How to Install Mods In BONELAB (2026)

A full guide on how to download and install mods in Bonelab including using mod managers like Thunderstore.

September 20, 20269 min readUpdated September 20, 2026

A guide on how to download and install mods in BONELAB on PC and on Meta Quest.

BONELAB is unusual among the games we write these guides for, because it has two completely separate modding systems and they do different jobs:

mod.io is built into the game. It works on PC and on a standalone Quest, needs no external tools, and covers avatars, maps and spawnable items.
MelonLoader is a PC-only mod loader for code mods, the sort that change how the game actually behaves. Those live on Thunderstore.

Which one you want depends entirely on what kind of mod you are after. We cover both, and use Ragdoll Player as the worked example for the MelonLoader side.

Requirements

For mod.io content:

BONELAB on any supported platform, including standalone Quest 2, Quest 3 and Quest Pro.
A free mod.io account.

For MelonLoader code mods, additionally:

A PC running Windows 10 or later, with BONELAB on Steam or through the Oculus PC app. Linux via Proton works with an extra launch option.
Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable, 64 bit.
.NET Desktop Runtime 6.0, x64. BONELAB is Il2Cpp and MelonLoader requires this.
A few GB free if you plan to collect avatars and maps, which are not small.

Two Systems, Two Kinds Of Mod

Getting this distinction straight up front saves a lot of time.

	mod.io	MelonLoader
Where you get it	Built into the game, or mod.io	Thunderstore
Platforms	PC and standalone Quest	PC only
What it handles	Avatars, maps, spawnable items, made with the BONELAB SDK	Code mods that change game behaviour
Needs extra tools	No	Yes, MelonLoader and usually BoneLib
Example	A custom avatar or an extra level	Ragdoll Player, Fusion multiplayer

So if you want to play as a different character or load a community map, mod.io is the whole answer and you never need to touch a file. If you want to change how the game works, that is MelonLoader territory and Quest players are out of luck.

NOTE - Quest standalone cannot run MelonLoader. Nothing works around that. Quest players connected to a PC via Link or Air Link are running the PC build, so they are on the PC side of this table.

Installing Mods With mod.io

From Inside The Game

This is by far the easiest modding experience of any game in this collection.

Start BONELAB and load into the Hub.
Find the mod.io terminal in the Hub and interact with it.
Sign in to your mod.io account. The game gives you a code to enter at mod.io/connect from a phone or a PC browser, which saves typing a password with VR hands.
Browse or search the catalogue.
Select a mod and install it. It downloads straight onto the device.

Installed avatars appear at the avatar terminals, maps appear in the level list, and spawnables appear in the spawn gun catalogue. There is no folder to find and nothing to launch differently.

From The Website

You can also queue things up on a computer.

Sign in at mod.io/g/bonelab.
Find a mod and click Subscribe.
Start BONELAB while signed in to the same account.

Subscriptions sync down on launch. This is much more comfortable for browsing than doing it inside a headset.

TIP - Subscriptions follow your account, not your device. Subscribe on your PC and the same mods appear on your Quest, which is genuinely handy if you play on both.

Quest Notes

Storage is the constraint here. Avatars and maps are real Unity content and they add up quickly on a headset that also has everything else on it. Unsubscribing from inside the game removes the files.

Quest also runs on a mobile GPU. Maps built for PC will run, but not always well, and the mod description usually says whether Quest is supported. Where a mod has separate PC and Quest builds, mod.io serves the right one automatically.

Installing Code Mods With MelonLoader

This is the PC-only half.

BoneLib

Nearly every BONELAB code mod depends on BoneLib, the shared library the scene is built on. Ragdoll Player is no exception.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing about. BoneLib used to be published under the gnonme namespace and has since moved to a bonelib one. The old gnonme/BoneLib package still exists and now just depends on the new one, so older mods that reference the old name keep working. If you see both in your installed list, that is why, and it is not a problem.

Mod managers handle all of this. It only matters if you install by hand.

Using Gale Or r2modman

Download Gale or r2modman and install it.
Open it and select BONELAB.
Let it detect your install, or point it at the game folder.
Search for Ragdoll Player and click Install or Download with dependencies.
MelonLoader and BoneLib come along automatically.
Launch with Launch game (modded) or Start modded.

Starting BONELAB from Steam or the Oculus app instead runs it without mods.

Installing MelonLoader By Hand

Find your game folder first. On Steam, right-click BONELAB, then Manage and Browse local files:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\BONELAB

The easy way is the MelonLoader Installer. Run it, pick BONELAB from the detected games list, choose a stable version, and click Install. If BONELAB is not detected, use Add Game Manually and point it at BONELAB.exe.

To do it fully by hand:

Download MelonLoader.x64.zip.
Extract the MelonLoader folder into the BONELAB folder.
Extract version.dll into the BONELAB folder as well.
Run the game once and quit, which creates the Mods and UserData folders.

WARNING - Do not enable nightly builds in the installer. They are built from the latest commits and break regularly. Mods are built against stable releases.

Installing Ragdoll Player By Hand

Download BoneLib and Ragdoll Player with Manual Download.
Extract both.
Copy each .dll into the Mods folder in your BONELAB directory.

MelonLoader mods go in Mods, not in a plugins folder. If you are coming from a BepInEx game, this is the layout difference to remember.

Ragdoll Player writes a config on first run under UserData, where you can set the input that triggers the ragdoll.

Installing With The TMC App

There is a third route worth knowing about, though it only applies to the MelonLoader half of this guide. The TMC App is our own mod manager and server browser, with one-click installs and sandboxes: named mod profiles per game, each with its own load order and deployment method, switchable with nothing re-downloaded.

BONELAB is not in its supported games list yet. Adding a game means four JSON files rather than code, so it is not a large job.

Two things to be clear about. The app would only ever manage code mods; mod.io content is handled inside the game and no external tool is going to change that. And the app is in very early development, which its own README states plainly. Much of it is only partially tested, so use it next to Gale rather than in place of it for now. If you try it, we would really like to hear how it went.

It is open source under GPL-3.0 at github.com/modcommunity/tmc-app. Bug reports and feature requests belong in the issue tracker, pull requests are welcome, and the repository documents the per-game format if you want to add BONELAB support yourself.

Installing it:

Linux: one line, no root and no package manager.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/modcommunity/tmc-app/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Windows: the setup.exe or setup.msi from the releases page. There is a portable build too, though it does not register the launcher entry or the tmc:// link handler.
macOS: the .dmg from the same releases page.

Multiplayer With Fusion

Worth mentioning because it is the mod most people eventually want. Fusion adds full multiplayer to BONELAB and is one of the most downloaded mods for the game by a wide margin.

It is a MelonLoader mod, so PC only, and everybody in a session needs it installed. Because it also has to agree on which mod.io content everyone has, there is a companion mod, ModioModNetworker, that syncs mod.io avatars and maps between players in a session.

Install Fusion the same way as anything else on the Thunderstore side, and share a mod manager profile with whoever you are playing with.

Confirming Your Mods Loaded

mod.io content: just look. Avatars appear at the avatar terminals, maps in the level select. If something you subscribed to is missing, check you are signed in to the same account in-game.

MelonLoader mods: a console window opens next to the game and prints a line per mod as it loads, with name, version and author. The full log is written here:

BONELAB\MelonLoader\Latest.log

That log is the first thing to check when a mod does not work, and the first thing anyone helping you will ask to see.

Linux

BONELAB runs through Proton. MelonLoader needs a DLL override, so set the game's Steam launch options to:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%

That is version, not winhttp. MelonLoader and BepInEx use different hook DLLs and mixing up the launch options is an easy mistake to make.

There is also a Linux build of the MelonLoader installer. Gale and r2modman set the override for you when you launch through them.

mod.io content needs nothing special on Linux, since it is handled entirely inside the game.

Uninstalling

mod.io: unsubscribe in-game or on the website. The files are removed from the device.

A single MelonLoader mod: uninstall it in your mod manager, or delete its .dll from the Mods folder.

MelonLoader entirely: delete the MelonLoader folder, version.dll, Mods and UserData from the game directory, or use the uninstall option in the MelonLoader Installer. Steam's file verification will not do this, since none of it came from Steam.

Troubleshooting

mod.io terminal says I am not signed in. Sign in again through mod.io/connect with the code the game shows you.

Subscribed mods are not appearing. Restart the game. Subscriptions sync on launch rather than live.

Quest is out of storage. Unsubscribe from what you are not using. Maps and avatars are large.

No MelonLoader console at all. MelonLoader is not loading. Check version.dll sits directly beside BONELAB.exe, and that you launched through your mod manager.

MelonLoader loads but a mod does not. Read MelonLoader\Latest.log. A missing or mismatched BoneLib version is the most common cause by far.

MelonLoader crashes at startup. Install the VC++ 2015-2019 x64 redistributable and the .NET Desktop Runtime 6.0 x64.

A Thunderstore mod does nothing. Check it is actually a BONELAB mod. Some packages are cross-listed with BONEWORKS, and BONEWORKS mods depend on ModThatIsNotMod rather than BoneLib.

Everything broke after an update. Stress Level Zero patches break MelonLoader mods. Empty the Mods folder to confirm the game runs clean, then wait for authors to rebuild.

Conclusion

The decision that matters is which system you need. Avatars, maps and spawnables are mod.io, they work on Quest, and you install them without leaving the game. Code mods are MelonLoader, they are PC only, and a mod manager like Gale makes them a two-click job.

If you are on a standalone Quest, mod.io is the whole story, and it is a good one.

If you have a moment to spare, the TMC App is open source, very early in development, and feedback on it would be much appreciated.