Item (entity)

Not to be confused with Drops.

Item

Health points	5HP[note 1]
Hitbox size	Height: 0.25 blocks Width: 0.25 blocks

Items are "dropped" blocks or items (non-block resources) that appear in the world, rather than being in the inventory of a player or block entity; they are a type of entity.

Appearance

Items have two possible appearances, generally corresponding to whether the item appears as a 3D or 2D shape in a player's inventory screens. 3D items appear as their 3D shape, miniaturized to about ¹⁄₄ scale (some blocks, such as heads, may have different scaling factors), while 2D items appear as ¹⁄₂ scale with all the pixels extruded into cubes. Both types slowly rotate and bob up and down; this is merely a visual effect, the item itself does not actually rotate or bob up and down.

Item entities that represent a stack of more than one item appear as several items stuck together. Stacks of 1 appear as one item, 2-16 as two items, 17-32 as three, 33-48 as four, and 49+ as five.

If the item's model bounding box depth (Z size) is more than 0.0625, a random offset of up to ±0.15 blocks is applied on each axis independently, for each copy of the model except one. Otherwise, the first copy has a Z offset of -(depth * 1.5 * (number of copies - 1) / 2), and each subsequent copy has an additional Z offset of depth * 1.5, random offset of up to ±0.075 blocks on the X and Y axes.

The item model hovers up and down in a sine wave with a period of π seconds, with a Y offset between 0.0625 and 0.2625 blocks. The item rotates at 1 radian per second (approximately 57.3 degrees per second). The spin and the vertical bob share a uniformly random phase offset.

Behavior

Item entities come from many sources. Some common ones are:

• The death of a mob or player.
• A block that is mined by a player, destroyed by an explosion, or washed away by water.
• An inventory item tossed by pressing the drop item key (default Q on PC, on Xbox, / on Nintendo Switch, on PlayStation) or dragging a stack outside of an inventory window.
  • In the mobile versions of Bedrock Edition, items in the hotbar can be dropped by pressing on the item's slot. The entire stack is dropped.
• A container (other than an ender chest or a shulker box) that is destroyed while holding items inside.

The player may be thought of as having an "item pickup" box that surrounds their hitbox. This pickup box extends 1 additional block to the horizontal sides, and 0.5 additional blocks up and down. Any item whose hitbox intersects with the pickup box can be picked up. The pickup box is inclusive on the horizontal sides (for distance less than or equal to 1), and exclusive on the vertical sides (distance less than 0.5). When the player's hitbox size changes, such as when crouching or sleeping, the pickup box size changes with it.

Once an item entity's hitbox overlaps with the player's pickup box, it can transfer its items. As many items as can fit in the player inventory, excluding the armor slots and the off-hand slot, are transferred. If any item is transferred, a "plopping" sound is played. If all items are transferred, the items appear to move into the center of the player. The item entity never physically moves, however, which means it can appear to go through lava and blocks in its path. This can happen through blocks that are thinner than a full block, but also through the shared edge of two full blocks. Unlike experience orbs, multiple item entities can be picked up simultaneously. Dropped items have a delay of 10 ticks (half a second) between appearing and being able to be picked up, or 40 ticks (2 seconds) if thrown by a player, dolphin, or fox.

Items do not collide with other entities (except boats, boats with chests, happy ghasts, and shulkers) and are only moved or stopped by blocks.

Like other entities, items can be pushed by flowing water and bubble columns, pushed by a piston, launched by a moving slime block, stuck to a honey block, or caught in a cobweb. Items move at faster speeds if ice is placed under the flowing water. When in still water, items float slowly up to the surface.

In Java Edition, items can be reeled by fishing rods, costing 3 durability.

If an item is within a solid block, it then flies out one of the unobstructed sides, or out of the top of the block if surrounded by solid blocks on all sides. It does this even if the space below is unoccupied; therefore, it is possible to recover an item dropped in a small pit by blocking up the pit.

Items visually disappear when the player is about 16 blocks away from them, and reappear when they get closer. In Java Edition, this distance can be adjusted by the "Entity Distance" slider in video settings.

Unlike most entities, items cannot be spectated in Spectator mode without use of the /spectate command.

When an item entity drops within the pickup box of two separate players simultaneously on a multiplayer server, the player who joined first automatically gets the item. If the item is tossed by one of said players, the other player is prioritized.

Mob pickup

Some mobs, such as zombies and skeletons, have a chance to spawn being able to pick up weapons and armor depending on difficulty.

Merging

Two stackable items of the same type can merge together into a single item entity if the resulting stack size does not exceed that item's maximum stack size and if one is within a 0.5×0.25×0.5 square bounding box around the other item. The item with the greater stack gets its item count increased while the smaller or equal that is processed first is despawned.

Items usually attempt to merge every 40 game ticks (2 seconds) but items moving across block boundaries can be processed every 2 game ticks (0.1 seconds). Items also attempt to merge instantly upon teleporting.

Damage

Items cannot be attacked by players or mobs; attempting to do so simply hits through them. However, they take damage and disappear from environmental or block-based damage such as explosions, fire, lava, and contact with cacti. Items have essentially no health, so they are destroyed by the slightest damage, though if set on fire they may remain for a few seconds before disappearing. Nether stars are immune to explosions, and netherite-based items and tools are immune to fire and float on top of lava. Also, some blocks that regularly damage mobs, such as magma blocks, campfires, sweet berry bushes, wither roses, and powder snow, do not damage items.

Despawning

Items despawn after 6000 game ticks (5 minutes) of being in a loaded, entity-ticking chunk; this is affected by the player's simulation distance. If two item stacks merge, the timer is set to the item that has more time remaining. The 5-minute timer is paused when the chunk is unloaded or no longer processing entities. In Bedrock Edition, Nether stars do not despawn. In Java Edition, Nether stars dropped by a dying wither despawn after 10 minutes, but they despawn after 5 minutes if dropped by any other means.

Items that fall into the void immediately despawn when they fall below world minimum build height - 64 (Y=-128 in the Overworld, Y=-64 in the Nether and the End).

Sounds

Java Edition:
Item Entities use the Ambient/Environment sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Bedrock Edition:

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Translation key
Item	item	entity.minecraft.item

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Numeric ID	Translation key
Item	item	64	entity.item.name

Entity data

Dropped items have entity data associated with them that contain various properties of the entity.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

History

Java Edition

Java Edition Classic
August 4, 2009							In the first public mention of item entities, "this early video of Minecraft (Classic 0.24) by Notch", they were referred to as "resources".[2]
August 4, 2009							Items were showcased by Notch in a blog post.
0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST							Added items to the game.
							Items currently take the form of destroyed blocks.
							Items currently pulse white (similar to the selection cursor).[2]
							Instead of appearing as shrunken down blocks, items use pixels the same size as block pixels.
							In addition to pulsating white, item entities rotate as well as move up and down.
Java Edition Indev
0.31			20091231-2147				Dropped items don't spin and don't glow white anymore.
							Dropped items now appear as shrunken down blocks.
							Items no longer prevent the placement of blocks but instead are moved to the nearest chunk. ​
							Non-block items added (as sprites); they now rotate to face the player.
?							Dropped items now spin again.
Java Edition Beta
1.8			Pre-release				A bug causing many item forms of blocks to be displayed at the 1⁄2 scale rather than 1⁄4 was fixed. The following items were affected by this at least at one point: Cactus Oak Trapdoor Oak Fence Oak Pressure Plate Stone Pressure Plate Stone Button Oak Stairs Cobblestone Stairs Snow (unobtainable at the time) Farmland (unobtainable) Cake (unobtainable version) Nether Portal (unobtainable) Water (unobtainable, before becoming 2D in Java Edition Infdev 20100615) Lava (unobtainable, before becoming 2D in Java Edition Infdev 20100615)
Java Edition
1.3.1			12w15a				Items that are moved into the same location now combine into stacks instead of remaining independent entities.
1.4.2			12w34a				Items, like other entities, can now travel through portals.
			12w34b				Some zombies, skeletons and zombie pigmen can now pick up items.
1.4.4			1.4.3				Items are now pushed out of transparent solid blocks as well as opaque ones.[3] Items can push into solid blocks while trying to escape a solid block instead of stopping (this has been used to create vertical transport of items). New feature: items are pushed out of the inside corner of stair blocks, causing "bouncing" effects.
December 11, 2012							Dinnerbone tweeted a picture of diamonds being rendered in 3D as dropped items.[4] He also revealed that other items would rendered in this way, but only in fancy graphics.[5]
December 12, 2012							TeamMojang (YouTube) posted a video showing off the new 3D items.[6]
1.4.6			12w49a				Nether stars are the first items to not be deleted by explosions.
			12w50a				When dropped, items now render in the fancy graphics setting as 3D spinning animations (non-block items no longer display as sprites).
							Dropped items now merge with nearby items and stack.
							Enchanted items now show the enchanted glow when dropped.
1.5			13w01a				Added hoppers, which can collect items.
			13w03a				Added hopper minecarts, which can collect items.
1.8			14w04a				Dropped items don't spin, and they are visible only from the south on fast graphics.
			14w04b				Dropped items are now completely invisible on fast graphics.
			14w05a				Dropped items on fast graphics now face the player on all three axes, and they spin again on fancy graphics.
			14w25a				Dropped items now render in 3D on fast graphics, instead of just on fancy graphics, likely due to item models being fully implemented and replacing the need for 2D items. However, they do not spin.
1.8.1			pre4				Dropped items now spin on fast graphics.
1.10			16w21a				Items can now be reared by fishing rods.
1.11			16w32a				The entity ID of items has been changed from Item to item.
1.13			18w07a				Items in water now float up.
1.16			20w06a				Netherite items are the first items to not burn in lava, and float in lava.
1.20			Pre-release 5				Items are no longer destroyed by falling anvils.[7]
1.21.2			24w33a				Items are no longer destroyed by TNTs submerged in water.
1.21.6			25w20a				Items are once again destroyed by TNTs submerged in water.

Bedrock Edition

Legacy Console Edition

Issues

Issues relating to "Item" or "Item entity" are maintained on the bug tracker. Issues should be reported and viewed there.

Gallery

Mojang images

• 
  First image of 3D dropped items.

See also

• Drops — items dropped by mobs when killed.
• Chunk format for more information about the attributes of items.

Notes

References