Minecraft Wiki:Issues

This page's purpose is to list all the bugs players have come across. Most of the single-player bugs also apply to multi-player.

World Select

 * Changing resolution on the World Select screen causes all buttons to appear twice.
 * On Mac OS X Systems, the World Select screen will not appear at all, making the game unplayable on Mac systems.
 * Once the player has entered The Nether, the save file will appear as 0.0 MB (or something similar).

General

 * A glitch has been observed where, occasionally, a given area of blocks can revert to their original state, partially or completely undoing any construction or mining that had been done in that area. Usually this happens after a long excursion into one of the natural cave systems.
 * Seemingly related to the above glitch is one where a specific chunk will constantly revert. In chunks that constantly revert, water will not duplicate if it is flowing, and water tends to linger much like lava when the source is removed.
 * You are unable to directly swap items in your inventory when the two items are same. This is important if you would like to swap similar items with different durabilities.
 * Sometimes you can see through everything and it happens on all your games. Toggle the fog distance and everything will change back to normal (Default key is F).
 * Iron bars and saplings may not appear in the inventory when collected.
 * If you wait a lot of time after map chunks are generated and then continue forward causing the game to generate new map chunks, it will cause weird structures which do not connect properly with the map. Sometimes even causing mountains which are, in a sense, cut in half. Furthermore, if one chunk ends in an ocean, and the other starts off with land with an underground cave in it, the water will not enter the cave.
 * When destroying a Furnace, unlike Chests, anything inside the Furnace will be permanently destroyed.
 * When sand is generated above a cave (or any opening), it will float until a space by it is modified in any way.
 * Crouching does not prevent the player from falling off of Steps or Slow Sand.
 * As well as mobs, if the player is on fire or touching a cactus, the "damage" sound is played very fast. No extra hearts are removed though.

Arrows

 * Arrows hitting doors can float if the door changes it's open/closed state.
 * Arrows can seem to be floating when hitting fences.
 * When arrows hit a portal they float.

Boats

 * When entering a boat on ground it will show a splash effect similar than on water.
 * When falling on a boat there is no fall damage.
 * If you manage to stand on your boat while it is under water the boat won't move to any direction.
 * If you go under a water stream your boat will accelerate and rise towards the sky.

Chests

 * If you open a chest at the same time as pressing a movement key, your character will continuously move in that direction until you click on the chest again. This is also fixed by pushing the same movement key after leaving the chest menu.
 * Chests sometimes revert contents to previous configuration. Opening a chest, modifying the content, exiting, then going back in displays the items the chest had when it was first accessed. This causes newly placed items to be lost and removed items to be duplicated.

Fences

 * Fences on top of blocks will have all faces on its underside's black.
 * Stepping on a fence is counted as an illegal operation.
 * Occasionally placed fences will become invisible. They will become visible again if you place normal blocks near to them though.

Jukebox

 * Inserting a record and removing it before the song ends will cause the jukebox to eject a duplicate. Only one of the records will be retrievable, but the second will remain stuck in world and eventually disappear after a certain amount of time. It is possible to abuse this bug to spawn hundreds of records.

Minecart

 * When spawning mine carts on a small track, they will gain momentum from colliding with one another.
 * Having too many minecarts will cause the game to crash.
 * It is possible to gain neverending speed for a mine cart from abusing the bug by spawning many carts on a small track.
 * When destroying a mine cart you are sitting in, you will fall one block under ground.
 * Sometimes moving minecarts disappear completely.
 * Trying to exit in a two block high area can cause the player to suffocate within the minecart.
 * If you open your inventory while in a minecart, your player hand model will not function as expected.
 * Riding a minecart into a Nether portal causes you to become stuck.

Mobs

 * If a mob is riding a mine cart and 2 (or more) mine carts get stuck in each other, after destroying or moving the carts away from the other carts the mobs will be invisible.
 * When up close to a Zombie Pig, the inventory GUI will become much brighter. It is unknown if this applies to any other mobs, or varies in the mac/linux versions, or if it's present in SMP.
 * Mobs that hit Cactuses constantly get hurt(they are red and constantly sound their 'hurt' sound) but get dealt the same damage.
 * You can hit a Mob more than once in one hit, dealing the same damage as one hit would but knocking them back further.

Paintings

 * If a painting is placed and immediately removed, there is a chance that the picture frame will get duplicated.

Signs

 * Placing a sign on top of a block that is placed at the maximum allowed building height in the world will cause the client to crash.

Stairs

 * Placing steps and then destroying them doesn't give you the stairs back, only a Cobblestone or Wood block.
 * Attempting to destroy stairs will sometimes destroy the block behind them instead.
 * Placing any kind of block on top of the stairs block will convert the latter into block which stairs were made of. This can be abused to quickly destroy stairs.
 * Stairs let light pass through.

Water
(To clarify this a bit, on the surface, you are blocked from placing a block on yourself, underwater, this blocking does not exist).
 * While underwater, you are able to place blocks at the location of the player.
 * It is possible for multiple water currents to crash against each other and create an inescapable rip-tide. Not only will this rip tide hold you in one place, it will also throw you from a boat if you are sailing it.

Doors

 * If doors are placed next to two stapled cactus-blocks, the door will immediately get destroyed and will drop two doors instead of one.

Snow

 * Snow currently does not fall, meaning that once it it destroyed it will not come back.
 * Utilizing snow, one can place saplings and cacti on any block. The sapling will grow, still; however, the cacti will break when they first grow.

Portals

 * Placing a boat in the portal and entering it will cause the game to skip the "safe area" finding algorithm. This means that you will appear in the Nether world exactly where you are meant to regardless of blocks in the way. Example video.

Trees

 * As of the Halloween 'Boo' Update, leaves no longer decay.

General

 * Sometimes blocks cannot be reliably removed. Attempting to remove them will cause them to temporarily disappear, then reappear. Note that this is a feature in some cases: it's always true in the 32x32 zone surrounding the spawn point, and on modded servers where visitors can look but not touch. Otherwise, this situation often is due to a poor connection. Disconnecting and reconnecting, or even restarting your internet connection, can help improve the situation.
 * Crouching is not visible to other players.

Health

 * Players and mobs are invincible. Enemy mobs can kill each other and also die from water, lava, TNT and Cacti.

Neutral Mobs

 * Sheep and cows are often unseen in SMP, while pigs and chickens will spawn often. Oddly enough, chickens seem to drop leather occasionally.
 * Since the boo update, chickens and pigs frequently glitch in the ground, making noises and blinking. You can try burning them to stop this problem.

Hostile Mobs

 * The ghast's fireballs are not visible, make no sound, and occasionally do not explode, only lighting a small area on fire.


 * Ghasts do not make noise when firing, and do not open their eyes and mouth when firing. They also will not consistently follow the player.


 * Ghasts rarely spawn underwater when in Nether (Hell) mode.


 * Zombie Pigmen do not attack when hit. This is most likely due to the invincibility glitch.


 * Skeletons will never be riding spiders when spawned.


 * Sometimes spiders freeze in animation and can not be hit. They disappear after about 2 minutes.


 * Some mobs are invisible. A scenario would be that a Creeper explodes next to you, making no sound and dealing you no damage but damaging the ground.

Armor

 * Armor cannot be seen by other player.
 * A pumpkin hat cannot be seeen by other players.

Fishing

 * Fish cannot be picked up.

Water and Lava

 * You can collect source blocks, but they will reappear shortly after being collected. Dropping them will create a source block temporarily, but it will not spread. Instead, it will disappear after some time. Other players never see the source blocks you place. As a workaround, a server admin can give a player source blocks (by using the /give command) source blocks (id 8 for Water, id 10 for Lava). These can be placed in the same way any other block is placed.

Furnaces and Coal

 * Coal can smelt 8 items per lump. However, in some cases, smelting a multiple of 8 items will use up all the coal, but leave one item without smelting. When cooking Pork, the furnace will not take any more coal after having burnt the first lump. The player has to close the furnace window and reopen it to continue cooking. The furnace will continue to show the fire animation after this, even when empty. Also, the animations in the furnace window (arrow showing progress, fire icon when consuming the fuel) seem to be broken as well.

Trees

 * Planting a sapling and waiting a bit will yield tree trunks with weird distributions of leaves, and in some cases, no leaves at all. Trees can also grow but be invisible, making it impossible to traverse a tree farm after a while. Rejoining the server appears to make invisible trees visible again and fire will swiftly cause phantom foliage to be made manifest. Trees with "weird leaves" cannot be cut down, as they regenerate instead of yielding wood blocks.

Doors

 * When trying to destroy a door, it may open and close quickly towards the end, or it could even split in half, with one half open and the other half closed. This makes it difficult to remove doors. It's easier to destroy the floor block they're on.
 * This seems to be fixed as of the Halloween update, btw Xolotl 12:25, 5 November 2010 (CDT)

Stone Buttons

 * In addition to not triggering doors, stone buttons may jump from the wall they are actually placed on to the one opposite upon being pressed the first time if there is just one block of air in between. They can then not be removed reliably without also removing the block to which they are attached.

Tools

 * Dropping them (i.e., by pressing Q while holding them) and picking them back up will revert their damage to zero. This probably is related to the player and mob server-side health issue. Applies to all items that take damage (e.g.: Armor).

Paintings

 * Paintings might disappear some time after being placed.
 * If they are destroyed after being placed, they cannot be picked back up.
 * You cannot see other people's paintings.
 * When copying an SSP world onto an SMP server, paintings are removed in the transition.

Boats

 * Boats are only visible to player who crafted it. When a boat breaks, its materials (planks and sticks) cannot be picked up by anyone.

Wheat Seeds

 * To a player, it will appear that some seeds cannot be picked up. But to the other players, these seeds will be invisible. Hoeing the ground directly beneath you improves the chances of harvesting the seeds. Disconnecting and reconnecting will leave visible only those seeds which are actually able to be picked up.

Chests

 * Destroying a chest will spill its contents, and every item in the chest will be duplicated. Only half of the items visible to the player can be picked up, so no items are gained nor lost in the process.
 * Also, quickly clicking on items and moving them around can cause them to disappear from your inventory, and in some cases to be duplicated.
 * The duplication seems to be cause by a server/client sync error. When holding the item place it and then quickly pick it up. Notice that the item with flash again in the bin location where you just put it. It seems the server is sending back that the item is still there after you have picked it up.  While the 'ghost' item is shown in the bin placing the item in your hand will  cause the item to be duplicated. In the case of stacks it will double the stack and in the case of un-stackable items it will remain in your hand (mouse) and also in the bin.
 * The disappearing seems to be caused by the same bug just in the opposite way. Instead of the server lagging behind the client and telling it that the item is still there the server will erroneously delete.

Minecarts

 * Minecarts do not function as expected. Minecarts can end up duplicated when used, wobble randomly, have their resources be unable to be retrieved (if you can destroy them at all), and cause severe client lag.

Notch has stated that minecart bugs in multiplayer will be fixed when beta is released.

Reeds

 * Reeds will sometimes (but very rarely) grow to be four blocks high. The normal maximum height is three blocks.

Arrows

 * Arrows can only be seen by the player that shoots them. You cannot see any arrows that a skeleton shoots.

Blocks

 * Blocks in areas of approximately 5x5x5 around the player will randomly disappear / break and you can pick them up again.

Snowballs

 * Shovelling Snow does not create a Snowball.

Sand and Snow

 * Sand will not fall down if Snow is underneath it.

Portals

 * Will appear to activate, but does not transport player to the Nether.

TNT

 * TNT disappears when ignited by a redstone circuit.
 * TNT lit by one user cannot be seen by another.