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 2×2 grid, and equip tools, blocks and items. The player's skin is also displayed here.

The inventory is opened and closed by pressing the key ( on the Xbox 360,  in PS3, and ••• in Pocket Edition). 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 2×2 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. In Creative mode, dragging items with the middle mouse button will place a full stack of the item in each dragged-over slot.

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 (with some exceptions, like dragon eggs or command blocks). 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.

Trivia

 * If the inventory is opened when the player dies, the avatar will fall over and have a red tinge.
 * When bed sleeping or riding a pig, horse, boat or minecart and the inventory screen is accessed, the avatar will be shown in the respective position. However, the current skin used stays the same.
 * In the Item Selection screen, some items and blocks are missing, such as huge mushroom blocks, dragon eggs and mob spawners.
 * The avatar will always look at the 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 the cursor, you can quickly click around your inventory, crafting table, etc. and divide it quicker. For instance, if a stack of 64 dirt is held, and this technique is used, it divides 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.