Screenshot 1 of 5. Blocks in purple, orange, green and blue tones fill a cube-shaped room with a lime block in the centre, shown with Colorblind Swap.
What Colorblind Swap works with.
| Platform | Java Edition |
|---|---|
| Loaders | Iris, OptiFine |
| Minecraft versions | 1.7.3, 1.16.5, 1.17.1, 1.18.2, 1.19.4, 1.20.6, 1.21.11, 26.1.2, 26.2, 26.3 |
Colorblind Swap is a lightweight full-screen post-processing shader for Java, running on Iris and OptiFine. Made by xsoras, it swaps and blends colour channels on a timer, so the same world keeps drifting between altered colour palettes. It is a player-side visual effect only and sits at the potato tier for performance.
Shader loaders and versions
- Iris and OptiFine: Minecraft 1.7.3 to 26.3.
How the colour cycles work
This is not a fixed filter. Each timed cycle picks a new colour interpretation mode and blends into it gradually, so there are no hard cuts. Four modes are described.
- Red-green reassignment exchanges portions of the two channels while keeping overall brightness.
- Blue-green blending removes the usual separation between vegetation, water and sky.
- Luminance-based red suppression is protanopia-inspired and partly replaces red with scene brightness.
- Warm-cool reconstruction pushes reds and yellows warmer and blues cooler.
Installation
Put the .zip in your shaderpacks folder, then pick it in Video Settings > Shader Packs with Iris, or in OptiFine's own shader menu. The shader install guide covers both loaders step by step, and fixing shaders that will not load helps if the pack does not appear. Bedrock cannot run it.
Performance and limits
The whole effect is one composite pass written in GLSL 1.20 that reads only the colour buffer. It needs no depth, normals or shadow maps, and the creator describes its computational cost as very low.
Questions about Colorblind Swap.
4 questions
How do I install Colorblind Swap?
Install Iris or OptiFine, place the shader's .zip in the shaderpacks folder, then open Video Settings > Shader Packs and select it. With OptiFine, use its own shader menu. The pack needs no other dependencies according to its listed builds.
Does Colorblind Swap work with Iris and OptiFine?
Yes. Both loaders have builds listed, and neither build requires any other mod. It is a single composite pass that works on the rendered colour buffer, which keeps it simple to run on either loader.
Is Colorblind Swap an accessibility tool for colour-blind players?
No. It simulates altered colour perception, including red-green and protanopia-inspired modes, and changes mode on a timer. It remaps colours for effect rather than correcting them for anyone with a colour vision deficiency.
Is Colorblind Swap good for low-end PCs?
It is tagged potato for performance. The shader runs one lightweight screen-space pass and skips shadows, depth effects and extra render targets, so its cost is described as very low.
