How to Toggle Particles and Animations in Sodium Extra

guide

Sodium Extra adds a large collection of visual controls that go beyond what Sodium offers on its own, including fine-grained switches for individual particle effects and for several animated textures. Everything here is handled through the mod's options screens and the hotkeys you assign yourself, not through crafting or items.

Where the Particle Controls Live

Open the mod's settings through its options screen. Particle entries are grouped together, and each one carries a short description of what it covers. Flip an entry off to stop that effect from rendering, and back on to restore it. Because the list is long, the recommended companion mod for Sodium's video options screen makes it much easier to browse.

Turning Off Specific Particle Types

Each of these is its own switch, so you can silence one effect without touching the rest.

Campfire Cosy Smoke and Campfire Signal Smoke cover the two campfire smoke variants, including the taller plume produced when a hay bale sits beneath the fire.
Dripping and Falling pairs exist for dripstone water, dripstone lava, and obsidian tears, separating the droplet that forms from the droplet that drops.
Honey, lava, and water each have their own drip and fall entries, including droplets that gather under full bee nests and hives, under blocks with liquid above, on leaves during rain, and on wet sponges.
Dust Color Transition and Dust handle redstone-related output from powered components.
Gust Emitter Large and Gust Emitter Small distinguish the bigger and smaller bursts left where a wind charge lands.
Sculk has several separate entries: the charge path, the charge's end, the catalyst, the shrieker, and the sensor.
Trial spawner activation has a normal entry and an Ominous variant.
Explosion effects are split between the general explosion output and the dedicated explosion emitter.
Environmental and biome particles each have their own toggle, covering spore blossoms, firefly bushes, mycelium, and the floating motes found in soul sand valleys, crimson forests, warped forests, and basalt deltas.
Combat and action particles are individually listed, including critical hits, sweeping attacks, enchanted-hit effects, mace smashes, totem activation, and the trails left by arrows, crossbow bolts, and fireworks.
Water-related output is separated into splash, bubble column, bubble pop, and fishing trail entries.
A broad All Particles switch turns every particle on or off at once, and a Particles master entry governs particle processing generally.

Block, Water, Lava, Fire, Portal, and Sculk Animations

Animation toggles sit in the same options area and work the same way: switch one off and that texture stops animating.

Block Animations governs animated block textures.
Water Animations and Lava Animations control the flowing texture of each liquid.
Fire Animations covers flame textures.
Portal Animations handles portal surfaces.
Sculk Sensor Animations covers the sensor's animated appearance.
All Animations disables every animation at once.

Other Rendering Switches Worth Knowing

The same screen holds toggles for things like rain and snow, rain splash particles, block break and breaking particles, armor stands, paintings, item frames, beacon beams, the enchanting table book, piston extensions, and player name tags. Limit Beacon Beam Height caps beams at the world's maximum height, and Biome Colors applies biome-based coloring where relevant.

Using Hotkeys

Sodium Extra does not ship with fixed keybinds for these toggles. To operate a feature by keyboard, open the controls menu and assign the corresponding hotkey yourself, then press it in-game to flip that setting. Anything not bound to a key is changed directly in the options screen.

Practical Notes

Turning off particles or animations reduces rendering work, which can help on weaker hardware, but it also removes visual cues you may rely on. If something looks wrong after changing these settings, re-enable the entry and check again before assuming a bug.