Inventory

The inventory is the pop-up menu that the player uses to manage items they carry. From this screen a player can equip armor, craft items on a 2x2 grid, and equip tools, blocks and items. Also displayed here is the player's Minecraft skin.

The inventory is opened and closed by pressing the key ( on the XBOX 360). This key can be changed from the in-game options menu. The inventory can also be closed with the key.

The inventory consists of 4 armor slots, 27 storage slots, and 9 hotkey slots. Items in the hotkey slots can be selected during play using the keyboard (keys ) or mousewheel, and placed or wielded with the mouse buttons.

Most items can stack up to a maximum of 64 in one slot. Tools (with the exception of clocks and compasses) cannot be stacked. Certain items, such as Snowballs, Buckets, Eggs, Signs and Ender Pearls are special and can only stack up to 16.

Items can be dropped into the world by clicking outside the inventory window while holding items, or by closing the inventory with items either held or placed in the 2x2 crafting grid. Items dropped in the game world will disappear after 5 minutes if not collected, but items placed using the right mouse button will not. Chests can be used to extend your inventory space, but they must be placed in the game world before they can be used.

Armor is only considered equipped when it is in an armor slot; when in any of the regular inventory slots, it is not considered "worn" and does not offer protection.

Inventory is saved on multiplayer servers, so that players' personal inventory, chests, etc. are saved when you leave, allowing the players to continue where they left off.

Items have tooltips displaying their name if the cursor is hovered over the item.

Managing inventory
To split a stack, right click the stack. If the stack is an odd quantity, then it will leave the smaller part (for example, when right-clicking 7 items in one slot, then you will grab 4 items and leave 3 items). This leaves half the stack on the square and allows you to move the other half.

Conversely, while holding a stack in the inventory, right click can be used to place just one item anywhere on the inventory grid.

Also, one way to quickly move and craft items is by holding and clicking on the item. By doing so while a chest is open, the item stack will immediately go into the chest that you have open. And if you click on an item in the chest, the stack will enter your inventory. If you do this with only your inventory open click will move the item stack between the hot bar and your inventory. Specifically, if you wish to move an item from anywhere, directly to a specific position on the hotbar, hover over the item(s) and press any key, which in turn corresponds to any of the 9 positions on the hotbar. If there is an item already on that specific hotbar position, it will simply exchange it out.

Double click items to fill the stack up as much as possible.

To move all items of one kind into a chest from your inventory (and vice versa), pick up any item, hold, and double click one of the items (or a stack) of the items you want to move.

Drag item stacks around with the right mouse button to place one of that stack in each dragged-over slot, if that slot is not occupied already. Dragging items around with the left mouse button in the same way instead divides the stack equally over the dragged-over slots.

Pressing the 'drop' key (default ) while the mouse is hovering over an item in the inventory or a container will drop one item. Holding and pressing  while hovering over a slot in the inventory or container that has one or more items, will consequently drop/toss the entire stack of items. While venturing without the full inventory open, the same can be applied for the selected item(s) being held from the hotbar.

Held armor can be equipped by right-clicking.

Creative mode


In Creative mode, the inventory contains all blocks and items from Survival, along with some others that can't be found like Sponges. The player can pick up blocks from here to use endlessly or drop things right in the menu to remove them.

Clicking on something more than once will give them a stack of that block or item. Right-clicking a block or item will give the player a full stack. Pressing a number key while hovering over an item will instantly place that item into the quick select slot that corresponds with the number.

The Creative inventory screen is sorted into 10 sections: 'Building Blocks', 'Decoration Blocks', 'Redstone', 'Transportation', 'Miscellaneous', 'Foodstuffs', 'Tools', 'Combat', 'Brewing' and 'Materials'. There is also a search box (compass icon) and survival inventory tab (chest icon).

Being attacked
When attacked, your Health above your hot bar will start to dim. And when you open a chest, open a furnace, open a dispenser, or even open a minecart of any type and you are attacked, the inventory will close up. Example: If a zombie attacked you while your inventory was open, it would close up.

External inventories
Many blocks and some non-player entities have their own inventory-like windows that pop up to allow manipulation of items.

History


The player inventory was the crafting menu when crafting was added in Indev 0.31 (January 29, 2010), and had same GUI as the current Crafting Table GUI as seen in a crafting and mining video by Notch.
 * In Indev, you could walk around while having the inventory open.
 * As of the Seecret Friday Update 9, inventory is now saved on multiplayer servers
 * In Alpha, the player could place items in the 2x2 crafting grid and they would stay there when the inventory was closed, but this has been removed as of the Beta release: items placed in the crafting grid are now dropped simultaneously when the inventory is closed.
 * As of Alpha 1.1.0, inventory is saved on multiplayer servers, so that players' personal inventory, chests, etc. are saved when you leave, allowing the players to continue where they left off.
 * As of the Beta 1.0 release, items now have tooltips displaying their name if the cursor is hovered over the item.
 * The default key for opening and closing the inventory was in Beta 1.3_01 and older, but was changed to  in Beta 1.4 because Notch found it to be much more efficient.
 * Since Beta 1.8, the inventory became an Item selection page in Creative Mode with all items and without the character, similar to one in the Classic 0.30 Creative Mode. In Creative mode, picking up a block with a full hotbar puts it in an inventory like the one in Survival mode. The only way to see the inventory was to open a chest, furnace, dispenser, crafting bench, brewing stand, minecart with a furnace/chest, or enchanting table.
 * In the Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4, the gray frame surrounding the hotkey items becomes white and the semi-transparent black background becomes completely transparent when the player holds a Golden Apple or an Enchanted Item. This also happens when you look at a Primed TNT, a Painting or an Enderman. This was fixed in Beta 1.9 Prerelease 5.
 * As of the 1.2.4 update, the body parts drawings have been reintroduced in the armor pieces.
 * As of snapshot 12w21b the inventory screen in Creative mode is tabbed when previously it was one big screen full of blocks with terrain blocks at the top and items further down. The Creative inventory menu is now organized into 10 categories: Building blocks, Decoration blocks, Redstone, Transportation, Miscellaneous, Foodstuffs, Tools, Combat, Brewing, and Materials. The Survival-mode inventory is also accessible. The inventory button does not close the inventory and instead opens search tab, so the player has to press Esc instead.
 * In snapshot 12w22a, the orientation of tools/weapons/items were changed from being oriented towards the left to being oriented towards the right. The player can wear or remove armor in creative mode; before, the player could not remove armor that was already worn, or put on armor. The Search tab does not automatically open up unless the player presses their chat key, allowing the inventory to be closed with the normal inventory key again.

Bugs

 * If you open your inventory while sitting in a vehicle and wearing Leggings, you will see that your legs will be bent in a sitting position but your Leggings will not. They will remain upright and come off your body right through your legs. The reverse happens if you put on Leggings while in a vehicle and leave it.
 * If you are flying while in Creative Mode in the inventory, if you click something, it grabs the maximum stack possible and, if you try to put it in the inventory again, it will not place it. This occurs because the Shift key is stuck (press both shift keys to fix this)
 * If the player has the inventory screen open when he/she dies, the Health and death screen does not appear until the inventory screen is closed. The player goes through the death animation and falls over, turning red, but does not "disappear" or die completely (the player continues to follow the mouse cursor as it is lying on the side) until the inventory screen is closed, upon which the screen immediately switches to the death screen.
 * If you are moving an item when you die, you will not lose it.
 * If you are in third person mode and position yourself so you can see your head with the inventory screen open, you will not see your head spin and move in an extremely fast and random manner.

Trivia

 * If you are in your inventory when you die, your character will fall over and have a red tinge.
 * If you are falling asleep in a bed and you access your inventory screen, your character will be laying down. However, the current skin you have on will stay the same. A similar effect is seen with riding a boat, pig, or minecart, but your character will be sitting.
 * In the Item Selection screen, the Sponge block is available again, but it does not absorb water.
 * In the Item Selection screen, some items and blocks are missing, such as huge mushroom blocks, dragon eggs and mob spawners.
 * Your character will always look at your mouse cursor while in inventory.
 * The "Search Items" tab's compass icon acts just like any other, and spins wildly in the Nether and End dimensions.
 * The maximum number of items the inventory can hold (36 stacks of 64 items each) is 2304.
 * If you hold shift, while holding an item on your cursor, you can quickly click around your inventory, or crafting table, etc. and divide it quicker. For instance, if you hold a stack of 64 dirt, and you use this technique, it will divide into 2 stacks of 32 if you click twice, 3 stacks of 21 clicking 3 times, 4 stacks of 16 for 4 times, and so on.