Thanks for reading and for posting your solution.

As above, just a standard disclaimer that I’m not familiar with all the sources listed, so follow at your own risk. As with any 3rd party or unknown code sources, you should always do a bit of research and be sure you trust that 3rd party (yes, even open-source stuff) or know what is going on (i.e.: be able to look through the code).

If you do not have Homebrew run this command in your terminal:
ruby -e “$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)”

If you do not have Homebrew Cask run this command in your terminal:
brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

Then just run:
brew cask install java

You will need to run this in your terminal, but it saves a lot of pain and headache. Not to mention you now have a package manager to take care of upgrades and versioning for java and other projects.

Thanks Dan, that’s interesting about the hot-keys. I probably missed that because I use Controllers to map a PS3 controller to the keys, so I don’t often use the actual keyboard (that said, I don’t know what the *default* keys should be in the first place, heh).

And, again, thanks for sharing your solution… and it’s probably a good one. I’d say the same about including anything 3rd party, no matter how good. So, I certainly wasn’t indicating it was in any way suspect. 🙂 All the best!

Steve, I actually used your solution for several months. It’s a pretty good solution but my son complained that the Mac hot keys don’t work. I guess that makes sense since it’s the Linux version, not the Mac version.

After that, I installed the Minecraft Mac version and created a link to the Bootstrap.jar (inside the Minecraft Mac version) on my Desktop. My son would double click on it and it would run the Minecraft JAR file as a standalone application. Mac hot keys worked but it looked a little weird on the Desktop (being a shortcut) and in the Dock (using the generic Java icon).

Your criticisms are fair of universalJavaApplicationStub but thanks for making it available to people so they can give it a try if they want.

Hi Dan, thanks for reading and for posting your solution. That said, I haven’t taken time to look at universalJavaApplicationStub, which seems to be something developed by a 3rd party. I typically advise against that kind of solution for people who aren’t able to look through the code, or know and trust the developer to some extent, as it’s always hard to say what is in there.

That said, I suppose one could argue it’s hard to trust even Oracle with Java since they keep trying to include ad-ware in installers and such. But, at least sticking with the big stuff, it’s easier to research or you hear about the issues more readily. As I mentioned in the comment above, I had seen a number of various ‘fixes’ prior to writing this up, but liked this method for the simplicity of only using a couple of known components (i.e.: Java install and the Unix launcher from Minecraft/Mojang).

Thanks for reading and taking the time to leave feedback! I’m glad it worked well for you. Yes, that was the beauty of this method, IMO, as it mostly involved straight-out installs of basic components from known sources (Java and Unix Minecraft component right from Mojang). Thanks again!

http://svexpertise.blogspot.com/2015/08/make-mac-minecraft-work-on-oracle-java.html

Hi Megan, thanks for reading and reaching out. Are you still running the older Java, or is this after trying to follow my instructions (I assume not, as it sounds like you don’t know how to try the initial steps). As an aside, I have also been experiencing some lag issues on two of our Macbook Airs as well, especially playing a local (i.e.: stored on the Macbook Air) game. I’m not sure what is going on with that, but it just started happening with the last couple point-updates of Minecraft (i.e.: 1.8.6 or 1.8.7).

As for finding your hard-drive (or SSD drive in case of the Macbook Air), I think Yosemite hides it by default. So, if you go to Finder –> Preferences, on the General tab, you can tell it to display hard disks, external disks, servers, etc. After checking ‘hard disks’ you should see your internal drive on your Desktop.