Chest

"Today a chest or two is probably one of the first things you build in a new Minecraft world, and any house worth living in has a dedicated storage area that's organised carefully in a system that only its creator fully understands."

- Duncan Geere

A chest is a block that stores items.

Obtaining
Chests can be obtained by crafting, or by breaking previously-placed chests, generated chests, or minecarts with chests.

Breaking
A chest can be broken using anything, but an axe is the fastest.

If the chest contains items, the items will also be dropped when it is broken. If one half of a large chest is destroyed, the corresponding items from the destroyed chest will be dropped and the remaining half will continue to function as a small chest.

Natural generation
Chests are naturally generated in dungeons, strongholds, jungle temples, desert temples, nether fortresses, villages, end cities, end ships, igloos woodland mansions, shipwrecks, underwater ruins and buried treasures. Chests also generate in pillager outposts. Minecarts with chests, which when broken will drop a chest, a minecart, and any contents of the chest, are naturally generated in abandoned mineshafts.

In Java Edition, the loot for these chests (or for the bonus chest, see below) is fully determined by the seed, while in the legacy console and Bedrock editions, the loot is determined randomly and independent of the seed.

Bonus chest
The bonus chest is a chest with items that act as a starter kit. Bonus Chests can only be spawned once and it can only be spawned at world generation. In order to spawn a Bonus Chest, the player must set the "Bonus Chest" option to "ON" in the "More World Options..." or "Game Settings" part of the "Create New World" screen. In that case, the Bonus Chest will be spawned somewhere near the player's initial spawn point, with up to four Torches generated around it in adjacent squares.

The Bonus Chest option is not available in hardcore mode or on servers, thus making the Bonus Chest unavailable as well. Up to four torches will generate around the chest in adjacent horizontal and vertical squares.

The Bonus Chest starts off pre-filled with a semi-random collection of basic items that can help the player survive early on, getting them started at gathering resources, and making the objective of building an initial shelter easier.

The Bonus Chest in the Legacy Console Edition will use the same set of items as in Bedrock Edition.

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 will typically join to create a "large chest" (also known as a "double chest"). This can be prevented by having the player while placing the second chest, or place the second chest facing a different direction from the first chest, allowing the player to place two small chests side-by-side. Alternately, trapped chests do not combine with normal chests. A chest cannot be placed in a way that would cause a large chest to be next to another chest horizontally (for example, the player may not place a small chest next to a large chest or place a chest in between two chests), but chests can be placed above or below a large chest.

Chests can be moved by pistons, and water and lava will 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 will not actually catch fire (and can't be burned whatsoever).

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 and Console Edition interfaces, the top three rows for a large chest correspond to the western or northern half and the bottom three correspond to the southern or eastern half. In Bedrock Edition, the top three rows correspond to whichever half was placed first and the bottom three to the other half.

To open the chest GUI, use the control. 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 will move 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. In Bedrock Edition, every entity (including the player, but excluding dropped items) will prevent a chest from being opened, while in other versions only ocelots will prevent chests from opening. Since chests themselves are (functionally) transparent, two chests can be stacked on top of one another while still allowing the lower chest to be opened.

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 data command (for example, to label a chest at (0,64,0) as "Bonus Chest!", use ). If only half of a large chest is renamed, that name will be used to label the GUI of the entire large chest, but if the named half is destroyed the other half will revert to the default label. If both halves of a large chest have different names, the GUI will use the name of the northernmost or westernmost half.

In Java Edition, 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 non-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 a donkey, mule, or llama.

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 llama 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).

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

Christmas chest
On 24-26 of December, chests, large chests and their trapped chest counterparts have their textures changed to "Christmas chests" which 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.

Block data
In Bedrock Edition, chests use the following data values:

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

Trivia

 * Chests render as a full block when in the inventory, but not when placed.