Installing Stardew Valley mods with SMAPI: the loader, the Mods folder and your first mods

1 Nov 2026 · 3 min read · ModsDrop

Official image from Stardew Valley — Image: official, via Steam.

This guide is for anyone who has never modded Stardew Valley before and wants to get set up without breaking a save. By the end you will have SMAPI running, a couple of mods installed correctly, and a backup of your save in case anything goes wrong.

What SMAPI does

SMAPI is the mod loader that most Stardew Valley mods rely on. It sits between the game and your mods, letting them hook into the game safely instead of editing game files directly. Almost every mod you will want to use expects SMAPI to be installed first, so this is the foundation everything else builds on.

Get SMAPI from its own official page, not from a random download link or a video description. The installer handles most of the setup work for you, including telling you how to launch the game through SMAPI rather than straight through Steam.

Back up your save first

Before you install anything, copy your save folder somewhere safe, such as an external drive or a cloud folder. Mods can occasionally cause a save to fail to load, and having an untouched copy means you lose nothing if that happens. This step takes a couple of minutes and saves a lot of frustration later.

Installing SMAPI

Download the installer from the official SMAPI page and run it. It will ask you to point it at your Stardew Valley game folder if it cannot find it automatically. Follow the on-screen instructions, since the installer also explains how to set Steam up so the game launches through SMAPI instead of launching the vanilla game directly.

Once installed, you should see a new way to start the game, either through a shortcut SMAPI creates or through a changed Steam launch option, depending on what the installer set up for you. Use that option every time you want mods to load.

The Mods folder

Inside your Stardew Valley game folder you will find a folder named Mods. This is where every mod you install needs to live. Each mod should sit in its own separate folder inside Mods, exactly as it came when you downloaded it, rather than having its files loose or mixed in with another mod.

Follow these steps when adding a new mod:

Download the mod from the author’s own page.
Extract the downloaded file if it is compressed.
Open your game folder and then the Mods folder inside it.
Copy the mod’s folder into Mods, keeping its internal files together.
Check that the mod folder is not nested inside another extra folder, since that can stop SMAPI from detecting it.

Starting small

Install one or two mods to begin with rather than a long list. This makes it far easier to tell which mod is responsible if something breaks. Once you are confident those mods work well together, you can add more one at a time.

Launch the game through SMAPI and watch the console window that opens alongside it. This window lists every mod SMAPI has loaded and will show warnings or errors in plain text if something is wrong. Reading it takes seconds and tells you far more than guessing.

If something goes wrong

If the game fails to launch, or SMAPI’s window shows errors, start by removing the most recently added mod folder from Mods and trying again. This isolates the problem quickly.

If your save will not load, close the game, restore your backed-up save files, and check the SMAPI window for any specific complaint about a mod or a missing requirement. Many issues come from a mod needing another mod to work, so check the mod’s own page for anything it depends on.

To remove a mod entirely, delete its folder from inside Mods and relaunch through SMAPI. There is nothing else to undo, since mods kept in their own folders do not touch your base game files.

A practical tip

Keep a plain text note of which mod folder does what, especially once you have more than a handful installed. When the SMAPI window flags an error months later, that note will save you from having to work out from scratch what each folder in Mods actually is.