Chest

A chest is a block that stores items.

Breaking
A chest can be broken using anything, but an axe is the fastest. Chests always drop themselves when mined. If the chest contains items, the items are also dropped when the chest is broken. If one half of a large chest is destroyed, the corresponding items from the destroyed chest are dropped and the remaining half continues to function as a small chest.

Natural generation
Chests are naturally generated in dungeons, strongholds, villages, jungle temples, desert temples, nether fortresses, end cities, igloos, woodland mansions, shipwrecks, ocean ruins, buried treasure, pillager outposts, bastion remnants, ruined portals and ancient city.

Large chests can occasionally generate in dungeons by one single chest generating next to the other. They can also generate in certain types of bastion remnants.

Bonus chest
The bonus chest is a chest that appears near the player's spawn if the "Bonus chest" option is toggled on the main menu. It generates with a semi-random collection of basic items to help the player survive early on and gather necessary resources, including tools, blocks, and food.

Entity loot
Breaking a minecart with chest drops the chest and minecart separately, and any contents. They generate naturally in mineshafts.

In Bedrock Edition, breaking a boat with chest drops the chest and matching boat separately, and any contents. In Java Edition a boat with chest drops itself instead.

Usage
Chests can be used as containers and as crafting ingredients.

To place a chest, use the control on the face of a block adjacent to the space the chest should occupy.

A chest placed adjacent to another chest joins to create a large chest (also known as a double chest). A player can prevent this, and place two small chests side by side, by while placing the second chest, pushing a chest into place with a piston, or placing the second chest facing a different direction from the first chest. Alternatively, trapped chests do not combine with normal chests.

Chests can be moved by pistons, and water and lava flow around chests without affecting them. Lava can create fire in air blocks next to chests as if the chests were flammable, but the chests do not actually catch fire and cannot be burned.

Container


A small chest has 27 slots of inventory space, and a large chest has twice that amount, at 54 slots. In the Java Edition interface, the top three rows for a large chest correspond to the right half of the chest when facing it, and the bottom three rows correspond to the left half. In Bedrock Edition, the top three rows correspond to whichever half was placed first and the bottom three to the other half.

Chests open when. To move items between the chest inventory and the player inventory or hotbar while the chest GUI is open, drag or shift-click the items. Holding and double-clicking while holding an item moves all items of the type clicked on in or out of the chest, to the extent that space is available for them. To exit the chest GUI, use the control.

A chest cannot be opened if there is an opaque block above it ($$, bottom-half slabs prevent chests from being opened). Solid faces do not prevent chests from opening, so the lid of the chest can phase through blocks such as bottom-half slabs, stairs, and transparent full cubes such as glass and ice. Ocelots and cats sitting on chests prevent them from opening. Because chests themselves are functionally transparent, two chests can be stacked on top of one another while still allowing the lower chest to be opened. Players can open chests when players are being hurt (effect of instant damage, poison, wither, fatal poison or on fire) or hurt by anyone (players, zombies, skeletons, etc.).

By default, the GUI of a chest is labeled "Chest" and the GUI of a large chest is labeled "Large Chest". A chest's GUI label can be changed by naming the chest in an anvil before placing it, or by using the command (for example, to label a chest at (0,64,0) as "Bonus Chest!", use ). If half of a large chest is renamed, that name is used to label the GUI of the entire large chest, but if the named half is destroyed the other half reverts to the default label. If both halves of a large chest have different names, the GUI uses the name of the northernmost or westernmost half.

$$, a chest can be "locked" by setting its  tag using the  command. If a chest's  tag is not blank, the chest cannot be opened unless the player is holding an item with the same name as the   tag's text. For example, to lock a chest at (0,64,0) so that the chest cannot be opened unless the player is holding an item named "Chest Key", use.

The capacity of a chest varies greatly, depending on its size, whether the items inside it are stackable, and whether shulker boxes are used. The minimum capacity is obtained when storing only non-stackable items while the maximum capacity can be achieved when storing items that stack to 64. Filled shulker boxes are not stackable, but each can hold 27 stacks of up to 64 items (excluding other shulker boxes), so filling a chest with them increases the maximum by a factor of 27.

Donkey, mule, or llama pack
A chest can be added to a donkey, a mule, or a llama by pressing on the respective animal.

A chest attached to a donkey or mule has only 15 slots. A chest attached to a llama has anywhere from 3 to 15 slots depending upon its "Strength" value (see ). The chest cannot be removed except by killing the carrier. The chest can be opened by holding and pressing, or by riding the carrier and pressing.

If shulker boxes are again used, each donkey, mule or strength value 5 llamas with a chest attached to it can carry up to 405 stacks of items (up to 25920 items), and with strength value 5 llamas, each caravan of 10 llamas with inventories full of shulker boxes can carry up to 4050 stacks of items (up to 259200 items).

Piglins
Piglins become hostile toward players who open or mine chests.

Fuel
Chests can be used as a fuel in furnaces, smelting 1.5 items per chest.

Note Blocks
Chests can be placed under note blocks to produce "bass" sound.

Christmas chest
On December 24–26, chests, large chests, and their trapped chest counterparts have their textures changed to "Christmas chests" that look like wrapped Christmas presents. Since the game uses the date shown on the computer, players can access the Christmas chest textures at any time by changing the date and time on their computers to 24–26 of December.

ID




Block data
A chest has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.




 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.
 * See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.

History
For a more in-depth breakdown of changes to textures and models, including a set of renders for each state combination, see /Asset history

Trivia

 * $$, Chests render as a full block when in the inventory, but not when placed.
 * The chest recipe is not unlocked by any specific item, but rather, having enough slots in the inventory occupied by any item.
 * In Pocket Edition, a player who leaves the game while standing on a chest rejoins the game with legs inside the chest.