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.

Overview
The inventory is opened and closed by pressing ( on the Xbox 360 & Xbox One,  on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4,  on the Wii U & Nintendo Switch, and ••• on mobile devices). This key can be changed from the in-game options menu. The inventory can also be closed with ( on the Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U and Nintendo Switch,  on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4, and &times; on mobile devices).

The inventory is saved upon exiting a world or server, so the player retains exactly the same items upon re-entering the world or server.

Slots
The inventory consists of 4 armor slots, 27 storage slots, 9 hotbar slots, and an off-hand slot. Items in the hotbar slots can be selected during play using the keyboard (keys –) or mouse wheel and placed or wielded with the mouse buttons.

Most items can stack up to a maximum of 64 in one slot. Some items cannot stack, notably anything with a durability attribute (weapons, armor, and tools except for clocks and compasses), filled buckets, and potions. Certain items, such as snowballs, empty buckets, eggs, signs, hanging signs, honey bottles, banners, written books, ender pearls, and armor stands can stack to only 16.

In Survival or Adventure mode, there is also a 2×2 crafting grid, which allows any recipe that fits to be crafted but does not offer item storage.

Armor is considered equipped only 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. Held armor can be equipped by it, exchanging it with any armor already occupying that slot.

Items have tooltips if the cursor is hovered over them, displaying their name, enchantments, lore, and some item-specific information such as the version of a written book. Pressing causes items to display additional information, such as their ID, data values, and some item specific information.

Pressing on a block with an inventory, such as a chest, crafting table, or a furnace opens its GUI and allow items to be transferred between the 27 main slots, the 9 hotbar slots, and the block's GUI.

The only available slots for setting attributes are "mainhand", "offhand", "head", "chest", "legs", and "feet".

Recipe book
The recipe book is a mechanic in Minecraft that serves as a catalog of recipes and as a crafting guide. It shows every crafting recipe that the player has had materials for.

Crafting recipes are organized in several different categories, as follows:
 * The first, topmost tab contains every unlocked recipe.
 * The second tab contains tools, weapons, and armor.
 * The third tab contains building materials.
 * The fourth tab contains food and miscellaneous items.
 * The fifth tab contains redstone materials.

In Bedrock Edition, the tabs are:
 * All
 * Nature
 * Items
 * Equipment
 * Construction

Managing inventory
Stacks can be grabbed by pressing left-click on the stack and split by pressing right-click. If the stack is an odd quantity, then it leaves the smaller half (for example, a stack of 7 leaves 3 items in the slot and grabs 4). Conversely, while holding a stack of items in the inventory, left-clicking places the full stack in the slot, and right-clicking place just one item. Double-clicking an item grabs up to a full stack from all the items within the inventory.

Holding and clicking on the item sends the item from the player's hotbar to the main 27 slots, or vice versa. Doing so, while a block's inventory (chest, dispenser, etc.) is open, sends the item stack immediately from the player's inventory into the block that they have open or vice versa. Holding and double-clicking a stack moves all items of that kind between the player's inventory and the block, or their inventory and their hotbar. However, the player's cursor must already be holding an item for this to work. The item held is irrelevant.

Pressing – switches the item hovered over with the cursor with the item in that slot of the hotbar, or moves the item from one to the other if either slot is empty. However pressing does a similar thing but only affects the off-hand slot.

While an item stack is grabbed, dragging items around with the left mouse button divides the stack equally over the dragged-over slots (with the remainder staying on the cursor), while dragging item stacks around with the right mouse button places one of that stack in each dragged-over slot. Regardless of which mouse button is used (left or right), this occurs only if the slot is empty or contains the same item being dragged.

In Creative mode, middle-clicking an item grabs a full stack of the item while leaving the item in the slot, and dragging items with the middle mouse button places a full stack of the item in each dragged-over slot.

Pressing + (hold down while pressing ) in Creative mode saves the current toolbar in the Saved Toolbars tab. It can be loaded with +.

Pressing while the cursor is hovering over an item in the inventory or a container drops one item. Holding and pressing  while hovering over a slot in the inventory or container that has one or more items drops the entire stack of items. While venturing without the full inventory open, the same can be applied for the selected item(s) from the hotbar. Items can also be dropped into the world by clicking outside the inventory window while holding an item with the cursor.

Creative inventory


In Creative mode, the inventory contains most of the blocks and items from Survival mode (with some exceptions, like dragon eggs or command blocks), and a few more (such as spawn eggs and bedrock). The player can pick up blocks from here to use endlessly. In the search tab found above the Creative inventory, players can search for the items they want to use.

Java Edition
A single item can be grabbed also can be used by pressing shift 4 times in a row using left click, increasing with continued left-clicks on that item. Left or right-clicking with an item or stack of items while hovering over any item other than the one held gets rid of the held item. Right-clicking an item also picks up one item, but the second click then puts it back down as opposed to picking up more. Shift-clicking an item grabs a full stack of items. Pressing a number key while hovering over an item instantly places one full stack of that item into the hotbar slot that corresponds with the number.

The Creative inventory screen is sorted into 11 sections: Building Blocks, Colored Blocks, Natural Blocks, Functional Blocks, Redstone Blocks, Tools & Utilities, Combat, Food & Drinks, Ingredients, Spawn Eggs, and Operator Utilities. The latter tab is only available if cheats are enabled and the "Operator Items Tab" option in the controls menu is turned on. Blocks are grouped by material and the same item can appear in multiple tabs. There is also a Search Items, Saved Hotbars and Survival Inventory tab.

Using the search tab, one can access enchanted books of any level, whereas only books of the maximum levels can be found in the Tools and Combat sections.

Bedrock Edition


A stack of items from the Creative inventory can be sent to the active hotbar slot by tapping on that item. This is the case on mobile devices; on other platforms, it sends only one item.

The Creative inventory screen in Bedrock Edition is sorted into 4 sections: Construction, Equipment, Items, and Nature. These 4 tabs appear along the right-hand side of the inventory (along the top in Windows 10 Edition). The Creative inventory screen also includes the usual armor, crafting and Survival inventory tabs along the left (along the bottom in Windows 10). The recipe book is also present.

Some items in the Creative inventory are grouped together in sub-sections with other similar items. These sub-sections can be opened by selecting the item with a + icon next to it. Selecting the sub-section with a - icon closes the subsection. These sub-sections exclusively appear in the individual 4 categories and do not appear in the All tab.

External inventories
Many blocks and some non-player entities have their own inventory-like windows that pop up to allow manipulation of items.

Note: Despite the fact that ender chest, crafting table, beacon, anvil, enchanting table, and villager inventories are actually internal behind the scenes, they are listed here as external because they require clicking on something external.

Mob inventory
Certain mobs have inventory slots, used for various purposes.
 * Villagers have 8 slots, not accessible to the player, which they use to collect various farming-related seeds and foods.
 * Piglins have 8 slots, not accessible to the player, which they use to collect various items.
 * Agents have 27 slots that are accessible to the player by a GUI, and can be accessed by the agent according to its programming.
 * Donkeys and Mules, when equipped with a chest, have 15 inventory slots accessible to the player.
 * Llamas, when equipped with a chest, have 3, 6, 9, 12 or 15 inventory slots, according to their  stat.

Trivia

 * When sleeping or riding a pig, horse, boat or minecart and the inventory screen is accessed, the avatar is shown in the respective position. However, only the player is displayed.
 * In the Item Selection screen, some items and blocks are missing, such as dragon eggs and spawners.
 * The avatar always looks at the mouse cursor while in inventory.
 * The Search Items tab's compass icon spins wildly in the Nether and the End dimensions, acting just like normal compasses and clocks.