Texture pack

A texture pack is a collection of files that is used to change the in-game textures of blocks, items, mobs and the GUI. They are zip files that have various PNG images in them and a pack.txt. The native resolution of Minecraft's Texture is 16×16 (measured pixels in block height and width). 32×32, 64×64, 128×128, 256×256 and 512×512 are referred to as ‘HD’ and requires a 3rd party patcher to run. Official support for 16×16 texture packs was added in Alpha 1.2.2. The crash with high resolution texture packs was fixed in Beta 1.8, but they still don't work correctly with the unpatched client. In version 1.2, Minecraft supports higher resolution Texture Packs, but with a few texture bugs and no support for custom animations.

All versions of Minecraft support custom textures, although old versions require you to modify the minecraft.jar file. High resolution texture packs are supported on all versions without a patch, however certain textures have errors or may not be changed.



Installation
1. Download a texture pack in a ZIP file format, do not unzip. If you create your own textures, you need to ZIP them. For in-depth instructions on obtaining the files to make your own custom texture pack go to Tutorials/Custom Texture Packs.

2. Run Minecraft. If you already have Minecraft running, make sure you save and quit the world: you need to be in the main menu to continue.

3. Click Texture Packs button.

4. Click Open Texture Pack Folder button; this will open the folder where minecraft stores all texture packs. If nothing happens, you need to find the folder manually. Depending on your operating system it is:
 * Windows XP/Vista/7:
 * Linux:  (This folder may be hidden in the Home Folder)
 * Mac OS X:  (This folder may be hidden)

5. Do not close Minecraft. Place the texture pack (ZIP file) in the opened folder, do not unzip.

6. In a few seconds the texture pack will appear in Minecraft. Select it and click Done. The texture pack is now applied, you may load your world and see the difference.

Tips

 * Texture packs may redesign only some textures. So if the main menu looks the same after you select a pack, this doesn't mean the pack is not working. If you feel the menu needs to be changed, contact the owner of the texture pack.
 * You may install many texture packs. The texture pack list can be scrolled by dragging the scrollbars up or down.
 * Minecraft may lock the currently used texture pack (for example, if the pack contains custom textures for user interface), so the file can't be overwritten. If you need to update the pack, you may need to temporarily switch to the default pack and then overwrite the file.
 * To get a directory to show as a texture pack in Minecraft, that directory needs a pack.txt in it (As of 1.2 you do not have to zip your texture pack to test it, once in world you can press F3+t to reload the texture pack.)

Texture Pack Creation
To create a custom texture pack, the files you wish to modify must be extracted from minecraft.jar with an archiving or decompression program such as WinRAR or 7-Zip. They can then be edited with any image editing program that can read/write the PNG file format and handle transparency (Adobe Fireworks and Photoshop are suitable for this). A program such as Gimp, paint tool SAI, or Paint.NET will work well, all three are provided free of charge. Edit each PNG file as desired, and save the PNGs as 32 bits, to preserve transparency. Then, create a zip file of the files modified, preserving all folder hierarchy. The root folder of the zip must have the files and folders listed below, or else they will not be changed. If you find that nothing changes when you select your texture pack, make sure that the files are in the root of the zip and not one folder in.



Native Resolution (16px)
WHERE DID ALL OF THE TEXTURE PACKS GO!?!?! I'm just editing this to make someone notice. Seriously. Someone took down ALL of the texture packs. Please put them back up or something.

Trivia

 * Prior to the Alpha 1.2.2 update, users would need to manually change the texture packs by overwriting their minecraft.jar files or use a patcher.
 * Prior to Beta 1.8, the client crashed loading a HD texture pack without using a patcher or mod.
 * The selected texture pack is saved to the options.txt file in the .minecraft folder, so you can also manually change the "skin:" value to the name of the .zip
 * Changing the dimensions of FoliageColor.png, GrassColor.png, or WaterColor.png (found in the 'misc' folder) will cause a severe loading issue that causes world generation to be corrupt and switching to any other texture pack to cause a "Dirtscreen" crash.

Resources

 * The official, unofficial list of texture packs on the Minecraft Forum (over 150 textures)