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 chest 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 and woodland mansions. They will also generate in shipwrecks, underwater ruins and buried treasures. 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 acts as a starter kit. It generates once in the player's spawn area, only in newly created worlds in which the bonus chest option was enabled. It is filled with basic items that may help the player survive early on, getting them started gathering resources, and making the objective of building a shelter a lot easier.

Up to four torches will generate around the chest in adjacent horizontal and vertical squares.

It is enabled by setting the "Bonus Chest" option to "ON" in the "More World Options..." or "Game Settings" part of the "Create New World" screen. The bonus chest cannot be enabled in hardcore mode or on servers.

The bonus chest in the legacy Console Edition will contain similar items to 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"). To avoid the chests joining and instead place two single chests side-by-side, the player may while placing the second chest, or place the second chest facing a different direction from the first chest. Alternately, trapped chests do not combine with normal chests. A chest cannot be placed in a way that causes a large chest to be next to another chest horizontally (for example, placing a chest next to a large chest and placing 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 burn up (and can't be burned by other methods either).

Container


A small chest has 27 slots of inventory space, and a large chest has 54. 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 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 will not open if there is an opaque block above it. In Bedrock Edition, every entity (including the player, but excluding dropped items) will stop the chest from opening, while in other versions only ocelots will prevent chests from opening. Since chests are transparent, they can be stacked on top of one another while still allowing the lower chest to open.

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 blockdata command (for example, to label a chest at (0,64,0) "Loot!", 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 be labeled with 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 except by players holding an item with the same name as the   tag's text. For example, to lock a chest at (0,64,0) so that only players holding an item named "Player's Key" can open the chest, use.

The capacity of a chest varies over a wide range, depending on its size, whether the items it contains are stackable, and whether Shulker Boxes are used. The minimum capacity is obtained when storing only non-stackable items; the maximum when storing items that stack to 64. Filled Shulker Boxes are non-stackable, but each can hold 27 stacks of up to 64 items, 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 from 3 to 15 slots depending upon its "Strength" (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.

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

Christmas chest
On December 24-26, chests, large chests and trapped chests 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 have access to the Christmas chest textures by changing the date and time on their computers.

Data values
Every chest has an ID name of  and is further defined by its block state and block entity.

Block entity
A chest has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block. The block's block entity ID is.

Trivia

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