Shears

Shears are a tool used to obtain Wool from Sheep, collect Red Mushrooms from Mooshrooms, get String from Cobwebs (with a Silk Touch enchantment the actual Cobweb), destroy Wool Blocks more efficiently, harvest placeable Tall Grass, Large Tall Grass, Ferns, Large Ferns, Dead Bushes, Vines and to safely remove Tripwire without creating a Redstone pulse.

Pocket Edition
Used to obtain wool from sheep and to harvest placeable Leaf blocks.

Uses

 * Primary use:
 * Shears are the most efficient way to get Wool from Sheep, because when sheared, sheep drop 1-3 wool blocks, as opposed to just killing a sheep, because then it can only drop 1 wool block. In addition, sheep will grow more wool once sheared, giving you another chance to shear them. Sheep can also be colored with a Dye before shearing, allowing the player to acquire colored wool instead of the natural colors of sheep wool (white, light grey, grey, black, brown and pink).


 * Secondary uses:
 * By using shears on Leaves you can obtain placeable leaf blocks that do not decay. Without shears, destroying a leaf block has a chance of it dropping a sapling or an apple.
 * Shears can also be used to harvest Grass, Ferns, Large Tall Grass, Large Ferns, Dead Bushes and Vines. Note that when harvesting dead bushes it doesn't use up durability on the shears.


 * Other uses:
 * Cobwebs can be destroyed by shears in half a second, dropping one piece of String. With a Silk Touch enchantment the cobweb drops the actual cobweb block.
 * You can get Red Mushrooms from a Mooshroom, which then turns the mooshroom back into a normal Cow.
 * You can use shears to break Wool faster, which doesn't make the shears lose durability.
 * Breaking a tripwire with shears doesn't create a Redstone pulse.

When using an Anvil, you can give shears various enchants for improved capabilities. To shear a sheep in the Pocket Edition, you must touch and hold down on the screen, similar to breaking a block, instead of tapping the sheep.

Speed and durability
The following table shows various things about shears. Colors indicate what will be dropped when the block is broken:
 * White: The original block.
 * Blue: The Block's normal drop (i.e. string, seeds, sapling, apple).
 * Red: Nothing.

Trivia

 * Shears are the only tool except the sword that has a specific right-click action (shearing sheep and mooshrooms) and left-click action (collecting leaves, vines, string from cobwebs, dead bushes, and tall grass).
 * Also shears are the only tool that are used to break blocks that only have one version (made with iron ingots); as opposed to pickaxes, hoes, axes and shovels that can be made out of wooden planks, cobblestone, iron ingots, gold ingots and diamonds.
 * Hitting a wool block with shears will break it quickly, but not damage the shears themselves. This also applies to a limited number of other blocks which can be collected with Silk Touch-enchanted shears, that last including glass and glowstone, making Silk Touch-enchanted shears invaluable for moving these materials.
 * If leaves are sheared with shears, they will not drop saplings, unlike using a tool with a Silk Touch enchantment on leaves, which will occasionally drop saplings.