Ghost Torch

Hide your lighting, not your creativity.

Ghost Torch is a lightweight, vanilla-friendly utility mod that gives builders and technical players complete control over Minecraft's hidden lighting and hostile mob spawning mechanics—all through a single intuitive tool.

At its core, Ghost Torch functions like a nearly invisible vanilla torch, allowing you to light your builds without covering them in visible torches. When held, it also reveals nearby Ghost Torches, making hidden lighting easy to locate whenever you need it.

Ghost Torch 1.0 introduces Ghost Vision, a powerful visualization system that lets you inspect your world without opening debug screens or relying on external utility mods.

Switch seamlessly between multiple Ghost Vision modes to visualize:

Effective Light Levels using Minecraft's own lighting calculations.
Hostile Mob Spawn Locations using Minecraft's native spawning rules.

Everything—from the textures and sounds to the crafting recipe and controls—has been carefully designed to feel like a natural extension of vanilla Minecraft.

Ghost Torch 1.0

Ghost Torch has officially reached Version 1.0.

This release marks the completion of the original vision for the project. While Ghost Torch is far from finished, the core feature set is now considered complete. Future updates will focus on refinement, compatibility, performance, and thoughtfully chosen quality-of-life improvements while preserving the focused, vanilla-friendly experience that defines the mod.

I'm incredibly excited to see where this journey leads. Ghost Torch is the very first entry in what I hope will become the Professor's Toolkit collection, and this is only the beginning. Whether you've been here since the early development builds or you're just discovering the project today, thank you for being a part of it. I hope you'll join me for the adventures ahead—and I'll see you in the next project.

Features

Ghost Torch

Emits Light Level 14, matching a vanilla torch.
Nearly invisible while remaining fully functional.
Reveals nearby Ghost Torches when holding another Ghost Torch.
Uses vanilla placement, breaking, and stacking behavior.
Vanilla-inspired crafting recipe.
Designed to blend naturally into survival gameplay.

Ghost Vision

Hold a Ghost Torch and Sneak + Scroll to switch between Ghost Vision modes.
Smooth mode switching with audio and visual feedback.
Displays Minecraft's effective light levels directly on the ground.
Displays valid hostile mob spawning locations using Minecraft's native spawning rules.
Large scan radius for improved visibility.
Color-coded overlays for quick readability.
Built from a modular framework designed for future expansion.

Crafting Recipe

Glow Ink Sac

Glass Block

Torch

(Place the ingredients vertically in any crafting table column.)

How to Use

Ghost Torch

Craft a Ghost Torch.
Place it like a normal torch.
Enjoy hidden lighting without visual clutter.
Hold another Ghost Torch to reveal hidden Ghost Torches.
Break it normally to recover the item.

Ghost Vision

Hold a Ghost Torch in either hand.
Sneak to activate Ghost Vision.
Use Shift + Mouse Wheel to switch between Ghost Vision modes.
Release Sneak to hide the overlay.

Why Ghost Torch?

Ghost Torch was created to solve two common problems:

Builders want beautifully lit interiors without visible torches disrupting their designs.
Technical players need a fast, intuitive way to inspect lighting and hostile mob spawning while building, exploring, and spawn-proofing.

Ghost Torch combines both ideas into a lightweight utility that feels like it belongs in vanilla Minecraft.

Compatibility

Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.6 (26.2)
Fabric Loader
Fabric API
Client & Server Compatible
Multiplayer Supported

Future Development

Ghost Torch's core vision is complete.

Future updates will prioritize polish over feature creep, focusing on:

Performance improvements
Compatibility updates
Visual refinements
Accessibility improvements
Carefully considered quality-of-life additions

Ghost Torch is designed to remain focused on one goal: revealing Minecraft's hidden lighting and hostile mob spawning information without changing the vanilla experience.

Part of Professor's Toolkit

Ghost Torch is the first release in the Professor's Toolkit collection—a growing series of vanilla-friendly quality-of-life mods that reveal information Minecraft already knows, but doesn't normally show the player.

Every Professor's Toolkit mod is built around one guiding principle:

Enhance vanilla gameplay—never replace it.

Acknowledgements

Ghost Vision was inspired by MiniHUD, created by masa and its contributors.

MiniHUD has been an invaluable tool for the technical Minecraft community for many years, and it served as the inspiration for bringing an integrated light-level visualization system into Ghost Torch.

While Ghost Vision is an original implementation built specifically for this project, I wanted to recognize the work that inspired its creation. If you enjoy technical Minecraft utility mods, I highly recommend checking out MiniHUD.

Thank you for checking out Ghost Torch.

I hope it earns a permanent place in your survival worlds.

This is only the beginning of the Professor's Toolkit collection, and I can't wait to share what's coming next.

Professors Toolkit: Ghost Torch