Path Tracer
A vanilla-friendly way to discover new paths & leave the ones you need to build your world.
Path Tracer

🗺️ Path Tracer
See exactly where you've been. Path Tracer renders a real-time color heatmap overlay on the ground showing your most-traveled routes — no commands, no maps, just a live visual layer on your world. NEW: Explorer Mode shows a color coded path of your walking history – great for caving & complicated areas!
How It Works
Every block you walk on gets tracked. The more you travel over a spot, the hotter its color becomes:
Path Mode
- 🟢 Green → lightly traveled - 🟡 Yellow → moderate use - 🟠 Orange → frequent path - 🔴 Red → heavily worn route
Tiles below your minimum threshold stay invisible, so only your real paths show up. Path Tracer records the block you're standing on plus the 8 surrounding blocks with each step, creating a natural-looking footprint rather than a single-block trail.
Explorer Mode
- 🟢 Green → walked in the last 1 day - 🟢🔵 Cyan → walked yesterday - 🔵 Blue → walked 2 days ago - ⚫️ Dark Grey → older paths
The path gradient can be adjusted from 1 - 14 days, stretching out the gradient progression. Dark Grey is always your oldest paths.
Features
- Live heatmap overlay — updates as you walk, no reload needed - Fully configurable via Mod Menu — adjust min/max walk counts, render radius, and how long data persists - Option to set Clear Area keybind (clears out paths within a radius of the player) - Set keybinds to enable/disable (H), switch modes, & remove paths near you - Ability to track movement for all loaded players in multiplayer (for building paths for shared builds) - Client-side only — works on any server, no mod required server-side, no world modifications — purely visual.
Configuration (via Mod Menu)
Footprint Size: 1x1, 3x3, or 5x5
Min Walk Count: How many passes before a tile becomes visible
Max Walk Count: The count at which a tile reaches full red
Render Radius: How far from the player tiles are drawn (blocks)
Max Age: How many in-game days before old data fades out
Track Other Players: Ability to have other players create heatmap paths when in your loaded chunks (set to Off by default if it feels too cheaty).
Clear All Dimensions: Clear all paths across all dimensions.
Compatibility Minecraft: 1.21.11 & 26.1.2
Mod loader: Fabric
Mod Menu: Optional, recommended for in-game config
Path Tracer is a lightweight client mod — your server friends will never know it's there.