JsonForge vs Minecraft Bedrock Debugger

JsonForge is a visual editor for building Minecraft Bedrock JSON UI screens and exporting UI for resource packs. It runs in modern browsers and as a native Electron application on Windows, macOS and Linux. Users can place interface elements on a canvas, adjust their properties, add textures and inspect JSON. The editor includes 10 element types, such as panels, images, labels, buttons, toggles and custom elements. Its workspace has dockable Toolbox, Hierarchy, Canvas, Properties, Textures, Bindings and JSON Preview panels. The canvas uses anchors and the game’s nine-slice texture behavior, with an Edit/Preview toggle. Export targets include form screens, HUD overlays and restyled vanilla scoreboards, with .mcaddon or .mcpack output as applicable. The app includes five ore-UI texture sets and Minecraft fonts. Projects can be saved as .jfproject bundles with an element tree, bindings and textures, or imported and exported as raw Minecraft Bedrock JSON UI .json files. The desktop app can locate worlds on the machine and install exported packs into resource and behavior pack folders. JsonForge is open source under the MIT license. Its guide notes that resource packs cannot create new values that the game does not draw.

Minecraft Bedrock Debugger is a free, open-source Visual Studio Code extension for developers building Minecraft Bedrock behavior packs and add-ons with JavaScript or TypeScript. It connects through script debugger commands, using port 19144 by default, and supports breakpoints, stepping, a Locals pane and watches. Developers can run Minecraft slash commands and keep shortcuts for favorite commands. Performance tools provide diagnostics and a script profiler that saves captures to a configured local path. Minecraft 1.21.10 or later can expose server statistics including entities, chunks, memory, tick time and network usage. Client diagnostics include FPS, memory, entity systems and CPU profiling, but require Minecraft’s “Enabled client diagnostics” creator setting. Scripts can add live diagnostics through the @minecraft/debug-utilities module. TypeScript projects can use source maps through sourceMapRoot and generatedSourceRoot. Dedicated Server debugging requires enabling inbound or outbound script-debugging settings in server.properties, which are disabled by default. Changing variable state and immediate mode are unsupported.