Chest

Chests are blocks that can store items. They have three texture faces - one on the top and bottom, one on the front, and one on the other remaining sides. A single chest can store up to 27 stacks of Items or Blocks. A large chest is created by placement of two adjacent chest blocks. Large chests have 54 storage slots and open as a single chest with six rows of slots. The top three correspond to the eastern or northern chest block and the bottom three to the southern or western chest block.

To open a chest, right-click on it. After opening a chest all items in a slot 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.

Destruction of a chest containing items will drop all of its contents in the surrounding area. If one half of a large chest is destroyed, the corresponding items from the destroyed chest block 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.

Chests can occur naturally in dungeons and are often guarded by a Monster Spawner. In rare instances, chests can also occur inside walls and under floors in dungeons. The contents of these hidden chests are similar to naturally occurring dungeon chests.

The front of the chest (with the latch) will face away from any adjacent solid blocks, or face west if placed independent of other blocks. The viewpoint of players has no effect on the orientation of placed chests. Chests often change in appearance when surrounding blocks are added or modified; this does not affect the use of the chest.

Chests can be surrounded by other blocks on all sides, but the top must have a one block clearance (exceptions to this exist, see Bugs below). Chest blocks embedded directly into floors function normally.

Crafting
A chest is crafted from eight wooden planks, as shown below:

A chest can be combined with a Minecart to make a Storage Minecart, as shown below:

Wall Mounted Chests
Placing a stair block over a chest can give the illusion of a solid wall

Bugs

 * In 1.8, standing in a specific spot next to a chest would cause it go completely pitch black.


 * In 1.8, when opening a chest in rapid succestion from closing it, the chest would remain open.


 * Some chests in a 1.7 save file will turn black when opened in 1.8 but will still work.


 * It is possible to attach torches above and to all sides of a chest, by attempting to place them on a piece of glass (or other block a torch cannot be placed on, such as a sign or another torch) above or under the chest. Since torches cannot be attached to glass, it gets moved to the nearest available block, onto the chest. The glass can be removed after the process.


 * Chests usually require a space of air above it to be used, as blocks directly above will prevent the chest from being opened. Certain blocks placed over the chest still allow the chest to open. These are:
 * Liquids: Water and Lava.
 * Plants: Leaves (On Fancy graphics), Cactus (With a water source block on top), and Farmland.
 * Translucent Blocks: Glass, Slabs, Stairs, Monster Spawner, Snow, Ice, Fence, Cake, and Beds.
 * Non-Blocks: Torch, Redstone Torch, Redstone Wire, Redstone Repeater, Pressure Plates, Lever, Ladders, Rails, and Sign.


 * In Beta 1.5_01, if you are killed while having the chest GUI open and you transfer items from the chest to your inventory after you are killed, those items will be lost.


 * In Beta 1.6.2, Beta 1.6.3, and Beta 1.6.4, when trying to shift-click an item stack into a filled chest, you'll get a dirt screen, with gray text saying "Saving Chunk", and eventually crashing the game.
 * When you re-enter the game, it seems as you've lost 2 hearts of life.
 * This glitch occurs with single and double chests.


 * Chests can be placed near lava and catch fire. However, they will not burn and after several seconds the fire will extinguish, leaving the chest intact.


 * When underground in near darkness, movement causes crates to flash into full brightness then out, even though it doesn't effect the area around it.

Trivia

 * A special version of the Chest, Locked Chest, was used as an April Fool's joke on April 1st, 2011. It was removed April 5, 2011.
 * Previously, if a chest was placed next to a large chest it would attempt to "connect" with the large one, changing its texture to that of half a large chest. However, this is purely visual; they would still act like two separate chests, but as seen in the picture, you could connect multiple chests together and get a glitched "Huge Chest". Additionally, if one attempted to open a chest connected on all four sides, the game froze and the client crashed. This was partially fixed in Beta 1.1_02, however it was still possible if the chest was not placed horizontally adjacent to a large chest or if placed in the location of a fluid. The game would no longer freeze, but instead display a graphically glitched, fully functional chest screen. This bug was completely fixed in Beta 1.5, however any chest previously created in this way still functions.
 * Unlike most other wooden blocks, chests are not flammable.
 * In worlds generated in an Alpha version of Minecraft, chests placed by the player will have a different behaviour than the currently known one in Beta. The chest will be placed facing towards the player (with the latch in front), instead of using the current algorithm being that the chest will face away from any adjacent solid blocks, or face west if placed independently of other blocks. This particular behaviour takes place on any Alpha world, even if played on a Beta version of the game.

Future

 * In Beta 1.8, Chests will have an opening animation and a 3D lock, and will be visually smaller than a full-size block. Chests will also no longer be forced to face west when placed independently of other blocks.