I'm having trouble figuring out what the latest version of Minecraft is. Different download locations seem to have different versions, so I'm not sure what the latest one is. How can I tell which of these is the newest version?
43 Answers
Game Websites
Oddly enough, the official Minecraft website and Mojang blog don't current the latest version at the time of this writing. However you can information on current versions and recent releases on the Minecraft Wiki and other unofficial sites dedicated to the game. You can find announcements and release notes for both official and unofficial on the Mojang blog, but only by browsing for the most recent of such posts.
Minecraft Launcher
Besides looking up the version numbers online, Minecraft itself can tell you which version is current if your launcher is up to date (it will update automatically if there is an internet connection available).
From the Launcher window, select "Edit Profile" and open the version drop-down selection. This will list all available versions in descending order. "release-x.x.x" indicates an official release, with other naming conventions indicating modded jars. After "Use Latest Version", the top-most official release (with the highest version numbers) will be the current version. However you can just leave "Use Latest Version" selected if you always want to use the latest release and not worry about version numbers.
The launcher will also give you, again assuming an internet connection, "Minecraft News" updates on the "Update Notes" tab. The first listed version "Minecraft X.X.X" will be the most recent official release.
Weekly Snapshots
If you want to try weekly snapshots, minor beta versions released on a weekly basis between official versions, those are more predictable. Those use the naming scheme YYwWWA where YY is the year, WW is the week, and A is a letter that varies, usually a/b/c to indicate minor updates at the time of release. So if today is the 5th week of 2014 then the latest snapshot would be 14w05a or 14w05b, etc.
1The versions go in number order:
- 1.0 was before 1.1
- 1.7.2 was before 1.7.4
Alpha was before beta, beta was before release:
- Alpha 1.2 was before beta 1.0
- Beta 1.8 was before 1.0
- Alpha 1.2 was way before 1.0
Snapshots use a different version numbering based on date, which you will have to manually compare with release dates of other versions. Snapshots are all newer than beta 1.7 though.
Occasionally there will be prerelease versions for download in the blog, those will always be the newest and follow the released version numbering.
For a more definitive order, you might want to check the version history on the wiki, which includes release dates of each version.
To see the latest version, you can check the version number of the current server release on the Minecraft download page:
It should say on the title screen or in the menu what version it is.
