile editor page.

This looks complicated, but for now you only need to worry about here things: the profile name, the game directory, and the version selected.

The profile name can be pretty much anything you want. Most people put the minecraft version or the name of the main mods they are using or something like that.

Above all, you need to check the "Game Directory" checkbox. This tells the launcher that you want to use a directory that is specific to this profile, and not lump all the profiles into a single location.
Then you just fill in the directory name.  I suggest putting all your game directories into the same parent folder, for example "C:\MC", and then add the name of the profile as the subfolder.

In the "Use version" dropdown box, just pick the version of Minecraft you want to use. It's that easy. If you've installed Forge for any versions, the Forge versions will be listed separately at the bottom of the list.

Save your profile, and you are done. One warning - when you go back to the main launcher page, you may be expecting the profile you just created to be selected, but usually it isn't. So change to the newly created profile before you hit Play!