Optimized Cushions
by NikitaCartes
Optimized Cushions reduces the cost of cushion entities on Fabric and NeoForge servers and clients without changing how they play.
What it does
Vanilla 26.3 added cushions as entities, and each one is ticked and tracked like any other entity even though a cushion never moves. Optimized Cushions treats a cushion as a static block instead. On the client, cushions are baked into the terrain and rendered like blocks, so they draw from the chunk mesh, stay visible at full render distance rather than the shorter entity range, and are picked up by Sodium chunk meshes. On the server, cushions that nobody is sitting on are dropped from per-tick tracking and checked in a single light pass, while a cushion someone sits on or rides returns to the full vanilla path.
Sitting, breaking, picking up, sounds, particles, drops and saves all behave as in vanilla, and cushion textures are read from any resource pack. Either half can be installed alone: the client part runs against servers without the mod, and the server part serves players who lack it. Optimized Cushions is open source under the MIT License and is published for Fabric and NeoForge across six release versions, 1.20.1 – 26.3. Snapshot builds are published as well. It has no required dependencies.
Key features
Baked cushion rendering
Cushions are baked into chunk meshes on the client, so they draw as terrain instead of as individual entities.
Longer draw distance
Baked cushions stay visible at the full render distance, not the shorter range that applies to vanilla entities.
Lighter server tick cost
Cushions nobody is sitting on are removed from entity tracking and the tick list, which cuts tick time in cushion-heavy worlds.
Unchanged interaction
Sitting, riding, breaking, picking up and dropped items work exactly as they do with vanilla cushions, and saves stay compatible.
Resource pack textures
Cushion textures from resource packs are picked up automatically, with no extra setup.
Gallery
Compatibility
Latest build for each game version and loader.
This mod also publishes snapshot builds. Snapshots are not shown in the matrix.
How it compares
Cushion Backport adds cushions to versions before vanilla 26.3, 1.18.2 – 26.2, for client and server under the MIT License. NoTick is server-side only, open source under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 or later, and covers 1.20.1 – 26.2 on Fabric, Forge and NeoForge. Optimized Cushions targets only cushions in 26.3 and later builds on Fabric and NeoForge.
| Mod | Loaders | Game versions | Environment | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Optimized Cushions | Fabric and NeoForge | 1.20.1 – 26.3 | Client or server, optional | 2026-10-11 |
| Cushion Backport | Fabric, Forge and NeoForge | 1.18.2 – 26.2 | Client and server | 2026-07-13 |
| NoTick | Fabric, Forge and NeoForge | 1.20.1 – 26.2 | Server-side only | 2026-09-19 |
Questions
Does Optimized Cushions need Cushion Backport?
Does the server need the mod to get the benefit?
Does Optimized Cushions work with Sodium?
In the catalog
Optimized Cushions is one of 3,545 Optimization mods on ModsFinder, and one of 2,575 Optimization mods for Fabric. 8,071 mods support Minecraft 26.3.
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What the author says
Vanilla 26.3 added cushions as entities. A cushion never moves, yet it costs the same as any other entity, both on the client and on the server. This mod treats a cushion as what it is: a static thing. The client bakes it into the terrain so it renders like a block; the server drops the per-tick tracking and ticking…
Official listing
- Modrinth page
- modrinth.com/mod/optimized-cushions
- Owner
- NikitaCartes
- Published
- 2026-07-10
- Updated on Modrinth
- 2026-10-11
- Facts verified
- 2026-10-15