This article is about features only in Java Edition. For features removed from a previous update, see Java Edition removed features.
This feature is exclusive to Java Edition.
This is the list of features that are available exclusively to the Java Edition. Bear in mind some of the exclusive features may be added to the Bedrock Edition eventually.
Blocks
- Bonus chest will always contain the same items.
- The top three rows for a large chest correspond to the western or northern half and the bottom three to the southern or eastern half.
- Holding ⇧ Shift and double-clicking while holding an item will move all items of the type clicked on in or out of the chest, to the extent that space is available for them.
- A chest can be "locked" by setting its Lock tag using the
/datacommand. If a chest's Lock tag is not blank, the chest cannot be opened except by players holding an item with the same name as the Lock tag's text. 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/data merge block 0 64 0 {Lock:"Player's Key"}. - On December 24-26, chests, large chests, ender chests and trapped chests have their textures changed to "Christmas chests" which look like wrapped Christmas presents.
- Paintings can be placed on their sides.
- Jumping will vibrate the player, similar to jumping in a 2-block-high space.
- Primed TNT can pass through cobwebs without slowing down if shot through fast enough.
- Support quasi-connectivity.
- Transparency: Partial (Blocks light)
- Mobs smaller than 0.512 cubic block cannot destroy farmland. This includes parrots, rabbits, chickens, bats, ocelots, wolves, cave spiders, endermites, silverfish, baby mobs, small slimes, and small magma cubes.
- The lit furnace block cannot be obtained, even with commands.
- Fuel last differently, see Furnace/table.
- Doesn't drop itself when broken with a Silk Touch tool.
- When obtained as an item and placed, it will spawn pigs by default. It is not available in the creative inventory.
- Piston and Sticky Piston
- Cannot push or pull certain blocks (those with block entities):
- Sticky pistons drop blocks when a single redstone tick pulse occurs, rather than retracting them.
- Redstone wire runs next to pistons instead of curving into them.
- Support quasi-connectivity.
- If the solid block is powered to signal strength 15 the comparator will output 15 no matter the fullness of the container.
- Can't lock redstone repeaters.
- Can have colored text using dyes.
- Wooden slabs can be used as a fuel in furnaces, smelting only 0.75 items per slab.
- Wool can be used as fuel in furnaces, smelting 0.5 items per wool block.
Items
- Bows can be used as fuel, smelting 1.5 items per bow.
- Has a 5% chance of being dropped by any kind of fish.
- Wooden buttons can be used as fuel in furnaces, smelting 0.5 items per button.
- Carpet can be used as a fuel in furnaces, smelting 0.335 items per carpet.
- Leather armor can be dyed by crafting dyes with a piece of leather armor.
- Raw cod can be used to feed ocelots, get cats off of chests, beds, etc., breed cats, and make baby cats grow up faster by 10% of the remaining time. Raw salmon, tropical fish and pufferfish will also work.
- A utility item that reveals crafting recipes to the player when used.
- A ladder can be used as fuel in furnaces, smelting 1.5 items per ladder.
- What makes it a lingering potion as opposed to a splash potion is that their
Potiontag stores aminecraft:lingering_potionitem.
- The name for "Empty Locator Map" (requires compass) in Java Edition is called "Empty Map", which is different from the "Empty Map" that uses no compass in Bedrock Edition.
- Each spawn egg has a different id.
- Trader Llama spawn egg is available.
Mobs
- The detection range of creepers is reduced to half of their normal range (8 blocks) when the player is wearing a creeper mob head.
- Drops 0-1 Cooked cod if killed by fire.
- Endermen cannot normally be attacked with projectiles (including splash potions of harming), as they will always teleport away just before being hit.
- However, they will not teleport if positive potions are thrown at them, including splash potions of regeneration and strength, and will not teleport away from poison potions either.
- If all available blocks within teleport distance are removed or unable to be transported to, it is possible to hit endermen with a projectile, though arrows tend to bounce off dealing no damage on occasion.
- Even though rare, endermen can create iron and snow golems.
- However, they will not teleport if positive potions are thrown at them, including splash potions of regeneration and strength, and will not teleport away from poison potions either.
- There are some blocks that enderman can pick up:
- A giant-sized zombie.
- Has no AI.
- Can only be summoned via commands.
- An unused hostile mob.
- One of the four illagers.
- A hostile bunny based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
- Will attack players.
- Can only be summoned via commands.
- The detection range of skeletons is reduced to half of their normal range (8 blocks) when the player is wearing a skeleton mob head.
- Skeletons holding tipped arrows in their offhand will shoot that type of arrow; these arrows are not consumed.
- Skeletons can animate their bow; they pull it out when becoming hostile and draw it back to fire arrows.
- Squid can drown in lava.
- Zombies will automatically hold any item they come across (except jack o'lanterns).
- Zombies can spawn naturally with a carved pumpkin or a jack o'lantern on Halloween, or if the computer's calendar is set to October 31st.
- On Halloween, if a zombie wearing a carved pumpkin or jack o'lantern is killed using a weapon enchanted with Looting, there will be a chance equivalent to the level of Looting used to drop the carved pumpkin or jack o'lantern, up to a maximum of a 3% chance of a drop.
- The detection range of zombies is reduced to half of their normal range (20 blocks) when the player is wearing a zombie mob head.
- Non-hostile zombified piglins will not prevent a player from sleeping in a bed.
Non-mob entities
- Items take damage from fire and lava.
- Arrows can get visually stuck in players.
- Includes Arrow of Luck.
- Includes Spectral Arrows, imbues the Glowing status effect for 10 seconds.
- Doesn't need a shovel to be crafted.
- A self-propelling minecart with furnace inside. This can only also be found in the Legacy Console Edition.
- A combination of minecarts and monster spawners.
- Can only be obtained via commands.
- When summoned, it will spawn pigs by default.
World generation
- General
- 64-bit world seeds.
- Solid terrain, structures, and biome generation can generate all the way to 2.147 billion blocks (if the hard coded 30 million block limit is removed).
- Terrain can generate above y=128.
- Badlands and Eroded Badlands
- Red Sandstone can generate in regular Badlands and Eroded Badlands.
- Forest and Wooded Hills
- Wolves can spawn in Forest and Wooded Hills biomes.
- Giant Tree Taiga and Giant Tree Taiga Hills
- Black rabbits can spawn in Giant Tree Taiga and Giant Tree Taiga Hills biomes.
- Jungle
- Has more jungle trees.
- Plains, Savanna and variants
- Generate a lot more grass.
- Buffet world type
- A world type which consists of only a single biome. There is also an option to choose between Surface, Floating Islands or Caves.
- Debug Mode world type
- A world type used to test block states, block models, and textures.
- If the player smelts a number of items in the igloo furnace, light generated by it will melt the igloo window, turning the ice into a water source block.
- Igloos always generate with a villager without profession.
- Can generate in Bamboo Jungle and Bamboo Jungle Hills.
- Large Biomes world type
- A world type which has its biome scale set to 6.
- Chunks found in the world spawn point which are not unloaded from the memory, unlike normal chunks.
- They generate in rings with the strongholds evenly spaced around the circle until the total of 128 is reached.
- The 1st ring has 3 strongholds within 1408–2688 of the origin.
- The 2nd ring has 6 strongholds within 4480–5760 of the origin.
- The 3rd ring has 10 strongholds within 7552–8832 of the origin.
- The 4th ring has 15 strongholds within 10624–11904 of the origin.
- The 5th ring has 21 strongholds within 13696–14976 of the origin.
- The 6th ring has 28 strongholds within 16768–18048 of the origin.
- The 7th ring has 36 strongholds within 19840–21120 of the origin.
- The 8th ring has 9 strongholds within 22912–24192 of the origin
- Superflat world type
- Superflat worlds also allow the player to access the End, which generates as in a normal world, by finding a stronghold or by creating an end portal in Creative Mode.
- Villages can generate in superflat worlds.
- Oak and Spruce Trees can generate in Mountains and Gravelly Mountains biomes.
- Oak Trees can generate in Snowy Plains biomes.
- Taiga village armorer generate armor stands.
- By default, a customizable world border will appear to prevent players passing through.
Gameplay
- Uses the advancement system instead of the achievement system.
- Can be used to gain experience.
- The range of breaking blocks is 5 blocks in Creative mode, and 4.5 blocks otherwise.
- The Potion of Luck cannot be brewed, and can only be obtained by commands such as
/give @p minecraft:potion{Potion:"minecraft:luck"} 1, or through the creative inventory.
- Is uncensored.
- The "attack strength" combat mechanic.
- A meter shows up after switching items or attacking.
- Damage done depends on the fullness of the meter, with a quadratic reduction (attack does 20%–100% of normal damage as the meter fills).
- Fills at different rates depending on the new attack speed attribute (see table on the changes to gameplay section for a complete list).
- The haste effect will cause the meter to fill faster.
- Can be displayed next to the hotbar (left or right based on the player's main hand), under the crosshair or turned off.
- A cooldown animation is displayed of the tool slowly being lifted up, when either first switching to it or after attacking.
- A meter shows up after switching items or attacking.
- Play sounds when attacked strongly and weakly, as well as sprint-knockback attacks, sweeping attacks, and critical hits.
- When the player is in third person while suffocating, the view will automatically switch to first person.
- The player will take damage from falling in the void, even in Creative Mode.
- It shows the chunk cache, the memory usage, various parameters, the player's map coordinates and a graph that measures the game's current frame rate.
- The player can enchant any item with any enchantment in creative mode with enchanted books, allowing any applied effects to exhibit themselves.
- Sweeping Edge enchantment.
- Increases sweeping attack damage.
- Hardcore mode
- In this mode, the world is locked to hard difficulty and the player has only one life. Cheats and the bonus chest are unavailable.
- For players, a "You died!" screen (or "Game over!" in Hardcore mode) appears that displays the player's score.
- Death messages are broadcast to everyone upon the death of a player, and to the pet's owner on the death of a pet wolf, cat, or parrot.
- Death message: "<Player> fell from a high place," caused by a fall greater than 5 blocks.
- Screenshots are images taken in-game by pressing the (by default) F2 key or Fn + F2 for Macs and some other keyboards.
- Spectator mode
- A game mode which allows the player to fly around and observe the world without interacting with it in any way.
- Spectator mode can be entered by using the command
/gamemode spectator, dying in hardcore mode, or using F3 + N, or F3 + F4.
- Summary of effects:
| ID | Name | Effect | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | Glowing | Outlines entities (can be seen through blocks) | |
| 26 | Luck | Increases chances of high-quality loot. Cannot be obtained without cheats or creative mode. | |
| 27 | Bad Luck | Reduces chances of high-quality loot. Cannot be obtained without cheats. |
- A feature which display text for sounds in game.
- Has different trades than in Bedrock Edition.
- They are meant to guide newer players who may not know the controls.
Command format
- Data tags are used in commands to specify complex data for players, entities, and some blocks.
- The identifiers are namespaced and all have the "minecraft:" prefix, except when they're modded, in which case it'll have a "modid:" prefix.
- Most selector arguments were renamed and remade, and some behave differently. Others, like
distanceandlevel, support a range (1is exactly one,1..is one or more,..1is one or less, and1..10is between one and ten, inclusive).
Commands
- Gives, removes, or checks player advancements.
/ban
- Adds player to banlist.
- Adds IP address to banlist.
- Displays banlist.
/data
- Modifies the data tag of a block or entity.
- Starts or stops a debugging session.
- Sets the default game mode.
- The maximum experience that the player can earn from the
/experiencecommand is 2,147,483,647 levels.
- Removes entries from the banlist.
- Opens single-player world to local network.
- Gives or takes player recipes.
- Saves the server to disk.
- Disables automatic server saves.
- Enables automatic server saves.
/seed
- Displays the world seed.
- Sets the time before idle players are kicked.
/stop
- Stops a server.
- Sets a trigger to be activated.
- Manages server whitelist.
- Manages the world border.
General
- Smooth Lighting has three settings: minimum, maximum, or off, and can be changed by accessing Video options from the Options menu.
- Uses a special Minecraft Launcher.
- Able to load the user's skin on the launcher.
- This launcher is able to play previous editions of Minecraft all the way back to 2009 (That is, if the player downloads the old launcher due to a lack of sound support in the new launcher).
- Able to load up custom/modified versions of Minecraft such as Optifine, and Forge.
- The types of particles and their technical names are displayed below. Particle names in italics are shown when using the "Minimal" particles setting.
| Particle name | Block/entity/event | Image |
|---|---|---|
| enchanted_hit | Hitting a mob with a tool enchanted with Sharpness, Smite (undead) or Bane of arthropods (arthropods). | File:Particle magicCrit.png |
| underwater | When underwater. | File:Particle suspended.png |
| sweep_attack | Perform a sweep attack with a sword. | File:Particle sweepAttack.png |
| damage_indicator | When an entity is damaged significantly. | File:Particle damageIndicator.png |
- To save space, some recipes in the recipe book are grouped together and can be selected by pressing the right button on the mouse.
- A game feature that allows players to track how many times they have completed certain tasks.
