How to Extract Minecraft Assets

Step-by-step instructions on how to extract Minecraft: Java Edition data and assets

Universal

1. Go to your .minecraft folder
2. Locate your "versions" folder and open it.
3. Find the version you want to extract, it should be a .jar file
4. If you don't have a program to open it simply make a copy of the jar.
5. Change the file extension from .jar to .zip. You should be able to open and see the assets.
6. The most useful parts of the JAR are the assets and data folders. The assets folder has all the textures that can be used in a resource pack. The data folder can be used in a datapack.

Using mcextract CLI

1. Install Python if you haven't already.
2. Install the mcextract package by running this command in your terminal.

pip install mcextract

1. Now you can use the mcextract command in your terminal.
2. Run the below command to extract the assets and data folder from the client jar.

mcextract extract 1.21.1/1.21.1.jar --assets --data -eula

You can find the docs for the mcextract CLI via the mcextract Documentation