There’s a new Minecraft launcher for OS X and you can test it

If you play Minecraft – and if you’re reading this, it’s likely that either you or one of your kids does – then you’ll know that installing and launching the game on OS X has been as awkward as a creeper with a bucket on its head.

That about to change! The Mojang development team has revealed that it has a new native launcher that doesn’t require Java to play nice. Here’s the news straight from the dev’s mouth:

You may have noticed that launching Minecraft on OS X is kind of a pain in the butt. We’ve been trying for a while to make that not the case, and finally we have the solution.

Following on from our previous efforts to make installing Minecraft on Windows really simple (no Java required, just our own installer) we’ve now created a very similar application for OS X.

…the new fancy Native OS X Launcher… does not require Java to be installed, nor any other dependencies. Just open up the link, drag the Minecraft icon to your applications folder, and you’re all done. That’s it.

There is one caveat: You must be running at least Mac OS X Lion (10.7) or newer…

Another thing to note is that Mojang is testing auto-updating, so it’ll be downloading up to 55MB a few times in a 24-hour period.

The developers are looking for information on specific issues, which are detailed in this Reddit post. That’s also where you can grab the installer.

There’s also an FAQ over there if you have any more burning questions.

➤ OSX users, we need your help testing a new launcher! [/r/minecraft]