Installing GTA 5 Mods on PC

Modding has pushed the creativity of individuals to its limits in the gaming industry, allowing players and creators to not only enjoy a fun experience, but also keep the games relevant beyond their originally expected lifecycle.

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is no stranger to the modding community. Modding has become a staple aspect of every GTA game released in the last decade and more, most notably GTA 5, GTA 4, and the classic GTA San Andreas.

If you want to spice up your GTA 5's single-player experience, look no further, as this guide will walk you through everything you need to know about GTA 5 mods.

Game Backup

As with anything you alter, it is always a good idea to create a backup of your original files in case something goes wrong. First, it is best to create a backup of your original GTA 5 game directory.

If you have the game on Steam, you can reach the game directory by right-clicking on the game name, going to 'Manage,' and selecting 'Browse local files.'

You will land inside the GTA 5 game directory. Go back up one folder, create a copy of the Grand Theft Auto V folder, and paste it somewhere safe. I usually keep it in the same folder to save time in the future, should I need to get the original files back.

You will have two files once copied. The one named 'Grand Theft Auto V' is the game executable folder and the one we will mod. And 'Grand Theft Auto V — copy' is the backup. You can rename the backup folder, whatever you like. But do not name it 'Grand Theft Auto V,' or the game will recognize the executable from that folder.

Open IV Setup

Next, we need to set up Open IV. Open IV is a multi-purpose mod manager for the PC version of GTA 5. You can download Open IV from the official website.

Click on the green button to download the file and install it.

Run the program, and you will be asked to select the game and platform you want to mod.

The next step must be performed within Open IV. Go to the 'update' folder inside your GTA 5 game directory and open update.rpf by double-clicking it.

At the top, you will see a notification stating the archive is not located in your mods folder. Select the "Copy to mods folder" option and wait for the contents to be copied to your mods folder. This is an important step that you must always perform when you are editing an archive for the first time. It always copies the content to your 'mods' folder for you to edit in the future and utilizes the mod folder files to run your mods. This is much safer as it doesn't edit your original in-game files.

Once the copying is finished, you will land on the same update.rpf page, but now it is located inside the mods folder. Continue going to common > data and scroll down until you see dlclist.xml.

Right-click dlclist.xml and click on edit. If you do not see the edit option, it is because you are not in edit mode. Click 'Edit mode' at the top-right corner of the interface.

Scroll to the bottom of the dlclist and add the following line:

**dlcpacks:/addonpeds**_

Do not change anything else, and click 'Save' at the bottom-right corner.

Go to the addonpeds folder you copied to your GTA 5 game directory (mods > update > x64 > dlcpacks > addonpeds) and open dlc.rpf. Inside dlc.rpf, open peds.rf.

When you open peds.rpf, you will see all your skins here. When you download your skins (addonpeds skins), you must always copy them here. Since we've installed the Shazam mod, let's download a high-quality Shazam skin for addonpeds as recommended by the original Shazam script mod author.

After downloading the skin, you will see some files inside the folder. The number and types of files you get determine whether the skin is streamed or not streamed. I will explain more about it in just a minute.

First, copy the Shazam(Movie) folder, Shazam(Movie).yft, and Shazam(Movie).ymt files inside your peds.rpf. The skin also comes with a script that gives Shazam powers, but we won't be needing that since we've already installed our own script.

Now, go to your GTA 5 game directory and open AddonPeds Editor. You will already have two skins by default (Vito Mafia and Superman).

Click on Peds at the top-left corner of the program and click New Ped.

For the model name, ensure it is exactly the same as the files you copied to your peds.rpf. These are case-sensitive and won't be recognized if the names are not exactly the same. So here we will name the model Shazam(Movie). The ped type is male.

Finally, whether it is streamed or not streamed? We can determine this by the number and types of files we get when downloading the skins. If the skin is NOT STREAMED, it will have four normal skin files with the following extensions:

-.ydd
-.ytd
-.ymt
-.yft

If the skin is STREAMED, it will have three files, with one being a folder:

Folder
-.yft
-.ymt

Our Shazam skin is streamed since we have a folder, a.yft, and a.ymt file. We will select TRUE here.

When done, click 'Add Ped.' After that, you will see the model name in your list of all peds. Click 'Rebuild' at the top, and you're done.

When you return to the game, press 'L' to bring up the Ped Selector and select your Shazam skin.

You might run into an issue where two menus appear since the 'L' key is assigned to both the Ped Selector and the Shazam powers script. Usually, these mods come with a.ini file which allows you to change your hotkey.

Unfortunately, the Shazam script mod had no option for us to change that.

In general, you must avoid mods that have such conflicts. You can use them side by side as long as they have a.ini file that allows you to set your own hotkeys.

Vehicle Skins

There are two ways you can install vehicle mods. The first method is to replace the existing vehicles with the new ones you download. However, I wouldn't recommend doing this. A better way to install vehicle mods is as an add-on.

Add-on vehicle mods do not replace your existing vehicles and add a new vehicle to your game. Let's take the 2020 BMW 330i G20 add-on mod as an example.

When you download the mod, you can extract it out of a.zip file. It will contain a read-me file with all the necessary instructions. The instructions are more or less the same for all the other add-on vehicles you will install in the future.

First, copy the gxg20 folder to mods > update > x64 > dlcpacks.

After that, go to mods > update > update.rpf > common > data and edit dlclist.xml.

Like the addonpeds, you need to add another line for the vehicle mod to be recognized in the game as a mod. Scroll to the bottom of the list and add the following:

**dlcpacks:/gxg20**_

Save and exit.

That's all you have to do. Now, you can go in-game and test your vehicle. This is where the MenyooSP trainer comes in super handy. When you go in-game, press F8 to bring up the MenyooSP trainer and go to Vehicle Options.

Then go to Vehicle Spawner.

Scroll to the bottom and select Input Model.

Here, you can enter the vehicle model name, and it will automatically spawn it for you. The read-me file states that the in-game model name for the vehicle is gxg20. So, you will enter that in the field and press enter for it to spawn.

Let's move on to our final mod type, Weapon Mods!

Weapons

The weapon mods are as easy as replacing your existing weapon models. However, I highly recommend always backing up the original models before installing weapon mods. It is as simple as selecting and dragging the files into a folder.

As an example, we will install the M14 from Modern Warfare Remastered (MWR). This mod comes with a skin replacement for the marksman rifle and a scope replacement to match the one from MWR.

To install the weapon mods, you must navigate to update > x64 > dlcpacks > patchday8ng and open up dlc.rpf.

Once again, since it is your first time accessing the archives inside this folder, copy it to the "mods" folder to continue editing it. Now the location of the patchday8ng for your use would be mods > update > x64 > dlcpacks > patchday8ng.

So if in the future you have any weapon mod that needs to go inside the dlc.rpf of patchday8ng, you can navigate to the one inside the mods folder. If any other weapon may require a different dlcpacks folder, such as patchday7ng, you must copy them to the mods folder as well. Luckily, most of the weapons modded or replaced are present inside patchday8ng. So you don't have to worry too much about it.

Anyway, continuing with our mod installation, once you're in the patchday8ng folder, continue navigating to dlc.rpf > x64 > models > cdimages > weapons.rpf.

You will find all your weapon models inside weapons.rpf. Before you install your weapon mod, match the names from the modded files to the ones inside weapons.rpf and copy those in a folder somewhere to keep a backup of the original models to essentially "uninstall" the weapon mod.

Next, copy the downloaded files inside weapons.rpf. The same goes for the scope files. Copy all the files inside the scope folder and put them inside weapons.rpf (also remember to make a backup of the scope files).

Once done, you can go in-game and check out your weapon. It has replaced the marksman rifle, you can search for it using the MenyooSP trainer.

Frequently Asked Questions

My game keeps crashing after installing the mods. How can I fix it?

This is a common occurrence for many when they install the mods for the first time. You can solve it by editing the dlclist.xml file. First go to your Open IV and enter edit mode. Navigate to mods > update > update.rpf > common > data and right-click edit dlclist.xml.

Inside this text file, you will notice all the forward slashes (/). All you need to do is change them into backslash ().

You don't need to edit the ones inside the string of texts, such as dlcpacks/mpValentines. But you need to change the one at the beginning and the one at the end.

For instance, in platform:/dlcPacks/mpBeach/, the one right after platform: must be changed, and the one right at the end before /item must be changed.

Can I get banned for modding?

No, you will not get banned as long as you follow our guide carefully. Even if you don't, you just cannot get banned as certain files won't allow you to enter GTA Online. You will only get banned if you try and use mods in GTA Online.

Can I play online with mods?

You cannot play GTA Online with mods on and this is the reason why you can't get banned. Whenever you try to play online with mods on, you will receive a message stating you have an altered version of the game and cannot enter an online session.

How can I play online without deleting the mods?

You can play online without deleting your mods and mod setups. All you need to do is delete the dinput8.dll file from your GTA 5's game directory. Consider this.dll file as the main file that enables all the mods in your game. When you remove this one.dll file from your game directory, the game does not recognize any of the mods inside your game folder except the official game files.

Whenever you want to play online, move the dinput8.dll file somewhere other than the GTA 5 game directory. After your online session, you can move it back to enjoy your modded offline session.

How can I uninstall.oiv mod files manually?

Certain mods won't allow you to uninstall.oiv files automatically through an executable launcher. In that case, you need to uninstall the mod by removing the mod-related files manually.

But since we don't know where the files went, it can be challenging to uninstall them. You can use a simple trick to identify the directory where the Open IV installer installs the mod files.

Let's take our Shazam superpowers mod as an example for this demonstration. We know some of the files are in the scripts folder. However, when you have multiple mods, you cannot tell which one belongs to the mod you're looking to delete.

So let us first identify the files and their locations to confirm and then we can proceed to delete. Some of these files can only be accessed using Open IV. First, go to the folder where you have the originally downloaded.zip file. Do not extract the contents and open it using Winrar.

Right-click on the.oiv file you installed and click on 'View.' It will open another instance of Winrar showing some more files.

You will find a file called assembly.xml. Double click on it to open.

In this.xml file, you can identify all the files installed for this mod and where they are installed. Every line that starts with "addsource" refer to the addition of the file for this mod. Let's start with the first batch that states the name of the files and their location. They are in the scripts folder according to the assembly document.

You can go to your GTA 5 folder > scripts to find all the relevant files. This method not only allows you to see the location of the files but also their names. For example, ModMenu.dll doesn't exactly confirm whether it belongs to the Shazam mod or some other. But the assembly document confirms our suspicion. You can delete these files from Open IV or by navigating to the folder.

The next section of the assembly tells us where the rest of the files are and what archive holds them. The classic x64c.rpf archive holds all the animations for this mod.

According to the assembly document, we need to navigate to mods > x64c.rpf > anim > ingame > clip_melee@.rpf. In this archive, you can find all the added files.

Finally, the last section of the assembly shows some more files in the script folder which we can delete along with a.asi file. You can usually find the.asi files inside your GTA 5 game directory. In this case, our file is called ObjectSpawnUnlockNbuild.asi. DirectShowLib-2005.dll and NAudio.dll are both in scripts folder which we overlooked earlier (since we were going in order).

Although it doesn't say make sure you delete any other file named the same as your.asi or other script files. Sometimes files such as.txt log files are generated once the script or the mod has run once. They won't show up until you've played the game once with the mod.

And that's it, you've now successfully uninstalled the Shazam mod manually without leaving a trace.

I am not seeing the 'view' option when right-clicking the.oiv file within Winrar?

Don't worry, it is quite simple to fix. This is because your.oiv file has not been opened up directly using the Open IV program. The.oiv file needs to recognize Open IV as the default program for it to show its icon and allow you to view the files inside so that you may check out the contents of the assembly document.

Extract the files, right-click on the.oiv file and open it (open with) using Open IV as the default program. Now when you go back to your Winrar, you should be able to see the 'view' option. it will automatically open up Open IV and ask you to install the program again. You don't have to install it. You can close the program once the prompt to install shows up.