How do I turn off mods in Minecraft without deleting them?

Rename the mod's file from name.jar to name.jar.disabled, or move it out of the mods folder. Fabric, Forge and NeoForge only load files ending in .jar, so the file stays on disk but is ignored. To turn it back on, undo the rename or move it back.

How do I play vanilla Minecraft again with mods installed?

On the official launcher, choose a plain release installation from the profile dropdown at the bottom left instead of the Forge or Fabric profile. A vanilla profile starts with no loader, so the mods folder is not read. Switch back to the modded profile when you want your mods again.

Does disabling a mod remove its items from my world?

Not by itself, but opening the world while the mod is off can. If the mod added blocks or items and you load the world without it, the game may drop that content when it saves. Back up the world before opening it with content mods disabled.

Can I disable one mod in a CurseForge modpack?

Yes, after you tick Allow content management for this profile in the pack's Profile Options. The Installed Mods section then shows a toggle for each mod. While that option is on, the pack cannot be updated, and switching it off later means your changes are overwritten at the next update unless you update into a new profile.

Does .disabled work on a modded server?

Yes. A server runs the same loader code as the client, so Fabric, Forge and NeoForge servers skip a file ending in .jar.disabled in the server's mods folder too. Stop the server before renaming, and disable the matching mod on clients if it is required on both sides.

Guide

How to Disable Minecraft Mods Without Deleting Them

Here is how to disable Minecraft mods for a single evening: a friend wants to play plain survival tonight, your modded setup has sixty mods you spent a weekend getting stable, and the last thing you want is to delete them and rebuild that list tomorrow.

You do not have to. Every Java mod loader decides what to load by looking at file names in one folder, and every major launcher builds on that. Turning a mod off is a matter of hiding it from the loader, and turning it back on is undoing that one change.

This page covers the four ways to do it, which one fits your launcher, what happens to a world when a mod it depends on goes quiet, and the Bedrock equivalent, which works per world instead of per install.

Every method side by side

Pick a row by launcher first, then by how long you want the mod off. All of these keep the file on your disk; none of them touch your world saves by themselves.

The column that matters most is the second one. A per-instance method only affects one setup. A method that works on the shared mods folder of the official launcher affects every Forge or Fabric profile that points at that folder.

Method	Keeps the file	Scope	Works with	Reversible
Rename to .jar.disabled	Yes	That one folder	Any launcher; Fabric, Forge and NeoForge all skip it	Yes, rename back
Move the .jar out of mods	Yes	That one folder	Any launcher	Yes, move it back
Switch to a vanilla profile	Yes	Whole session, all mods	Official Minecraft Launcher	Yes, pick the modded profile again
Prism Launcher checkbox	Yes (renamed to .disabled)	One instance	Prism Launcher	Yes, tick it again
Modrinth App toggle	Yes (.disabled suffix)	One instance	Modrinth App	Yes, toggle on
CurseForge Installed Mods toggle	Yes	One profile	CurseForge app, after enabling content management	Yes, but see the update caveat
Deactivate a pack in world settings	Yes	One world	Bedrock Edition	Yes, activate again

Disabling methods compared. Loader and launcher behaviour checked against Fabric Loader, Forge, NeoForge, Prism Launcher and Modrinth App source code and CurseForge support docs, October 2026.

Why renaming to .jar.disabled works

The rename trick is not a convention someone agreed on. It works because of how the loaders are written.

Fabric Loader proposes a file as a possible mod only if it is a regular file, is not hidden, does not start with a dot, and has a name ending in .jar. A file called sodium.jar.disabled fails the last test and is never opened. Forge and NeoForge use the same rule: their mods folder locators define the suffix as .jar and skip any file whose name does not end with it.

So any extra ending works, but .disabled is the one to use, because Prism Launcher and the Modrinth App both recognise it. Prism's code disables a mod by appending .disabled to the file name and enables it by chopping exactly those nine characters back off. The Modrinth App marks a file as disabled when its name ends in .disabled. Rename by hand with that suffix and both launchers will show the mod as switched off, ready to toggle back on with a click.

On Windows, turn on file name extensions in File Explorer first. Otherwise you may end up with a file actually called sodium.jar.disabled.jar, which still ends in .jar and still loads.

Close Minecraft completely, not just the world.
Open the mods folder for the profile or instance you are changing.
Rename the file, adding .disabled after .jar.
Launch. The mod is gone from the mod list; everything else loads as before.
To restore it, remove .disabled and relaunch.

Before and after, in the mods folder

mods/
  fabric-api-0.x.jar          <- loads
  sodium-fabric-0.x.jar        <- loads
  journeymap-fabric-6.x.jar.disabled   <- skipped by the loader

To turn it back on, delete .disabled from the end of the name.

The vanilla evening: three ways to play without any mods

If the goal is plain Minecraft for one night, disabling mods one by one is the slow way. You want everything off at once and back on tomorrow with no fiddling.

On the official Minecraft Launcher, the fastest route is the profile dropdown. Fabric's own install instructions tell you to select the Fabric profile from the dropdown in the bottom-left corner before pressing Play, and a Forge install adds its own entry. Pick a plain release installation from that dropdown instead and the game starts without any loader, so nothing in the mods folder is read at all. Tomorrow, pick the modded profile again. Your mods never moved.

If you would rather keep the modded profile selected but empty, move the whole contents of the mods folder into a new folder outside it, for example a folder named mods-parked beside it in your Minecraft directory. Current Fabric, Forge and NeoForge only scan the top level of the mods folder, but parking the files fully outside it means you never have to wonder how a particular loader version treats subfolders.

Third-party launchers make this easier still: create a separate instance with no loader for vanilla play. Instances in Prism, the Modrinth App and the CurseForge app each keep their own folders, so a vanilla instance cannot see the modded one's mods.

Situation	Best route	Why
One evening, official launcher	Select a release profile in the dropdown	Nothing to move or rename
Several days, official launcher	Move mods to a mods-parked folder	The modded profile can stay selected without loading anything
Prism, Modrinth App or CurseForge	Separate vanilla instance	Instances do not share mods folders
Same world in vanilla and modded	Back up the world first	Vanilla cannot read modded blocks; see the next section

Which vanilla route fits which situation.

Per-mod switches inside third-party launchers

Every major third-party launcher has a built-in on/off control, and all of them are per instance: disabling a mod in one instance leaves your other instances alone.

In Prism Launcher, edit the instance and open its Mods page. Each mod in the list has a checkbox. Unticking it renames the file with a .disabled suffix on disk, exactly the manual method above, which is why manually renamed files show up as unticked.

In the Modrinth App, open the instance and switch items off from its content list; the app keeps the file and marks it with the same .disabled suffix. Modrinth's March 2026 content management update added a sticky bulk action bar for working on several items at once. For an installed modpack, the pack appears as its own card with a view where you can see and disable the content it brought in.

In the CurseForge app, modpacks are locked by default. Open the pack's three-dot menu, choose Profile Options, and tick Allow content management for this profile. After that, mods can be toggled on or off from the Installed Mods section.

What a disabled mod means for your world

To your save file, a disabled mod and a deleted mod are the same thing. The loader never opened it, so its blocks, items and entities do not exist in that session.

Mods that only change how the game runs or looks, such as performance mods, shader loaders, minimaps and interface tweaks, can be disabled and re-enabled freely. The world never recorded them.

Mods that add blocks, items, dimensions or creatures are different. Open a world containing their content while they are switched off and the loader will warn about missing entries or refuse to load. If you accept a load with missing content, the world can be saved without those blocks and items, and switching the mod back on afterwards will not bring them back. The remove guide walks through that failure in detail; the short version is that the same rules apply.

The safe habit is to keep worlds and setups matched. Play vanilla in a vanilla world. If you must open a modded world without its mods, copy the world's folder from saves to somewhere outside the instance first, so the original is untouched whatever happens.

Mod type	Disable while a world uses it?	What to expect
Performance, shaders, minimap, HUD	Yes	World opens normally
Library mod (for example Fabric API)	Only with the mods that need it	Dependent mods fail to load otherwise
Adds blocks, items or mobs	Not in a world that uses them	Missing-entry warning or load failure
Adds a dimension	Not in a world that uses it	That dimension's data has nothing to load it

Disable first, open the world second, only after checking this.

Bedrock: switch packs off per world

Bedrock Edition has no mods folder and no mod loaders; Forge, Fabric and NeoForge are Java only. Its add-ons are behaviour packs and resource packs, and they are switched on per world rather than per install.

Microsoft's creator documentation describes activation from a world's settings: scroll to the Add-Ons section, open Behavior Packs, find the pack under My Packs and choose Activate. A behaviour pack can be linked to a resource pack, in which case activating one automatically activates the other.

Turning a pack off is done from the same Add-Ons area of that world's settings, and because activation is per world, deactivating it there affects only that world. Your other worlds, and the pack itself, stay exactly as they were, so the Bedrock version of a vanilla evening is simply a new world with no packs active.

The world-safety rule carries over. Microsoft notes that each world folder in minecraftWorlds contains the behaviour and resource pack folders for packs in use in that world, so a world built around a pack's custom blocks or mobs should be copied before you switch the pack off.

Questions people actually ask

How do I turn off mods in Minecraft without deleting them?: Rename the mod's file from name.jar to name.jar.disabled, or move it out of the mods folder. Fabric, Forge and NeoForge only load files ending in .jar, so the file stays on disk but is ignored. To turn it back on, undo the rename or move it back.
How do I play vanilla Minecraft again with mods installed?: On the official launcher, choose a plain release installation from the profile dropdown at the bottom left instead of the Forge or Fabric profile. A vanilla profile starts with no loader, so the mods folder is not read. Switch back to the modded profile when you want your mods again.
Does disabling a mod remove its items from my world?: Not by itself, but opening the world while the mod is off can. If the mod added blocks or items and you load the world without it, the game may drop that content when it saves. Back up the world before opening it with content mods disabled.
Can I disable one mod in a CurseForge modpack?: Yes, after you tick Allow content management for this profile in the pack's Profile Options. The Installed Mods section then shows a toggle for each mod. While that option is on, the pack cannot be updated, and switching it off later means your changes are overwritten at the next update unless you update into a new profile.
Does .disabled work on a modded server?: Yes. A server runs the same loader code as the client, so Fabric, Forge and NeoForge servers skip a file ending in .jar.disabled in the server's mods folder too. Stop the server before renaming, and disable the matching mod on clients if it is required on both sides.