Player

The Notch is the character that users control in Minecraft. The default player is popularly known as Notch, a name suggested by Steve as a joke, and is intended to be a generic, Female representation of a fat human being, although the player's skin can be changed. The player appears to be right-handed, holding all items and blocks in his right hand, though he also holds the bow with his right hand, meaning he shoots it with his left.

Appearance
The default player's skin has dark brown hair, brown skin, and blue/purple eyes, with a cyan-blue shirt (un-tucked on the left hand side), a pair of blue/purple jeans, and grayish-black shoes. Steve seems to have a slight stubble of a light brown beard. In the Xbox 360 version the player's skin can vary from Steve to seven other player skins (stated below). These skins now have names with the Xbox 1.7.3 update and are listed below.

Pocket Edition
In the Pocket Edition, the player still makes the "Ooh" sound. In iOS versions of the Pocket Edition, Steve is named Stevie. In Android versions of the game, he is named Steve, as normal.

Xbox 360 Edition
In the Xbox 360 Edition, there are 8 defaulted versions of Steve for the player to use (as well as many packs of new skins featuring non-Steve characters from various video games, such as  ' Splosion Man from his titular indie game and Master Chief from the Halo series). The 8 defaults are Steve, Boxer Steve, Cyclist Steve, Tennis Steve, Scottish Steve, Prisoner Steve, Tuxedo Steve, and Athlete Steve. Some variants of Steve look nothing like him, while others are him with different clothes.

Health
The player has 10 full hearts. When the player's hunger bar is at 9 points or higher, their health will slowly regenerate by half a heart every five seconds. The hunger bar depletes faster when the player does things like sprinting, jumping, attacking mobs, and mining, and it can be refilled by eating food. If the hunger bar is at 8 and a half points or lower, the player will not regenerate health unless in peaceful mode (or under the effect of certain potions). If the hunger bar is down to 0, the player will start starving and losing health. On hard difficulty, starvation will kill you. On normal difficulty, it will bring you down to half of a heart. On easy difficulty, it will bring you down to 5 hearts. On peaceful difficulty the health bar will recover regardless of hunger but will still take starvation damage, and the hunger bar will not lose any points, even when under the effect of food poisoning.

Movement

 * Note: the numerical values used in this section are approximations based on experimentation. Slight variation from true values is possible, based on human error, and so each value also lists an error range.

The player walks at a rate of 4.31(±0.2) blocks per second. This means that they can walk a total of 5172 blocks in one Minecraft day.

As of Beta 1.8, the player is able to sprint, draining the food bar considerably (10×) faster than usual while doing so. The player is capable of sprinting approximately 5.55(±0.02) blocks per second, as opposed to the regular pace of 4.31. The player can jump four blocks horizontally when sprinting. The player cannot sprint if there are only 3 bars or fewer left in the hunger meter. By default, sprinting is activated by double-tapping then holding it.

Sneaking is a feature activated by holding the sneak key (default is ). Sneaking prevents players from falling one or more blocks, making it highly useful for building horizontally outwards over empty space. However, if the sneak button is released while beyond the edge of a block, the player will fall down. Additionally, the player can still dismount blocks while sneaking by jumping over the block's edge.

Note: In current versions of the game, if you are past the edge of the block and you stop sneaking, you will not fall off of that block, as it has been changed so that it will not put you past the block, but only at the very edge of that block.

In Creative mode, the player flies at 10.88(±0.06) blocks per second.

Gameplay HUD
The onscreen heads-up display (HUD) consists of the player's health bar, hunger bar, experience bar, and hotbar. The armor rating bar appears above the health bar if the player is wearing armor and the oxygen bar appears if the player is submerged in water. The HUD also contains the crosshair, and held object (or fist). The HUD can also be toggled by.

Experience
Beta 1.8 introduced the ability to gain experience points via experience orbs when killing mobs. However, experience points and levelling was not yet utilized in the game until the fourth pre-release of version beta 1.9. The current level is indicated by a green number above the HUD, and the experience points can be used to enchant weapons, tools or armor with different useful attributes and skills (see enchanting table.) In Version 1.4 and beyond, Anvils require experience to use.

The level increases by obtaining enough experience points. All levels and experience are lost upon death, but can be partially restored by picking up the experience orbs at the place of death.

Since Minecraft 1.3 experience is also obtained through activities such as mining, smelting (experience is only given when already-smelted items are taken out of the furnace), fishing, and animal breeding.

Modes

 * In Survival mode, the player is able to place and destroy blocks, and use all tools available. The player has limited health (heart icons), hunger (drumstick icons), and oxygen (bubble icons) and it takes time to break blocks.
 * In Creative mode, the player has the ability to fly by double tapping the key and to place infinite number of blocks, but with limited use of crafting and tools. The player cannot take damage (except from falling into the Void, or, with cheats enabled, typing the command "/kill"), has no hunger and has unlimited oxygen, and breaking blocks is instantaneous.
 * In Hardcore mode, the player cannot respawn and the difficulty level is locked on hard mode. (If playing on a hardcore multiplayer server, the player is automatically banned from that server when they die.)
 * In Adventure mode, there are no changes from Survival mode aside from being unable to break blocks without the correct tool. The gamemode can only be played by having cheats enabled and typing the command or, , or opening a multiplayer (including LAN) world.

Customization
Users can change their character's skins; this can be done on the Preferences page of Minecraft.net by uploading a PNG image file, which will then replace the default skin.

The Xbox 360 Edition has a separate default skin for each player. The ability to change that skin is currently now available using the Change Skin option in the game and Skin Packs 1 through 4 have been released. Skin packs that have now been removed from Xbox Live include the Summer of Arcade Skin Pack, the Halloween Charity Skin Pack, and the Festive Skin Pack.

In the Pocket Edition, the player uses the default skin, and it can only be changed by changing the char.png in the game's files (on iDevices, one needs to jailbreak to change the skin due to Apple's limitations). (Tutorial for jailbroken iDevices)

History
Before Alpha 1.0.14, the walking animation for the player was different; the player swung their arms wildly to their sides while walking as can be seen in the file archives, and in a video of Minecraft Classic from 2009 as well as in the video Zombie Town by Notch, which features the removed human mob. This animation is still used in Classic.

After the Beta update, the default texture for the player was replaced with a beardless version. The bearded version is still obtainable by downloading the reference skin. The bearded version can often be mistaken for a smiley face.

Before the Adventure Update, the armor bar had appeared in the position that the hunger bar is currently at now.

The player can jump one block high, and two blocks long (in Classic, three blocks long). Since Beta 1.8 Pre-release 1, the player can jump 4 blocks horizontally if sprinting.

The player did not have an experience or hunger bar before 1.8 pre1.

Before Minecraft RC2, when the player was damaged, he would make a deep "Ooh!" sound which represented the player's response when hurt. However, this sound suggested that the player was male, which was not consistent with/representative of female player skins, so Mojang changed the sound to make it more gender-neutral, and, as of RC2, any physical damage will play a flesh impact sound, and damage from falling would play sounds like bones breaking.

Trivia

 * The player's eye level (According to coordinates while pressing ) is 1.62 meters. Since his eyes are 29 pixels above his feet, leaving 3 pixels above his eyes (.17m), Steve is approximately 1.79 meters tall (5'10"). This seems to be confirmed by the game's code that shows Steve's hitbox being 1.8m tall and 0.6m wide.
 * Zombies wear the same clothing as Steve. This has led to the discussion whether zombies are actually the dead bodies of past Steves.
 * The player is right handed as they hold weapons, like swords, in their right hand. But they are left eye dominant, meaning they shoot left handed by holding the stock of a bow in their right hand. An easy way of seeing this is by charging a bow and pressing.
 * Steve is featured as a Micro Mob along with a creeper in the LEGO set 21102 LEGO Minecraft Micro World.
 * The player seems to have peripheral vision. Lights and lit objects are more visible near the edges of the display.
 * Steve is also an unlockable character in the Steam version of the game Super Meat Boy under the name "Mr. Minecraft". He has shorter jump height than other characters, and can mine squares from the level and place them as platforms.
 * Steve's head is an unlockable helmet in the Xbox Arcade game, Hybrid.
 * Steve's head is a wearable item in the game Borderlands 2.
 * Steve's head is able to be bought in the flash game "Fantasy Online", under the name "Minehead".
 * Steve's terminal velocity is 162 km/h (100 mph), less than the average human's, about 190 km/h (120 mph).
 * The Player appears to be very strong, being able to carry an entire inventory of gold blocks, weighing about 73,525,046.288256 pounds.
 * Upon death, the player has the same death animation as any other mob, which is keeling over to the side and disappearing into a cloud of smoke (while viewed in third-person view). However, this animation is client-side, and cannot be seen by other players.  If another player kills you, you will see yourself keel over and disappear, while the other player will just see you disappear while standing, as if you teleported away.