Better UX

Overview

How many hearts is "a few hearts"? How long until you starve? Will this armor survive a creeper? Vanilla's rows of little icons make you guess. Better UX turns them into clean bars with the real numbers on them, so one glance tells you everything.

• Health: one bar with your exact health. Golden apple hearts show as a strip across the top, and after a hit a pale trail shows how much it cost you. The bar changes colour when you're poisoned, withering or freezing.
• Hunger: your hunger and your saturation, the hidden "fullness" vanilla never shows. Hold any food to see exactly what eating it will give you.
• Armor: two small shields show how much damage your armor really blocks, Protection enchantments included.
• On fire: the flames move to your health bar instead of covering your screen, so you can actually find the water.
• Underwater: your air becomes a timer that counts the seconds you have left and flashes red when you start drowning.
• Riding: your horse's health shows right where your hunger was.
• Experience, bosses and potions: your level sits on a sleek experience bar, boss bars show health in percent, and potion effects show how long they last and how strong they are.
• A cleaner screen: numbers fade away when nothing is happening and come back the moment something changes.

The first time you join a world, a quick visual tour shows you what everything means. Better UX is lighter than the vanilla HUD it replaces, so there's no FPS cost. Press J any time to switch back to the plain vanilla HUD, and again to bring yours back.

Presets

Pick a style in one click, then make it your own.

Found a layout you love? Press Save to keep it in its own slot and switch back to it any time. Saving always makes a new slot, so you never overwrite one by accident, and a saved slot stays exactly as you left it.

Edit Mode

Press U and the whole HUD becomes editable while you watch. A panel on the side lists every part of the HUD, and you can dock it to either side of the screen so it never gets in the way.

• Move: drag anything anywhere. It snaps neatly into place and stays put at any window size.
• Resize: make the bars shorter or longer.
• Flip: choose which way a bar empties, or which side of the shield its number sits on.
• Hide: make any part invisible.
• Go vanilla: switch a single part back to its vanilla version. Want the classic hearts with everything else upgraded? Easy.
• Tweak: slide your level along the experience bar, turn the portrait's helmet on or off, or choose whether numbers fade, always show or stay hidden.
• Reset: put any part back where it started.

Not sure what something does? Press the ? button in edit mode to replay the tour. Both keys can be changed under Options → Controls → Better UX.