How to Download and Install the Minecraft 1.9 Pre-Release

Update: this article is referring to the 1.9 pre-release beta version, which is now commonly referred to as 0.1.9, released in October of 2011.

As some of you may know, Jeb recently made the Minecraft 1.9 pre-release available to folks via a link on his twitter. Exciting, right? If you're interested in seeing what it's like, the good folks over at IGN have given us a little preview video of how it looks! But if you're interested in actually downloading, installing, and upgrading your version of Minecraft to the Minecraft 1.9 pre-release, feel free to scroll past the video and take a look at my directions.

Update: Minecraft pre-release 1.9 Version 3 is out. Click here to download and install.

If the video above made you interested, you can follow these directions (or skip ahead to a tutorial I found on YouTube) on how to install the Minecraft 1.9 pre-release yourself and give the new features a spin! These instructions are specifically for Windows folks, but the same principles apply for users who want to enjoy it on their Mac too! This guide is very similar to the one I produced for the 1.8 pre-release, so feel free to refer to those as well.

1. Download the Minecraft 1.9 pre-release .jar file directly from the Minecraft server! Accept no substitutions! This is what you want.
2. Go to your start button in the bottom left corner of your screen and select run (or type it into the search box).
3. In the run box, type %appdata% and hit okay.
4. Open the .minecraft folder, and access the bin folder inside of it.
5. Rename the current minecraft.jar file to "minecraft1.8backup" or something similar, so you can always restore the file later on if you wish.
6. Drag the new minecraft.jar file that you downloaded at the start of this process into the bin folder.

That's it! Now you can enjoy the 1.9 pre-release. If you're struggling with those steps, this video might give you some help:

Remember that this is a beta version of the game and you may encounter problems. If you do, you can always remove the minecraft.jar file that you installed in the bin folder and rename the old one back to "minecraft.jar" again.

Let us know what you think. Anything exciting? What do you think of the new snow golems? I'm not going to lie- I'm terrified.