Docs
Everything here is about the parts Portal adds on top of Prism Launcher. For the Prism side (instances, Java, accounts, logs) the Prism wiki still applies, since Portal is built on it.
Sharing a pack
Sharing runs on Modrinth's shared instances service, the same one the Modrinth App uses. Portal does not host anything itself, which is also why your friends do not need Portal to receive a pack.
- Open the instance and go to its Sharing page. The first time, sign in with your Modrinth account: the sign-in page opens in your browser and Portal never sees your password.
- Press Share. Portal uploads the pack definition: mods from Modrinth are referenced, not uploaded, and anything else (hand-added jars, resource packs, configs you chose to include) is uploaded once.
- Copy the invite link, or invite people directly by Modrinth username. Links last 7 days and 10 uses; you can mint a new one any time.
- When you change the pack, press Push on the Sharing page, or turn on push before launching and forget about it. Portal warns you when you have changes you have not pushed.
What goes across
Mods, the config files you picked (none, all, or a list of folders), the pack icon, and the Minecraft and loader versions. Disabled mods are left out on purpose. Resource packs and data packs are shrunk losslessly before upload, so repeat pushes stay small.
Optional mods
As the owner you can mark mods as optional from the Sharing page. Friends can turn those off (client-side shaders, minimaps, that sort of thing) and still stay in sync with everything else. An update to an optional mod a friend turned off arrives disabled, so it never switches itself back on.
Joining a pack
From a link: File > Join Shared Pack, or paste the modrinth.com/share/... link into Add Instance > Import. Invites sent to your Modrinth account also show up in the Friends panel, where one click joins.
After that there is nothing to do. Each time you press Play, Portal checks the pack, applies whatever changed, shows you the list of changes, and launches. If an update adds files the owner uploaded themselves (not from Modrinth), Portal asks before applying, because those are files you have not seen before.
Same link, same flow. A pack shared from Portal opens in the Modrinth App and the other way round. Nobody in the group has to switch launchers.
Moving from another launcher
Add Instance > Other Launchers looks in the usual places for instances you already have and lists them with their game version and loader. Pick one, optionally rename it, press OK, and Portal copies it over. The other launcher keeps its copy untouched.
| Launcher | What Portal reads |
|---|---|
| Minecraft Launcher | Your launcher profiles. Each custom profile becomes an instance; worlds, mods, resource packs and options are copied, the versions and libraries folders are not, because Portal rebuilds those. |
| CurseForge | Every instance in the CurseForge app's Instances folder, with its loader. |
| Modrinth App | Your profiles, read from the app's own database. |
| MultiMC, PolyMC, Prism Launcher | Instances are copied whole, settings and all. |
| GDLauncher, ATLauncher, XMCL | Instances from each app's data folder, with loader and version. |
| Technic | Installed packs from the Technic launcher; the pack's own version file sets up the loader. |
If a launcher lives somewhere unusual (a portable MultiMC on another drive, say), use the folder button on that page to point Portal at it. It works out whether you picked the launcher's data folder, its instances folder, or a single instance.
If you already use Prism Launcher in its normal location, you do not need any of this: Portal reads the same data folder, so your instances and accounts are simply there.
Disk space
Portal stores each distinct mod, resource pack and shader pack once, however many instances use it. Installing a mod that another instance already has links the same bytes instead of downloading or copying them. Every instance still has its own file at its own path, so nothing else changes: you can enable, disable, update and delete per instance exactly as before.
For the instances you had before this existed, Help > Reclaim Disk Space finds the duplicates across all of them, tells you how many files and how much space that is, and only links them once you say yes. Files a running game has open are skipped, so run it when nothing is playing.
Mod groups
On an instance's Mods page, select mods and use the Group button (or the right-click menu) to file them under a name: Performance, Optional, Library, whatever helps. A Group column and a filter next to the search box let you work on one slice of a 300-mod pack at a time. Groups follow a mod through updates, since they are keyed on the mod's project, not its file name.
What Portal sends where
There is no telemetry, no analytics and no ads, and therefore nothing to opt out of. The complete list of places the launcher talks to:
| Who | Why |
|---|---|
| Microsoft and Mojang | Signing in to Minecraft (through Microsoft's own sign-in page, Portal never sees your password) and downloading the game. |
| Modrinth | Browsing and installing mods; sharing, joining and syncing packs; the friends list. Your Modrinth session token is stored in prismlauncher.cfg in the launcher data folder and is only ever sent to *.modrinth.com. |
| CurseForge | Browsing and installing mods and packs, when you use them. |
| GitHub | Checking for launcher updates and downloading them. |
| Prism Launcher's metadata server | Minecraft, loader and Java version lists. |
| Discord (on your PC) | Only if you turn on Rich Presence in settings, and only to the Discord client running on the same machine. |
Updating and verifying
Portal checks for updates once a day and on Help > Update, and installs them in place. Settings, instances and accounts carry over. If an update ever fails halfway, the previous version is put back.
Every release from 1.0.6 onwards is built in public by GitHub Actions from a specific commit, and each file carries a build provenance attestation you can check with the GitHub CLI:
gh attestation verify PortalLauncher-Setup-1.0.6.exe \ --repo Portal-Launcher/PortalLauncher
Every download also has a .sha256 next to it. Windows SmartScreen may still warn, because the build is not code signed yet: that warning is about the missing certificate, not the file, and the attestation is the stronger check anyway.
Getting help
- Something broke: open an issue. Help > View logs and the instance's Minecraft log are what make it fixable.
- Questions and ideas: GitHub Discussions.
- Anything about instances, Java or accounts that Prism also has: the Prism Launcher wiki.