Chest

A chest is a block that stores items.

Obtaining
Chests can be obtained by crafting, or by breaking previously-placed or generated chests and 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, and villages. Minecarts with chests, which can be broken to produce chests (and minecarts) are naturally generated in abandoned mine shafts.

Bonus chest


A bonus chest will generate in the player's spawn if the "Bonus Chest" option is enabled in the World Options menu. The bonus chest can't be enabled in hardcore mode.

The bonus chest acts as 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 the player survive early on 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.

Each seed's Bonus Chest will always contain the same items, except in the console edition, where the loot is generated separately.

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

The bonus chest in the console edition may contain any of the above items, except acacia wood. It also may contain the following items:

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.

Two adjacent chests will join to create a "large chest" (aka "double chest"). Chests cannot be placed horizontally next to a large chest, or where they would create a large chest next to a single chest (for example, a chest cannot be placed horizontally between two other chests), but chests can be placed above or below a large chest. A trapped chest or large trapped chest can be placed next to a large chest without restriction, allowing close-packing of alternating single or large chests and trapped chests.

Chests cannot 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 single chest has 27 slots of inventory space, and a large chest has 54 slots of inventory space. In a large chest, the top three rows in the interface correspond to the western or northern chest block and the bottom three to the southern or eastern chest block.

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. By holding and double-clicking while holding an item, all items of a type clicked on will be moved into or out of the chest. To exit the chest GUI, use the control.

A chest will not open if there is an opaque block or ocelot above it. Since chests are transparent, they can be stacked on top of one another while still allowing the chests 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 of the large chest depending on its orientation (the half with the lowest coordinate in the appropriate axis).

A chest can be "locked" by setting the chest's  tag. 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. A chest's  tag can be set or unset with the blockdata command. 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.

Christmas chest
On December 24, 25, and 26, chests and large chests have their textures changed to christmas chests.

Data values
Every chest has an ID name of  and is further defined by its block data and block entity. A chest also has a block state which is expected to replace the functionality of block data in a future version.

Block data
A chest's block data stores its facing:

Block entity
Every chest has a Chest block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the chest.