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FeaturedDawn Performance Update 1
Performance Update 🔥
Our first big batch of FPS optimizations is live. On average, our testers saw:
The FPS gains are great, but the allocation numbers are what I'm most excited about, because that's what makes the game actually feel smoother.
Tester results
What changed
Every frame, Minecraft creates thousands of short-lived objects: text layouts, render states, matrices, positions and strings. Java's garbage collector has to clean all of that up, and when it does, you get those small stutters where your FPS looks fine but the game doesn't feel smooth.
Most of this batch is about not creating that garbage in the first place. We now reuse objects instead of making new ones every frame, cache results that don't change, and skip work you can't see. A few of the things we found:
• Every character on your screen (chat, scoreboard, nametags, HUD) was getting a brand new object every frame. They're pooled and reused now.
• Signs were rendering text on their back face even while you were looking at the front.
• Nametags were being rebuilt constantly.
• Cosmetics rebuilt their geometry and animation state every frame, for every cosmetic. In a full lobby, that adds up fast.
• To check whether an entity was on screen, vanilla made a slightly larger copy of its hitbox every frame and then threw it away.
• Particles no longer allocate per particle.
• Text width and right-to-left text ordering are cached instead of recalculated every frame.
• A bigger font atlas means text rendering switches textures less often (5–20% on its own, depending on the scene).
• Network packets are decoded faster.
The launcher is lighter too
The launcher now stays out of the way while you play, which reduces CPU and RAM usage and indirectly affects your in-game FPS.
• In the background, it used to redraw about 141 times a second, because every animation (the hero, the mobs, your player model) redrew the whole window on its own schedule. It's now capped at around 27, and launcher CPU usage is roughly cut in half (about 180% → 92% of a core on our test machine).
• While you're playing, the launcher drops to 10 FPS (1 FPS when the game covers it), lowers its CPU priority and gives memory back to Windows. Garbage collections while playing went from 173 to 93 per minute.
• Every page uses less CPU when idle: Settings −65%, Mods −45%, Store −35%, Wardrobe −27%, Community −22%.
• Home is much lighter: 90% → 54% of a core, 123 MB less RAM and 128 MB less GPU memory.
• Switching pages no longer freezes. Long stalls (>50ms) dropped from 84 to 23 in our testing.
• Fixed a memory leak where the launcher kept every line of game output for the entire session. If your launcher crashed after long play sessions, this was likely the cause.
Supported versions
The client optimizations are live on 1.21.5, 1.21.8, 1.21.10, 1.21.11 and 26.1.1. 26.2 has most of them, but not the text caching yet. 26.3, 1.21.4 and older versions (including 1.8.9) don't have them yet. We're working on bringing them over.
The launcher improvements are in version 0.2.0.410, which is out now.
What's next
This is the first batch. The second one is already in testing and focuses on the GUI and HUD, mainly not redrawing things that haven't changed.
One big thing that will have a MASSIVE difference soon is once we move away from using web overlays in-game for the custom HUD. The early results look really good, but I'll share numbers once they're final.
Huge thanks to the performance team for this one.
Our first big batch of FPS optimizations is live. On average, our testers saw:
The FPS gains are great, but the allocation numbers are what I'm most excited about, because that's what makes the game actually feel smoother.
Tester results
What changed
Every frame, Minecraft creates thousands of short-lived objects: text layouts, render states, matrices, positions and strings. Java's garbage collector has to clean all of that up, and when it does, you get those small stutters where your FPS looks fine but the game doesn't feel smooth.
Most of this batch is about not creating that garbage in the first place. We now reuse objects instead of making new ones every frame, cache results that don't change, and skip work you can't see. A few of the things we found:
• Every character on your screen (chat, scoreboard, nametags, HUD) was getting a brand new object every frame. They're pooled and reused now.
• Signs were rendering text on their back face even while you were looking at the front.
• Nametags were being rebuilt constantly.
• Cosmetics rebuilt their geometry and animation state every frame, for every cosmetic. In a full lobby, that adds up fast.
• To check whether an entity was on screen, vanilla made a slightly larger copy of its hitbox every frame and then threw it away.
• Particles no longer allocate per particle.
• Text width and right-to-left text ordering are cached instead of recalculated every frame.
• A bigger font atlas means text rendering switches textures less often (5–20% on its own, depending on the scene).
• Network packets are decoded faster.
The launcher is lighter too
The launcher now stays out of the way while you play, which reduces CPU and RAM usage and indirectly affects your in-game FPS.
• In the background, it used to redraw about 141 times a second, because every animation (the hero, the mobs, your player model) redrew the whole window on its own schedule. It's now capped at around 27, and launcher CPU usage is roughly cut in half (about 180% → 92% of a core on our test machine).
• While you're playing, the launcher drops to 10 FPS (1 FPS when the game covers it), lowers its CPU priority and gives memory back to Windows. Garbage collections while playing went from 173 to 93 per minute.
• Every page uses less CPU when idle: Settings −65%, Mods −45%, Store −35%, Wardrobe −27%, Community −22%.
• Home is much lighter: 90% → 54% of a core, 123 MB less RAM and 128 MB less GPU memory.
• Switching pages no longer freezes. Long stalls (>50ms) dropped from 84 to 23 in our testing.
• Fixed a memory leak where the launcher kept every line of game output for the entire session. If your launcher crashed after long play sessions, this was likely the cause.
Supported versions
The client optimizations are live on 1.21.5, 1.21.8, 1.21.10, 1.21.11 and 26.1.1. 26.2 has most of them, but not the text caching yet. 26.3, 1.21.4 and older versions (including 1.8.9) don't have them yet. We're working on bringing them over.
The launcher improvements are in version 0.2.0.410, which is out now.
What's next
This is the first batch. The second one is already in testing and focuses on the GUI and HUD, mainly not redrawing things that haven't changed.
One big thing that will have a MASSIVE difference soon is once we move away from using web overlays in-game for the custom HUD. The early results look really good, but I'll share numbers once they're final.
Huge thanks to the performance team for this one.
Gifting & Cosmetics Market
Two big additions to the Modern Launcher in update .425: you can now gift cosmetics to other players, and you can buy and sell cosmetics with other players on the new Cosmetic Market.
Both are in the Modern UI only. If you're still on Classic, go to Settings → General → Switch to Modern UI → Switch and restart. It only restarts the launcher, and you can switch back the same way.
Gifting 🎁
Every item in the store now has a Gift button.
1. Press Gift on any item.
2. Pick who it's for: one of your Friends, someone from Requests, or search for any player by name.
3. Check the price and press Send Gift.
The gift is delivered automatically, even if they're offline, and they get a notification saying who it's from. You pay with Gems like a normal purchase. Free items can't be gifted.
Gift Requests
Want something from your lineup? Press Request on the item and it goes on the Gift Requests board, where your friends (or anyone) can buy it for you. When someone gifts it, it's removed from your lineup and the request closes. Buying it yourself or rerolling your lineup also removes the request.
The new Gifting tab
Everything you gift counts towards two things, and you can follow both in the new Gifting tab in the Store:
• The Gifting Gauntlet: every Gem you gift adds $0.01 towards your next reward tier, and your progress never resets.
• The Monthly Leaderboard: the top gifters each month win exclusive prizes, delivered automatically when the month ends.
Gauntlet rewards
The first tier gets you the Gift Hat and the Gifter I badge. At $10 gifted you unlock 3D Glasses and get 500 Gems back, and further tiers include the Hacker Visor, the Pilot Hat and more. Press View More in the Gifting tab to see every tier.
Gifter badge
Your Gifter badge shows next to your name on your profile and levels up as you climb the Gauntlet. You can choose which of your badges show in Edit Profile → Profile Badges.
Cosmetic Market 🛒
You can now sell cosmetics you own to other players for Gems, and buy theirs. The Market lives on the right side of the Community tab.
To sell:
1. Press List on the Market card and pick one of your cosmetics.
2. Set your price. You'll see the item's median price as a guide once it has sold a few times.
3. Choose how long it stays up (15 minutes to 2 hours) and press List.
Before you list, it shows the fee and exactly how many Gems you'll get. If nobody buys it before the time runs out, it comes back to your cosmetics, and you can relist it from History.
To buy: hover any listing to see who's selling it, its median price and its last sale, then press Buy. Market purchases use paid Gems.
Expand the Market card to see everything that's listed, search it, filter by type and rarity, and sort by price or ending soon. My Listings and History show what you have up, what sold and what you bought.
Fees and limits
• Prices go from 50 to 250,000 Gems.
• There's a 10% fee on every sale, taken from the seller.
• You can have 1 listing up at a time.
• Trade-locked cosmetics can't be listed.
Have fun, and let us know what you think in Suggestions.
— Pizza
Both are in the Modern UI only. If you're still on Classic, go to Settings → General → Switch to Modern UI → Switch and restart. It only restarts the launcher, and you can switch back the same way.
Gifting 🎁
Every item in the store now has a Gift button.
1. Press Gift on any item.
2. Pick who it's for: one of your Friends, someone from Requests, or search for any player by name.
3. Check the price and press Send Gift.
The gift is delivered automatically, even if they're offline, and they get a notification saying who it's from. You pay with Gems like a normal purchase. Free items can't be gifted.
Gift Requests
Want something from your lineup? Press Request on the item and it goes on the Gift Requests board, where your friends (or anyone) can buy it for you. When someone gifts it, it's removed from your lineup and the request closes. Buying it yourself or rerolling your lineup also removes the request.
The new Gifting tab
Everything you gift counts towards two things, and you can follow both in the new Gifting tab in the Store:
• The Gifting Gauntlet: every Gem you gift adds $0.01 towards your next reward tier, and your progress never resets.
• The Monthly Leaderboard: the top gifters each month win exclusive prizes, delivered automatically when the month ends.
Gauntlet rewards
The first tier gets you the Gift Hat and the Gifter I badge. At $10 gifted you unlock 3D Glasses and get 500 Gems back, and further tiers include the Hacker Visor, the Pilot Hat and more. Press View More in the Gifting tab to see every tier.
Gifter badge
Your Gifter badge shows next to your name on your profile and levels up as you climb the Gauntlet. You can choose which of your badges show in Edit Profile → Profile Badges.
Cosmetic Market 🛒
You can now sell cosmetics you own to other players for Gems, and buy theirs. The Market lives on the right side of the Community tab.
To sell:
1. Press List on the Market card and pick one of your cosmetics.
2. Set your price. You'll see the item's median price as a guide once it has sold a few times.
3. Choose how long it stays up (15 minutes to 2 hours) and press List.
Before you list, it shows the fee and exactly how many Gems you'll get. If nobody buys it before the time runs out, it comes back to your cosmetics, and you can relist it from History.
To buy: hover any listing to see who's selling it, its median price and its last sale, then press Buy. Market purchases use paid Gems.
Expand the Market card to see everything that's listed, search it, filter by type and rarity, and sort by price or ending soon. My Listings and History show what you have up, what sold and what you bought.
Fees and limits
• Prices go from 50 to 250,000 Gems.
• There's a 10% fee on every sale, taken from the seller.
• You can have 1 listing up at a time.
• Trade-locked cosmetics can't be listed.
Have fun, and let us know what you think in Suggestions.
— Pizza
Support Staff Applications are now Open!
🛡️️ We are looking for active, reliable members who are passionate about Dawn!
Help keep Dawn welcoming and enjoyable by assisting players, answering questions, resolving issues, and maintaining a positive community.
Support Staff receive:
• Monthly Gems
• Exclusive Cosmetics
• Rewards
• and the opportunity to join a dedicated, hard-working team.
How to Apply:
1. Visit: https://dawn.gg/support
2. Select "Support Staff Application"
3. Fill out and submit the application form
Help keep Dawn welcoming and enjoyable by assisting players, answering questions, resolving issues, and maintaining a positive community.
Support Staff receive:
• Monthly Gems
• Exclusive Cosmetics
• Rewards
• and the opportunity to join a dedicated, hard-working team.
How to Apply:
1. Visit: https://dawn.gg/support
2. Select "Support Staff Application"
3. Fill out and submit the application form
Modern Launcher is here!
If you're still on the Classic launcher, now is a good time to switch.
To switch: go to Settings → General → Switch to Modern UI → Switch and restart. It only restarts the launcher, never your game, and you can switch back the same way at any time.
What's new in Modern Launcher?
Community 💬
The new Community tab:
• News, Threads and Suggestions, with replies, reactions and voting. Suggestions are marked Open, Planned, Implemented or Declined, so you can see what happens with your ideas.
• A proper post editor with formatting, a preview, and support for pasting images and GIFs directly into your post.
• Live Chat on the side, which you can pop out into a larger window.
• Friends Feed, which shows when your friends come online, add someone, or win or lose an MCPVP match (more stuff being added later)
• Trending Profiles, the most-viewed player profiles of the week.
• Click anyone's name or head to open their player card, with their stats and buttons to add them, request a trade or view their profile.
• Subscribe to threads to get notified when someone replies to you or mentions you.
• Copy Link on any post. If you open the link on dawn.gg while Dawn is running, one click takes you to that post in the launcher.
Player profiles
Your profile is now VERY customizable, you can add the following widgets:
• Where I Play: your most-played servers, with a button to copy the IP.
• Top Mods: a weekly and all-time ranking of the mods you play with most.
• Match Record: your recent MCPVP matches, filterable by kit.
• Wynncraft Stats, NameMC (skins, past usernames and monthly views), My Wardrobe, Besties, Favorite Moments (your screenshots) and About Me.
Coming soon: DonutSMP & Medal widgets!
You can also customize almost everything:
• Click Edit Profile to rearrange widgets, restyle them, and choose who can see each one (Everyone, Friends or Only Me).
• Pick a theme (Overworld, Nether, The End, Ocean or Love) or create your own.
• Use animated GIFs for your profile picture and banner.
• Set your cursor to any Minecraft block, item or mob, with optional sparkle, heart or ender particles.
• Add a favorite mob and switch to the Minecraft font.
• Link Discord, Modrinth, Twitch and X. These are verified connections, so people know it's really you.
• If you own a server, verify it through DNS and it'll show on your profile with a verified badge and its live player count.
• A status ring around your avatar shows whether you're online.
Your profile is also on the web at dawn.gg/p/yourname, and the link shows a proper preview when you share it on Discord.
Rotating store
The store works differently now, there will never be cosmetics on the store that will be available to buy all the time again. Every month, there will be a new collection. It works like this:
• Every month there's a new collection. When it leaves the store, its items can only be traded.
• You get your own lineup of 3 items from the collection, refreshed every 3 days. Buy all 3 and you get a new lineup straight away.
• Limited items can sell out for everyone, and some can only be owned once per player.
The first collection, 2026 Angels & Demons, drops on Friday, October 2 at 2 PM ET and stays in the store until November 6. Only 10 Angel Wings and 50 Ruler of Hell Wings will ever exist.
Trading
You can send a trade request to a friend and swap cosmetics and Gems right in the launcher. Both of you review the offer before confirming, and if anything changes, you both have to confirm again. Trading also works in Classic, but in Modern it opens on top of whatever you're doing instead of taking you to a separate page.
Non-Dawn profiles and NeoForge ⚙️
You no longer need Dawn Client to use the Dawn launcher! We are opening it up for everyone.
• The new profile creator walks you through it: choose Vanilla or Modded, decide whether you want Dawn, then pick your version and loader.
• Supports Vanilla (including snapshots and old betas), Fabric, Forge and now NeoForge.
• NeoForge works on 1.20.1 through 26.x and installs using the official NeoForge installer. Dawn Client support for NeoForge is coming soon; for now, those profiles run without Dawn.
• Dawn Optimized is a simple toggle. Turn it off to get a clean profile with only your own mods.
• In the mod browser, you can find a mod first and choose which profile to install it to afterwards. There's also a Modpacks tab for Modrinth packs on Fabric, Forge and NeoForge.
• Import your setup from Feather, your .minecraft folder, a .mrpack file or a CurseForge zip.
Everything else
• Wardrobe (previously Cosmetics) has been redesigned with a bigger preview, zoom controls and a one-click Unequip All.
• Hosting puts your local servers and your free Aternos servers in one place.
• Notifications now live in the title bar, and a What's new popup shows you what changed after each update.
• The launcher also got much lighter on your PC this week and barely uses anything while you play. The Performance Update post has the full numbers.
Is Classic going away?
Not right now. It still works and still gets fixes, but all of our new features are going into Modern, so if you've been waiting, this is the time to switch.
Let us know what you think below!
To switch: go to Settings → General → Switch to Modern UI → Switch and restart. It only restarts the launcher, never your game, and you can switch back the same way at any time.
What's new in Modern Launcher?
Community 💬
The new Community tab:
• News, Threads and Suggestions, with replies, reactions and voting. Suggestions are marked Open, Planned, Implemented or Declined, so you can see what happens with your ideas.
• A proper post editor with formatting, a preview, and support for pasting images and GIFs directly into your post.
• Live Chat on the side, which you can pop out into a larger window.
• Friends Feed, which shows when your friends come online, add someone, or win or lose an MCPVP match (more stuff being added later)
• Trending Profiles, the most-viewed player profiles of the week.
• Click anyone's name or head to open their player card, with their stats and buttons to add them, request a trade or view their profile.
• Subscribe to threads to get notified when someone replies to you or mentions you.
• Copy Link on any post. If you open the link on dawn.gg while Dawn is running, one click takes you to that post in the launcher.
Player profiles
Your profile is now VERY customizable, you can add the following widgets:
• Where I Play: your most-played servers, with a button to copy the IP.
• Top Mods: a weekly and all-time ranking of the mods you play with most.
• Match Record: your recent MCPVP matches, filterable by kit.
• Wynncraft Stats, NameMC (skins, past usernames and monthly views), My Wardrobe, Besties, Favorite Moments (your screenshots) and About Me.
Coming soon: DonutSMP & Medal widgets!
You can also customize almost everything:
• Click Edit Profile to rearrange widgets, restyle them, and choose who can see each one (Everyone, Friends or Only Me).
• Pick a theme (Overworld, Nether, The End, Ocean or Love) or create your own.
• Use animated GIFs for your profile picture and banner.
• Set your cursor to any Minecraft block, item or mob, with optional sparkle, heart or ender particles.
• Add a favorite mob and switch to the Minecraft font.
• Link Discord, Modrinth, Twitch and X. These are verified connections, so people know it's really you.
• If you own a server, verify it through DNS and it'll show on your profile with a verified badge and its live player count.
• A status ring around your avatar shows whether you're online.
Your profile is also on the web at dawn.gg/p/yourname, and the link shows a proper preview when you share it on Discord.
Rotating store
The store works differently now, there will never be cosmetics on the store that will be available to buy all the time again. Every month, there will be a new collection. It works like this:
• Every month there's a new collection. When it leaves the store, its items can only be traded.
• You get your own lineup of 3 items from the collection, refreshed every 3 days. Buy all 3 and you get a new lineup straight away.
• Limited items can sell out for everyone, and some can only be owned once per player.
The first collection, 2026 Angels & Demons, drops on Friday, October 2 at 2 PM ET and stays in the store until November 6. Only 10 Angel Wings and 50 Ruler of Hell Wings will ever exist.
Trading
You can send a trade request to a friend and swap cosmetics and Gems right in the launcher. Both of you review the offer before confirming, and if anything changes, you both have to confirm again. Trading also works in Classic, but in Modern it opens on top of whatever you're doing instead of taking you to a separate page.
Non-Dawn profiles and NeoForge ⚙️
You no longer need Dawn Client to use the Dawn launcher! We are opening it up for everyone.
• The new profile creator walks you through it: choose Vanilla or Modded, decide whether you want Dawn, then pick your version and loader.
• Supports Vanilla (including snapshots and old betas), Fabric, Forge and now NeoForge.
• NeoForge works on 1.20.1 through 26.x and installs using the official NeoForge installer. Dawn Client support for NeoForge is coming soon; for now, those profiles run without Dawn.
• Dawn Optimized is a simple toggle. Turn it off to get a clean profile with only your own mods.
• In the mod browser, you can find a mod first and choose which profile to install it to afterwards. There's also a Modpacks tab for Modrinth packs on Fabric, Forge and NeoForge.
• Import your setup from Feather, your .minecraft folder, a .mrpack file or a CurseForge zip.
Everything else
• Wardrobe (previously Cosmetics) has been redesigned with a bigger preview, zoom controls and a one-click Unequip All.
• Hosting puts your local servers and your free Aternos servers in one place.
• Notifications now live in the title bar, and a What's new popup shows you what changed after each update.
• The launcher also got much lighter on your PC this week and barely uses anything while you play. The Performance Update post has the full numbers.
Is Classic going away?
Not right now. It still works and still gets fixes, but all of our new features are going into Modern, so if you've been waiting, this is the time to switch.
Let us know what you think below!