Slick - Modern Hotbar, Inventory & Menu UI
Vanilla Minecraft has a certain charm, but its interface has barely changed in over a decade. If you have ever wished your hotbar looked as clean as the game world around it, Slick - Modern Hotbar, Inventory & Menu UI is the answer. This client-side mod redraws the hotbar, your inventory and every vanilla container with a modern, smooth aesthetic, and it does it without touching a single server.
What Slick Actually Changes
The first thing you notice after installing Slick is the hotbar. Instead of the familiar flat strip, you get a rounded bar with soft slot boxes, a matching offhand slot and an attack indicator that finally looks like it belongs. The selected slot glides smoothly from one position to the next rather than snapping, and scrolling past the final slot wraps around the edge instead of sliding all the way back. Small touches like the lifted selected item make the whole thing feel deliberate.
Menus get the same treatment. Every vanilla container is restyled: the inventory and creative inventory (tabs, search bar and scrollbar included), crafting tables and the recipe book, chests, barrels, ender chests, shulker boxes, hoppers, dispensers, droppers, furnaces, smokers, blast furnaces, brewing stands, anvils, smithing tables, grindstones, stonecutters, looms, cartography tables, enchanting tables, beacons, crafters, villager trading screens and horse inventories. Hover glow highlights the slot under your cursor in your accent color, progress bars for smelting, fuel and brewing are clean and readable, and an optional blur softens the world behind open menus.
Five Styles, Five Themes, Ten Accents
What sets Slick apart from a simple texture pack is that its five styles are genuinely different shapes, not just recolors:
- Modern: rounded panels with soft slot tiles.
- Cards: the container, inventory and hotbar each float as their own card with a shadow.
- Minimal: no boxes at all, just a small dot on empty slots and an underline for the selected one.
- Outline: see-through panels with a crisp accent frame and wireframe slots.
- Bevel: square, raised and sunken edges for a modern take on the pixel look.
Layer on a theme, Midnight, Graphite, Frost, Daylight or Onyx, then pick one of ten accent colors. Opacity, corner roundness, shadows and animation speed are all adjustable, and any theme works with any style. If you only want half the package, you can switch off the modern hotbar or the modern menus independently.
Supported Versions and Loaders
Slick is a client-side mod, so it works on any server you join. It supports Minecraft 1.20 through 26.3 on Fabric, 1.21 through 26.3 on NeoForge, and 1.20.1 on Forge. On Fabric it is compatible with Mod Menu, which adds a Configure button right in the mod list. Blur Behind Menus requires Minecraft 1.20.5 or newer, and a couple of small hint icons are missing on 1.21.3 and older.
If you would rather skip the manual file juggling, the foxygame.net launcher handles the whole process in one click, pulling Slick - Modern Hotbar, Inventory & Menu UI straight from its add-on catalog and keeping it updated as new Minecraft releases drop. It is a convenient way to stay current without hunting down the right jar for every version.
How to Install Slick
Fabric
- Install Fabric Loader for your Minecraft version.
- Place Fabric API and the Fabric build of Slick in your mods folder.
- Launch the game. Optionally add Mod Menu to reach settings via Mods > Slick > Configure.
NeoForge and Forge
- Install NeoForge for your version, or Forge for 1.20.1.
- Drop the matching Slick jar into your mods folder.
- Start the game and open Mods > Slick > Config.
There is also an unbound "Open Slick Settings" key you can assign under Options > Controls > Key Binds. Changes apply instantly and save to config/slick.json when you close the screen; if that file ever breaks, the game starts with defaults and preserves your old one as slick.json.broken.
Final Thoughts
Slick - Modern Hotbar, Inventory & Menu UI for Minecraft is one of those mods that quietly improves every session. It is lightweight, fully configurable, licensed under MIT, and safe to use anywhere. If you are ready to download Slick - Modern Hotbar, Inventory & Menu UI and give your interface the polish it deserves, grab the build that matches your loader and version, follow the steps above, and enjoy a cleaner Minecraft.