How To Install Fabric Manually on a Minecraft Server

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Overview

Playing Minecraft with mods is by far one of the best ways that you can enhance your gameplay experience. Adding mods to your server/client is easy enough as they just require Forge client-side. However, this is not the case with every mod out there. It’s possible that you may have run into a mod that requires “Fabric”. Fabric is a pretty small modloader that has a separate API required by Fabric mods. Similar to Forge, Fabric has to be installed on your Minecraft server and your Minecraft client. Learning how to install this onto your Minecraft server can be a bit tricky, but we will be walking you through each step of it.

Keep in mind that Fabric and Forge are not compatible with each other as they are both separate modloaders.

How to add Fabric

Downloading Fabric

In order to install Fabric on your own server, you will first need to download and install the version.

You will want to create a folder on your computer for later use, this can be named anything.
Head to the official Fabric website and click on Download installer (Windows/.EXE)
Go to your downloads and run the Fabric installer.
Towards the top of the installer, click on the Server tab. Then choose your Minecraft Version.
Under Select Install Location, click the 3 dots and navigate to the folder you made in step one.
Click Install, you may see a popup saying you need the official Minecraft Server version installed. Just go ahead and click on Download Server Jar
Once installed, you will see two files in the folder you made. Fabric-server-launch.jar and server.jar
Rename fabric-server-launch.jar to custom.jar.

Server Version

Navigate to your Apex Server Panel, then stop the server.
Locate the JAR File section and click the dropdown.
Search custom and select Custom Server Jar.
Reset the world when prompted, or proceed at the risk of world corruption.
It is recommended to restart later, as the server will not fully start yet.

Uploading to the Server

Head to FTP File Access from your Apex server panel.
Open the jar folder, then click Upload to the left of the panel.
Drag + drop the custom.jar file from the folder you made and wait for it to fully upload to 100%.
Head back to the main FTP page of the panel and then upload the server.jar file to there.
Once at 100%, click the server name at the top to return to the main page.
Start/restart your server and you should now have Fabric installed!

(Version Dependent) Using Java 16

In more recent versions, such as 1.17, you may need to perform a few different changes compared to the previous steps. These changes are:

Rename the fabric-server-launch.jar to customj16.jar instead.
Under the JAR File dropdown, select Custom Java 16.

Common Issues:

Non-matching version is present:
This will often occur when running later versions of Minecraft. Make sure to follow the version dependent instructions above to use Java 16 instead. Once the version and file are changed accordingly, you can restart once more to see if it starts correctly.

Getting “Could not find Minecraft server JAR (server.jar)!” error in console on startup:
This error means that you did not upload the server.jar into the main directory of your FTP. If you get this, stop your server, head to FTP File Access, press Upload and drag in the server.jar from the folder you created from the first step in this guide. Once it’s fully uploaded, restart your server.

I’m getting world errors and crashing:
Oftentimes, this can occur if a version is changed backwards, such as going from 1.17 to 1.16. When changing server versions, it is highly recommended to generate a new world to prevent this from happening. To do this, go to your Apex server panel, then scroll to the World section. Press the Change World button, then input a unique name. Once done, restart to try once more!