Change Minecraft save location?

I have a PC dual booted with Linux and Windows and Minecraft is installed on both. Now sometimes I play Minecraft in Linux and sometimes in Windows. I want to know if I could change the location where worlds are saved to a hard drive that is shared by both operating systems, so that I can use the same world on both operating systems.

Solution 1:

The Minecraft launcher allows you to change the folder it places your saves in (among other things) via the profile settings.

1. Create a "Minecraft" folder on a shared drive. Make sure you have read/write access to this folder from both Windows and Linux.

2. Start the Minecraft Launcher and click on Installations

3. Hover over the profile you want to change, click on ..., then Edit.

4. Enter the folder on your shared drive in the Box labeled "Game Directory". The game will now place saves, resourcepacks, screenshots and crash-reports (maybe some more folders) in this Directory.

5. Repeat on the other OS.

Solution 2:

Create a folder called saves somewhere in your shared drive. (eg. D:\Xyz\saves). Move your worlds(if you have any saved) to this folder.

Then in Windows, create a symlimk to the folder:

1. Open elevated cmd.

2. Navigate to .minecraft folder: cd %appdata%\.minecraft

3. Delete the saves folder from here.

4. In cmd, type: mklink /D saves <path to saves folder> eg. If your saves folder is D:\Xyz\saves, type: mklimk /D saves D:\Xyz\saves

Now reboot to Linux. In Linux,

1. Go to the shared drive which has saves folder.

2. Right click on saves folder and make link.

3. Rename the link to saves.

4. Go to .minecraft folder in your home directory and delete the saves folder from there.

5. Move the saves link here.

Now both operating systems will share the saved worlds.

Note: Shared drive must be NTFS for mklink to work.