Mojang recently released Minecraft 1.21.6 Chase the Skies game drop. This game drop brings loads of new features like happy ghasts, craftable saddles, harnesses, dried ghasts, Tears music disc, Vibrant Visuals for Bedrock Edition, etc. Soon after Mojang releases an update, the modding community starts working on updating their own mods and making them compatible with the game version.
OptiFine is arguably the most popular performance mod for Minecraft. It squeezes out a lot of performance out of the game by optimizing chunk rendering and other technical aspects. Since the game has recently been updated, many will search for the mod's updated version. However, OptiFine has not yet been released for Minecraft 1.21.6. Here is more information about it.
OptiFine mod's development progress and when it will update for Minecraft 1.21.6

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OptiFine is a performance mod that can be directly downloaded from their official website. When players head to this website and select the "Downloads" tab. They will notice that the latest mod version only supports Minecraft 1.21.4, The Garden Awakens, a game drop that released in December 2024.
This clearly shows that OptiFine is behind in their schedules and is not keeping up with Mojang's update cycles. Of course, it is worth mentioning that constantly updating mods is not an easy job.
OptiFine's development progress can be regularly checked on its official Discord server. As of now, their Discord server shows that they have skipped the mod development for 1.21.5 and are directly working on 1.21.6 now.
As of now, they have completed 40% development for the OptiFine mod for Minecraft 1.21.6. They are currently merging patches for their mod.
When can we expect OptiFine for Minecraft 1.21.6
Since OptiFine themselves stated that they have skipped 1.21.5's development and are directly releasing their mod for 1.21.6 Chase the Skies, there are chances that they might release the mod sooner rather than later.
Since they have already finished 40% of the development, OpitFine might be able to release their mod by the end of June or mid-July.
Of course, nothing can be said for sure since OptiFine has been slow in its development in recent times. Other mods like Sodium and Lithium are much faster in releasing mod updates with newer game versions. In fact, Sodium mod is already updated and works with Minecraft 1.21.6.
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