List of April Fools’ jokes

This page serves to list all of the April Fools jokes and give a summary of their features and changes.

2010
In 2010, Notch wrote that he had planned to make a video announcing “Minecraft 4D” for April Fools', but ran out of time due to moving into a new home.

2011
In 2011, a fake "Minecraft store" website was created. This was linked to by the locked chest, a block which was implemented for this purpose, as it was implied that keys had to be bought from said store to unlock these chests.

2013
During 2013, Mojang released a pre-release for a fake future version containing numerous joke features to various YouTubers.

2014
A post was added to Mojang Studios' blog for the joke.

This caused all players' current skin to be replaced with the various villager skins, and caused users to be unable to change their skins unless they modified the launcher file. Different career villager skins were used, including the then-unused green robe of a nitwit villager.

In-game, villagers still acted the same, but they made different sounds. All noises were replaced with the sound effects of Element Animation's "T.E.A.V.S.R.P" (The Element Animation Villager Sounds Resource Pack). Mojang Studios also added in-game villager music. The title screen music contains a parody of the Game of Thrones theme, due to the new series starting in early April and also because of its being included in the original trailer for "T.E.A.V.S.R.P." Jeb also claimed the villager got his Twitter account.

Grumm [ released the villager skins on Reddit] on April 1, 2014. There were seven variants, including a base skin.

An updated version of T.E.A.V.S.R.P., complete with the new music, [ was released by Element Animation] on April 2, 2014.

Soon afterward, Element Animation released [ this video], and the skins and the sounds were reverted to the way they were before on April 2, 2014.

One of the Pocket Edition developers, Johan Bernhardsson, also shared an image of the player bouncing a basketball in-game.

2015
15w14a was released as an April Fools' joke for version 1.10, when the next update was supposed to be 1.9. This "update" is called the Love and Hugs Update. There was also a QR code written in the snow that generated in a superflat world that, when scanned, reads "Minecraft 1.9: The Combat Update". Swords were replaced with "hearts". The only world name available was "There can only be one". Survival was called "Existence". Players were also unable to take damage from The Void.

2016


1.RV-Pre1 was released as an April Fools' joke for the update 1.RV. This "update" was called the "Trendy Update".

2017
The Mine & Craft Digital Leisure Device, a "game console" resembling a Game & Watch, was announced on the Minecraft website.

2018


A version of Minecraft's textures was released for. The new textures are available in versions of Java Edition 1.12.x and versions from Java Edition 17w43a to Java Edition 18w11a. It was announced that all editions of Minecraft would get the new version of textures.

The new textures are the original textures using 8-bit color, leading to a drastic reduction in detail. The splash text for this day also shows any of the following:


 * Cleaner!
 * Simplified!
 * Perfected!amazing
 * Art directed! (by robots)
 * Machine learned textures!
 * Not blurry!
 * Not bubbly!
 * Not cartoony!
 * Photorealistic!
 * Hand-painted!

The textures and the splashes were reverted to the way they were before on April 2, 2018. However, this update cannot be reactivated by setting the computer's date to April 1, 2018.

For block and item renders of these textures, see Category:April Fools 2018. Archive as a resource pack.

2019
An April Fools' version officially called "Minecraft 3D" was released, containing many references to gaming in the 1990s, primarily Doom.

2020
Snapshot 20w14∞ was released, adding 2,147,483,647 dimensions that can be accessed by throwing a book and quill that was not specially customized or written book into a nether portal.

2021
Minecraft Plus! for Windows, a screensaver collection that references screensavers from old versions of Windows, was announced on the Minecraft website.

2022
The update was released on April 1, 2022. It removes the inventory, and players can right click a mob or block to pick it up and throw it.

2023
For April Fool's Day 2023, fire randomly appears on the Minecraft launcher. Passing the mouse cursor over the flames extinguishes them.

Mojang Studios also published snapshot 23w13a_or_b, titled "The Vote Update", a few hours later. The gameplay of this update revolves around a voting system, where the player chooses from many possible scenarios that will change the state of the world.

Additionally, on the Minecraft website, two chickens will appear on the bottom left and right of the page. Clicking on both of them will cause them to breed and spawn numerous chickens, covering the entire page.