Java Edition removed blocks

This page documents an exhaustive list of blocks which no longer exist in current versions of.

Outright removed blocks
Despite having notable unique functionality or a block ID of their own, these blocks were eventually removed by the game, or replaced by another block of completely different use.

Old Colored Wool / Cloth


Added in Classic, wool had 16 colors. All colors minus white, were removed in late Infdev. With the introduction of Beta 1.2, Colored Wool was re-added, albeit with some different colors.

Gears


A fully animated block, it was inaccessible and had no real use other than decoration.

Infinite water and lava source


These blocks persistently generated their respective liquid around them.

Locked chest


A joke block, completely unrelated to the current ability to lock chests via NBT.

Shrub
A block that appeared identical to the dead bush, although possessing a random offset and the drops of grass, as they shared a numerical ID. These were merged into the dead bush in 17w47a.

Blocks replaced by other blocks
These blocks were either made redundant by the later introduction of another block serving their exact purpose, resulting in them either getting merged into said block ID or simply removed from the game, or were simultaneously renamed and retextured while retaining an identical core functionality.

Generic dead coral block


In snapshot 18w09a, all coral blocks had the same texture, colored differently. Because of this, there was only one dead variant needed. By the time of snapshot 18w10a, each color of the coral block had its own unique texture, but would still all die into the same generic dead coral block from the previous snapshot. The generic dead coral block was removed and replaced with dead variants for each color in snapshot 18w10b.

Powered comparator
During the development for 1.5, the comparator at first used two separate block IDs to represent its powered and unpowered states, with name IDs  and , and numeric IDs 149 and 150 respectively. As of snapshot 13w05a, the  block was removed from use in the game, replaced by a   block state on the   block. It is removed completely in snapshot 17w47a for 1.13, as of The Flattening.

Grassless Dirt


From snapshot 13w36a to 14w25a, a form of dirt called "grassless dirt" existed. It had the same texture as dirt, but would not grow grass. In later 1.7 snapshots, it would generate in Savanna M biomes. Grassless dirt dropped regular dirt even when mined with Silk Touch. It was later replaced by coarse dirt.

Blocks resulting from extreme data values
The majority of these blocks were likely never actually meant to exist in-game, and occurred only due to the game handling extreme metadata values as it would those in usually attainable ranges, resulting in strange blocks with traits arguably analogous to garbage data.

Leaves with data value 3, 7, 11, 15
From the introduction of leaves in Beta 1.2 onward to the Flattening of 1.13, leaves used numerical data values within the leaves block to hold their type. As only three species existed from Beta 1.2 to release 1.1, with data values 0/1/2 (and by extension 4/5/6, 8/9/10 and 12/13/14), a data value of 3, 7, 11 or 15 would produce an undefined leaf type. This block appeared identical to conventional oak leaves, but appeared to use the spruce tint.

These were substituted out of the game with the first 1.2 release snapshot, as jungle leaves from then on occupied that space in the leaves block.

Seamless smooth stone slabs
When new slab types were introduced in Beta 1.3, slabs with data values up to 7 that exceeded the value of the highest legitimately obtainable slab would use top on all faces.

Two of these were replaced by the brick and stone brick slabs in Beta 1.8 Pre-release, one was replaced by nether brick slabs in snapshot 12w49a for 1.4.6, and the last remaining one was replaced by the quartz slab in 1.5 snapshot 13w02a. The smooth stone block was effectively reimplemented later in 1.5 in snapshot 13w04a by making the upper eight stone slabs use the top texture on all sides (also introducing smooth sandstone and quartz as a result), but the slab version are no longer in the game.

Strange levers
These also had weird distorted models, and could be obtained by loading a world from 1.3 or later containing ceiling levers (0, 7, 8, 15) in 1.2.5.

Blocks in flower pots that should not be in flower pots
From 1.7 onward, as the amount of blocks that could be placed within pots exceeded 15, conventional 4-bit metadata values could not be used to store the contents of a flower pot, and as such a block entity needed to be used instead. This allowed any block (or indeed item) to be placed within a flower pot, but few of these would actually render with the block inside.

In 14w17a, almost certainly due to changes in how blocks render with them being changed to use block models rather than hardcoded models, these odd pot variants simply rendered as empty pots with no further interesting quirks, aside from the fact that their "invalid" contents could be retrieved from the pot via breaking or later right clicking it. They were completely removed in 17w47a, which split the flower pot block up into an individual block ID per potted object and scrapped the tile entity.

13w36a
The first version to make flower pots use a block entity, the fact that flower pots could hold ferns bled over somewhat into its other damage values, allowing shrubs and grass to exist in pots as well. Also, cobwebs would render if placed in a flower pot.

14w06a
In this version, a large amount of blocks now render if placed in flower pots via commands. In order to place these with commands, use the following command, with ITEM and DATA substituted with the appropriate values from Java Edition data value/Pre-flattening/Block IDs as necessary:

/setblock ~ ~ ~ minecraft:flower_pot 0 destroy {Item:ITEM,Data:DATA}

Only blocks that are completely unique in their rendering are shown here; some visually identical blocks do exist that are not listed here separately, such as the early stages of both carrots and potatoes, or potted pumpkins and jack o'lanterns.

The blocks always appear as a cross shape based on their bottom texture. Blocks with translucency appear either completely opaque or, in the case of stained glass, most pixels are invisible.

Some blocks appear tinted by biome if their normal variants usually would be. As leaves were tinted as per their numerical data values, setting the number prior to destroy to 1 for specifically potted leaves causes them to be tinted with the spruce color, and setting it to 2 gives the birch color. 0 or 3 results in them being tinted per biome like oak and jungle leaves are.

14w06b
In 14w06b, likely due to the fix for, an additional 57 visually distinct potted objects could be placed:

14w07a
14w07a introduced the iron trapdoor, which rendered in a flower pot.

Removed in 1.13 (17w47a)
These were the result of block state handling combined with the old block ID system, resulting in some odd combinations.

Redundant seamless double slabs
In 13w04a, double stone slabs were changed so that those with data values 8 through 15 would use the top texture on all six sides. This resulted in the return of the block which would several years later become smooth stone, and also introduced the smooth sandstone and smooth quartz blocks. However, as the smooth stone double slab block also housed the cobblestone, old (later petrified) oak, bricks, stone bricks and nether bricks slabs, these would also end up having "seamless" double slab variants which were visually no different from their normal double slabs or indeed their normal blocks. These blocks persisted up to 17w47a, where they were removed by the Flattening.

Snowy dirt and snowy coarse dirt
As podzol was a numerical variant of dirt prior to 1.13, the snowy block state it used also ended up applying to dirt and coarse dirt, with no effect. These were removed in 1.13.

削除されたブロック Blocos removidos da Edição Java