Chest

Chests are blocks that store items. A single chest can store up to 27 stacks of items or blocks and can hold from 0 to 1728 blocks. A large chest is created by placing two chest blocks adjacent to each other, however, large chests cannot be created directly beside each other. Large chests have 54 storage slots and open as a single chest with six rows of slots. A large chest can hold from 0 to 3456 blocks. The top three rows in the interface correspond to the eastern or northern chest block and the bottom three to the southern or western chest block.

Chests will face towards the player when placed. Destruction of a chest will drop all of its contents where the chest was destroyed. If one half of a large chest is destroyed, the corresponding items from the destroyed chest block will be dropped and the remaining chest block will continue to function as a small chest. The items in a large chest are organized so that the bottom half of the inventory is concentrated into the South or East side of the large chest, depending on how the chest is oriented.

If an opaque block is placed on top of a chest, the player will not be able to open it.

A chest can be renamed using an anvil which can be helpful to sort chests and the contents within.

Naturally generated
Chests occur naturally in dungeons (where they are guarded by a monster spawner), in strongholds, in jungle temples, desert temples, nether fortresses, and in NPC villages. Chests also spawn naturally if the Bonus Chest option is enabled in the World Options menu.

From minecarts with chests
Breaking a minecart with chest drops a chest, as well as a minecart and the contents of the storage minecart.

Usage
A chest is opened by pressing the Use key (right-click by default) while looking at the chest, and closed by pressing or the inventory key ( by default). Items in chests can be quickly transferred to and from a player's inventory by shift-clicking on the item; this will move all items in the slot to a free slot in the inventory and vice versa. For more control, all the items in a slot can be picked up with left-click, or half the items with right-click; then use left-click to place all items being moved, or right-click to place a single item at a time. Another way of transferring items from the hot-bar is to use the numbers associated with those spaces whilst the cursor is on the chest interface. This is also the same with transferring items to and from the hot-bar from within the hot-bar.

Bonus chest


A bonus chest will generate in the player's spawn if the Bonus Chest option is enabled in the World Options menu. It can't be activated in Hardcore Mode.

Rather than being filled with items one might normally consider "bonus", the bonus chest is more of a starter kit. It generates only once in newly-created worlds in which it was enabled, and is filled with basic items that may help beginning players survive their first night(s) and get them started gathering resources and building shelter more quickly. Up to four Torches will spawn around the chest in adjacent horizontal and vertical squares. Of course, the torches and the chest itself are quite useful to a beginning player!

This option is recommended for new players who are unfamiliar with the game's mechanics, and may also be useful to seasoned players who don't want to waste time punching Trees etc. to obtain starting resources.

Bonus chests contain up to ten item stacks, chosen from the following list:

Each world seed's Bonus Chest will always contain the same items. Due to a bug whereby existing blocks at the spawn point are not altered to allow ideal chest placement conditions, a Bonus Chest will sometimes not spawn, resulting in either total loss of the chest, or with its items appearing as loose resources on the ground. The same issue may result in lost Torches.

However, in the Xbox 360 Edition, a bug exists where bonus chests reappear after reloading the world after breaking the chest. This can lead to the creation of up to nonuple chests. (However, when going higher than 3, some chests will be invisible and will have no opening sound)

Trivia

 * An ocelot/cat or any other opaque block sitting on top of a chest will prevent it from opening.
 * Chests cannot be pushed or pulled by pistons.
 * On December 24 and December 25, chests have textures of presents. The presents are red with a yellow bow (normal) or are green with a white bow (large).
 * You can place a painting on the wall directly behind a chest, but it will pop off after a short while.
 * In April 2011, a Locked Chest was implemented until April 5th as an April Fools joke and was also referred to as "Steve Co. Supply Crate", referencing Valve's "Team Fortress 2".
 * When you break a chest, it has the same particle effect as Wooden Planks.
 * Opening chests placed adjacent to a dispenser will trigger the dispenser.
 * Being slightly shorter than a full block, chests can be used for traps and one-way doors similarly to Soul Sand. However, without the slowing effect of Soul Sand, the traps will be less secure; monsters may be knocked out by arrows or other monsters.