MCLauncher keeps several Bedrock versions installed at once

Side by side versions, not parallel instances

The tool's purpose is narrow and specific. It allows you to install several versions of Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition, the Bedrock edition, side by side, which is useful if you want to test beta versions, releases or anything else side by side without needing to uninstall and reinstall the game. The FAQ sets a limit on what that means. At the time of writing, it does not allow running multiple instances of Minecraft Bedrock at the same time; it allows you to install multiple versions, but only one version can run at a time. So this is a version manager rather than a multi-instance launcher, and the difference matters if you were hoping to run a server and a client simultaneously from one install.

It is not a piracy tool and says so

The disclaimer is explicit. The tool will not help you pirate the game, and it requires that you have a Microsoft account which can be used to download Minecraft from the Store. The prerequisites spell the same requirement out: a Microsoft account connected to the Microsoft Store which owns Minecraft for Windows 10. A valid license is required, and the launcher cannot pirate the game. That distinction is what makes the approach workable, because the Bedrock executable is stored encrypted and the launcher has to obtain a decrypted copy through the Windows store machinery, and the same decryption step in the troubleshooting section is one of the places the failures come from. The remaining prerequisites are administrator permissions on the account, developer mode enabled for app installation in Windows 10 settings, the Visual C++ Redistributable installed, and a subscription to the Minecraft Beta programme through Xbox Insider Hub if you want betas.

The known failures are mostly Windows and GDK

The common pitfalls section is the most useful part of the README, because the author is blunt about the state of the project. The launcher has become quite unreliable with the migration to GDK, and combined with Windows 11's steady worsening in quality and stability, most of the issues seem to be caused by Windows itself, while others are caused by the method the launcher uses to extract the game files. Since the author does not use Windows as a primary operating system any more and finds Windows tiresome to deal with, it is not likely these will get significantly improved, and the section is a list of known issues and workarounds rather than a bug tracker. The upshot for a user is that this is a tool you may need to work around rather than one that just works.

Path length and decryption are the two recurring failures

Two of the workarounds cover most of the reported problems. The first is an Invalid argument error when launching the game from the start menu, and the fix is to move the launcher to a shorter path and launch it at least once from inside the launcher after moving it, which points at the path to `Minecraft.Windows.exe` being too long somehow, since the issue seems to occur on newer versions of Windows even when MAX_PATH is increased, and older versions did not have it. The second is a failure to decrypt Minecraft.Windows.exe, which means making sure Minecraft or Minecraft Preview was installed from the Store before using the launcher. Sometimes the Tools, then Cleanup for installing Minecraft from Microsoft Store option resolves it, and the fallback advice is to reboot the machine, since Windows services sometimes get glitchy for no obvious reason.

SmartScreen failures and broken deeplinks

The third common failure is an Invalid 16-bit application error, or SmartScreen saying the app cannot run on your PC, which the documentation says is usually a failure to get a decrypted version of the Minecraft executable, so the steps above apply, and it also suggests opening the log file from the File menu to look for errors. The fourth is that `minecraft://` and similar deeplinks do not work, and the fix is in the registry, checking keys like the one under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT for the minecraft protocol under the Windows CurrentVersion AppModel PackageRepository Extensions, and similar keys, because the registry sometimes ends up with duplicate entries for these protocols for reasons that are not yet clear, and deleting the dead entries may help. So the launcher's own deep link handling is the thing to check when a project or a launcher cannot reach the game by URL.

Building it needs an old Windows SDK

The build instructions are a short paragraph with a specific requirement. You need Visual Studio with the Windows 10 SDK version 10.0.17763 and the .NET Framework 4.6.1 SDK installed, and the documentation notes that these are available in the Visual Studio Installer. The project should build out of the box with Visual Studio as long as you have not done anything bizarre. The repository layout shows the three helper components that explain what the tool actually does: a `GDKDecryptHelper/` directory, a `GDKLaunchShim/` directory and a `WUTokenHelper/` directory, alongside the `MCLauncher/` project itself and the `MCLauncher.sln` solution. The naming lines up with the failure modes above, since the decrypt helper is what obtains the runnable executable and the token helper is what authenticates with the store. The last push to the master branch was on 2026-06-19, with the release 0.7.0 from the same day, and the licence is GPL 3.0.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt MCLauncher if you regularly switch between Minecraft Bedrock betas and releases and want both installed, since the alternative is uninstalling and reinstalling the game each time. Do not adopt it expecting a smooth experience, because the author states plainly that the launcher has become quite unreliable with the migration to GDK, and that he no longer uses Windows as his primary system, so improvements are unlikely. Verify first that the Microsoft account on the machine already owns Minecraft through the Store, that developer mode is on, and that the Visual C++ Redistributable is installed, because a failure to decrypt the executable usually means one of those prerequisites is missing.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. MCMrARM/mc-w10-version-launcher on GitHub
4. README
5. Releases