Player

The Player is the character played by the players. He is seen wearing a blue shirt and a pair of jeans, but this can be changed (see customizing). He is known as "Steve?" (Notch puts the question mark because the name "Steve" is still not confirmed to be his real name).

Health
The player has 10 hearts. When the player's hunger bar is over 9 points, his health will slowly regenerate by half a heart every five seconds. The hunger bar depletes slowly when the player does things like running, sprinting, jumping and mining, and it can be refilled by eating food.

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(±0.01) blocks per second. This means that he can walk a total of 5160 blocks in one minecraft day.

As of Beta 1.8, the player is able to sprint, draining the food bar considerably 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 less left in the hunger meter. Sprinting is activated by double-tapping the forward button (default is "w" key) then holding it.

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

Gameplay HUD
The HUD consists of the user's health bar, hunger bar, experience bar, and hotbar. The armor condition bar appears above the health bar (as of 1.8) if the player is wearing any armor. before 1.8 the armor appears in the same position as the hunger bar is currently at. The HUD also contains the reticule, version and if applicable, the unlicensed copy note.

Experience
Beta 1.8 introduced the ability to gain experience points via experience orbs when killing mobs. However, experience points and leveling was not yet utilized in the game until the fourth pre-release of version beta 1.9. Your level is indicated by a green number and your exp can be used to enchant weapons and tools with skills using an enchanting table. You will level-up by getting enough experience, and you will lose all your experience when you die.

Modes

 * In survival mode, The Player is able to place and destroy blocks, and use all tools available. The player has limited health and oxygen (10 hearts/bubbles) and it takes time to break blocks.
 * In creative mode, the player has the ability to fly by double tapping the space bar and to place infinite number of blocks, but with no use of crafting or tools. The player has unlimited health and oxygen, and breaking blocks is instantaneous.
 * In hardcore mode, you're playing survival, but you can't respawn and the difficulty level is locked on Hardcore.

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

While you can use a female custom skin, there is only one player model, and a male sound set. This is due to the fact that when creating a skin, you are only editing the textures of the player model, and not the properties themselves. There are currently no known official plans to implement female character models or sounds.

Bugs

 * When you get out of a boat sometimes your right arm can still have the pose it did when it was in the boat.
 * When you get out of bed you may be in the position you were in while sleeping.

Trivia

 * 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 at minecraft.net/profile, and is still used in offline mode.
 * Given that the densest substance available in the game is gold, the player is capable of carrying 44,518,667 kg if he fills the entire inventory with gold blocks and wears a full set of gold armour. However, given that the lightest substance in the game is feathers, and presuming that a feather weighs approx 4g, the player cannot carry any more after reaching a burden of 4.6 kg.
 * The player's eye level (According to coordinates while pressing the F3 button) is 1.62 meters, if every block is assumed to be one meter tall. Using some math, this means that the player height is approximately 1.89m (=6.2 feet).
 * The player can jump about one block high, and about two blocks long (in Classic, three blocks long). However, the player is able to jump 4 blocks while sprinting as of the 1.8 update and in the future, certain potions can increase the length and height of each jump.
 * Before Alpha 1.0.14, the walking animation for the player was different; the player swung their arms wildly to their sides while walking. This animation is still used in Classic.
 * In the Pocket Edition, the Player's default name is Steve.