Hopper
| Type |
Block Entity |
|---|---|
| Physics |
No |
| Transparency |
Partial (does not block light, mob spawning possible) |
| Luminance |
No |
| Blast resistance |
24 |
| Hardness |
3 |
| Tool | |
| Renewable |
Yes |
| Stackable |
Yes (64) |
| Flammable |
No |
| Drops |
|
| Block Entity ID |
hopper |
| Data values |
|
| Namespaced ID |
hopper |
This article is about the block. For the crash utility, see Hopper (crash utility).A hopper is a block that can be used to catch item entities, or to transfer items into and out of containers.
Contents
Obtaining[edit]
A hopper can be obtained by crafting, by breaking a previously-placed hopper with a pickaxe, or by breaking a minecart with hopper.
Breaking[edit]
To break a hopper, mine it with a pickaxe. Using any other item to break a hopper doesn't drop a block.
| Block | Hopper | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardness | 3 | |
| Tool | ||
| Breaking time[note 1] | ||
| Hand | 15 | |
| Wooden | 2.25 | |
| Stone | 1.15 | |
| Iron | 0.75 | |
| Diamond | 0.6 | |
| Golden | 0.4 | |
- ↑ Times are for unenchanted tools in seconds. For more information, see Haste § Instant mining.
Crafting[edit]
A hopper can be crafted from 5 iron ingots and a chest.
| Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|
| Iron Ingot + Chest |
Usage[edit]
A hopper can be used as a container, as a crafting ingredient, and as a redstone component.
A hopper has an "output" tube at its bottom that can face down or sideways and provides a visual indication of which block the hopper it set up to drop its items into, if that block has an inventory. To place a hopper, use the Place Block control while aiming at the surface to which its output should face (Hoppers do not orient themselves automatically). To place a hopper directly on the face of an already interactable block, the player can sneak while placing the hopper. Attempting to place a hopper aimed on the bottom face of a block instead faces downwards. A hoppers does not change direction after placement, and it is not attached to the container it faces; the container can be removed or replaced, and the hopper remains unchanged.
Hoppers cannot be moved by pistons.[Java and Legacy Console editions only] Despite not appearing as a solid block, attached blocks such as rails, levers, tripwire and redstone dust can be placed on top of hoppers (but not on their side).
Container[edit]
A hopper can be used as a container and has 5 slots of inventory space.
To open the hopper GUI, use the Use Item/Place Block control. To move items between the hopper inventory and the player inventory or hotbar while the hopper GUI is open, drag or shift-click the items. To exit the hopper GUI, use the Esc control.
By default, the GUI of a hopper is labeled "Item Hopper". A hopper's GUI label can be changed by naming the hopper in an anvil before placing it, or by using the data command (for example, to label a hopper at (0,64,0) "Steve's Hopper", use /data merge block 0 64 0 {CustomName:"\"Steve's Hopper\""}).
A hopper can be "locked" (or subsequently unlocked) by setting the hopper's Lock tag with the data command. If a hopper's Lock tag is not blank, the hopper cannot be accessed except by players holding an item with the same name as the Lock tag's text. For example, to lock a hopper at (0,64,0) so that only players holding an item named "Steve's Key" can access the hopper, use /data merge block 0 64 0 {Lock:"Steve's Key"}.
Crafting ingredient[edit]
A hopper can be used to craft a minecart with hopper.
| Name | Ingredients | Crafting recipe |
|---|---|---|
| Minecart with Hopper | Hopper + Minecart |
Redstone component[edit]
A hopper's behavior is the opposite of most redstone mechanisms, in the presence of a redstone signal actually shuts down the device. Thus, a powered hopper is here described as being deactivated, and an unpowered hopper is described as being activated.
Hoppers can be powered by:
- Direct power from power components, or being the block a powered redstone repeater aims at, any block adjacent a block of redstone, any terminating block or supporting block for a powered redstone dust trail, or the block directly above any redstone torch.
- Indirect power, or being next to a directly powered block, as described above. Note that every adjacent block except its placed-upon block considers a redstone torch itself a directly powered block (i.e. an activated redstone torch "soft-powers" all adjacent blocks that aren't its supporting block, and it "hard-powers" only the block directly above it).
An activated hopper has three functions:
- Collect item entities (free-floating items in the world) into its inventory from the space above it
- Pull a single item into its inventory from a container above it
- Push a single item from its own inventory into a container it's facing
Hoppers with containers above them to pull from (furnaces, chests, other hoppers, etc.) cannot collect dropped items (For run-time efficiency, their code doesn't even check for them). Dropped items are gathered from the entire block above the hopper (so they can be collected even if sitting on, for example, Soul Sand). That includes when that block is a solid, non-entity block (a situation that might come from items rising up through solid blocks or being summoned there). Item entities are not collected when they're beyond the hopper's reach (for example, an item on a block of stone above a hopper). Hoppers check for dropped items above them every game tick, and they can collect them even before they're picked up by players or destroyed by lava.
Hoppers have a "transfer cooldown" time. After pulling or pushing items, a hopper waits 3 redstone ticks (6 game ticks or 0.3 seconds, barring lag) before pulling or pushing again (a transfer rate of 2.5 items per second, barring lag), meaning it pulls/pushes every 4 redstone ticks. Hoppers that have an item pushed into them from another hopper also start a 3 redstone tick cooldown period, regardless of whether they pushed or pulled items themselves. Item pushes and pulls are processed in the same game tick, but pushes are processed before pulls (see schematic, right). Item entities can be collected in at any time, without affecting the item transfer cooldown time, and can be collected in as entire stacks (rather than a single item at a time).
A hopper always tries to pull or collect items into the leftmost available slot (either because the slot is empty or because it contains an incomplete stack of the item being pulled), and pushes items from its leftmost slots before it pushes from rightmost slots (it won't start pushing items from its second slot before its first is empty, from its third slot before the first two are empty, etc.) unless the container it is pushing into can only accept items from the hopper's rightmost slots (because the container is full except for incomplete stacks matching the hopper's rightmost items). A hopper won't collect or pull items, even when enabled, if it has no available slots to accept available items (there are no empty slots and no incomplete stacks of items that match available items). Similarly, a hopper pushes items into the leftmost slot of the uppermost available row of containers, and they stop pushing items when the target inventory is out of available storage.
Some containers interact with hoppers in specific ways:
- Brewing Stand
- An working hopper on the top face of a brewing stand deposits only into the ingredient slot, and it can only work with valid brewing ingredients. A hopper on side face of a brewing stand only deposits blaze powder as fuel or bottled brews into the three brew slots, and at that only brews that are valid for the brewing stand's current ingredient. A hopper underneath a brewing stand always extracts from the three brew slots, whether brewing is finished or not—Keep the hopper disabled while potions are brewing.
- Chest
- Trapped Chest
- Large chests and large trapped chests are treated as a single unit: A hopper depositing into a large chest fills up the entire chest, and a hopper underneath a large chest empties the entire chest. Trapped chests being accessed by a player disable any adjacent hoppers, per the standard behavior of a hopper next to an active power source.
- Furnace
- A working hopper on the top face of a furnace deposits only into the ingredient slot, but it can push any items (even those that can't be smelted). A hopper on the side face deposits into the fuel slot, and it only pushes items that can be used as fuel. A hopper below a furnace pulls only from the output slot, with the exception of also pulling empty buckets from the fuel slot left over from using a lava bucket as fuel. When a hopper removes items from a furnace, the experience points are 'stored' in the furnace until the player removes at least one smelted item.
- Hopper
- A sequence of three or more hoppers, each pushing items into the next, is called a hopper pipe. Working horizontal hopper pipes simply push items into each other at the expected rate of 2.5 items per second, but vertical hopper pipes are more complicated, as the hoppers are trying both to pull and to push. When a vertical pipe pulls from a single container, it simply transfers items at 2.5 items per second (because the transfer rate is limited by the first hopper pulling items from the container). If a stack of items is in a vertical pipe (either from collecting a dropped item stack or being manually placed inside) the items can be transferred twice as fast, because the hopper with the item stack is pushing items down while the hopper below it is also pulling items down.
- A redstone comparator measuring the fullness of a hopper in a hopper pipe usually reads a continuous stream of items (instead of blinking on and off as each item passes), but because pulls and pushes both occur in the same game tick, certain hoppers in a vertical hopper pipe may never power comparators even with a continuous stream of items: Their items get pulled out a single game tick after they're pushed in, which isn't measurable by a comparator—Comparators need measurements of at least 1.5 redstone ticks to produce a reading.
- Minecart with Chest
- Minecart with Hopper
- Working hoppers fill chests-minecarts or hopper-minecarts if any part of the entity's hitbox is within the hopper's target block-space. Hoppers also pull items from minecarts above them—Rails can be placed directly on the top faces of a hoppers, but detector rail in such position disable hopper use, per standard redstone-hopper behavior.
- Jukebox
- [Bedrock Edition only]
- Discs play instantly when inserted.
- Shulker Box
- Hoppers cannot put shulker boxes into other shulker boxes. This allows for the creation of certain item filters.
- Ender Chest
- Hoppers cannot interact with ender chests in any way.
A disabled hopper does not pull items from above (including item entities) or push them out, but may receive items from other droppers and hoppers, and may have its items removed by another hopper beneath it. To stop item transfer in a horizontal hopper pipe, only one hopper needs to be disabled, but to stop item transfer in a vertical hopper pipe, it is necessary to disable two hoppers in a row (because if a single hopper is disabled, the hopper above it can still push items into it and the hopper below it can still pull items from it).
Data values[edit]
Block data[edit]
In Bedrock Edition, a hopper uses its block data to specify its orientation and activation status.
| Bits | Values |
|---|---|
| 0x1 0x2 0x4 |
A three-bit field storing a value from 0 to 5:
|
| 0x8 | Set if activated/disabled. |
Block states[edit]
| Name | Default value | Allowed values | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| enabled | true | falsetrue | True if hopper can move items to and from its inventory. When the hopper is being powered by redstone current, this is set to false. |
| facing | down | downeastnorthsouthwest | The direction the hopper's output points. The hopper will push items into containers in this direction only. |
Block entity[edit]
A hopper has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.
- Block entity data
- Tags common to all block entities see Template:Nbt inherit/blockentity/template
- CustomName: Optional. The name of this container in JSON text component, which will display in its GUI where the default name ordinarily is.
- Lock: Optional. When not blank, prevents the container from being opened unless the opener is holding an item whose name matches this string.
- Items: List of items in the container.
- : An item, including the slot tag.
- Tags common to all items see Template:Nbt inherit/item/template
- : An item, including the slot tag.
- TransferCooldown: Time until the next transfer in game ticks, naturally between 1 and 8 or 0 if there is no transfer.
- LootTable: Optional. Loot table to be used to fill the hopper when it is next opened, or the items are otherwise interacted with.[note 1]
- LootTableSeed: Optional. Seed for generating the loot table. 0 or omitted will use a random seed.[note 1]
Achievements[edit]
| Icon | Achievement | In-game description | Actual requirements (if different) | Availability | Xbox points earned | Trophy type (PS) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xbox | PS | Bedrock | Nintendo | ||||||
| Freight Station | Use a hopper to move an item from a chest minecart to a chest. | No | No | Yes | New 3DS | 15G | — | ||
| Smelt Everything! | Connect three chests to a single furnace using three hoppers. | No | No | Yes | New 3DS | 15G | — | ||
Video[edit]
History[edit]
| Java Edition | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 | 13w01a |  Added hopper.
| |||
| At the time, there was a temporary "work in progress" sprite for the inventory. | |||||
They could be crafted from a chest and stone blocks with the following recipe:
| |||||
| 13w01b | Rails can be placed on top of hoppers. The hopper no longer loads items into minecarts without chests. | ||||
| 13w02a | 24px The inventory sprite was changed. | ||||
| Applying a redstone signal to the hopper now deactivates the hopper until the signal is removed. | |||||
| Hoppers can no longer be used as fuel in a furnace. | |||||
| Hoppers are now crafted using 5 iron ingots rather than 5 stone blocks. | |||||
| Hoppers now only take from the output slot of furnaces. | |||||
| Hoppers output 1 signal strengh per 1/3 of a stack (21 items) when interacting with a redstone comparator. | |||||
| Hoppers no longer use the cauldron texture. | |||||
| 13w02b | Hoppers now treat large chests properly, no longer needing two hoppers connected to them to fill up the entire inventory. | ||||
| Hoppers no longer take items from containers when powered via a redstone current. | |||||
| 13w03a | Hoppers are now used to craft a minecart with hopper. | ||||
| Hoppers can now empty a minecart with hopper. | |||||
| 13w04a | Transfer rate changed from 7 to 8 game ticks per item (2.5 items per second). | ||||
| 1.8 | ? | Hoppers no longer generate multiplayer lag when idle. | |||
| 1.9 | 15w33c | A hopper generates as a part of the end ship in the end cities. | |||
| 15w41a | End ships no longer contain a hopper. | ||||
| 15w43a | Loot tables are added; hoppers now can use loot tables. | ||||
| 1.9.1 | pre1 | A hopper can now push into and pull items from a blocked chest. | |||
| 1.13 | 17w47a | Prior to The Flattening, this block's numeral ID was 154. | |||
| 1.14 | 19w03c | Hoppers now use correct cullface arguments, and some redundant faces were also deleted.[needs testing] | |||
| Pocket Edition Alpha | |||||
| 0.14.0 | build 1 | Added hoppers. | |||
| 0.15.0 | build 1 | Hoppers can now be moved by pistons. | |||
| Legacy Console Edition | |||||
| TU19 | CU7 | 1.12 | Patch 1 | Added hoppers. | |
| New Nintendo 3DS Edition | |||||
| 0.1.0 | Added Hoppers. | ||||
Gallery[edit]
In snapshot 13w01a, the hopper item uses a 'WIP' sprite, though the item still read "Hopper".
The 13w02a Banner includes a minecart with TNT and a hopper.
Issues[edit]
Issues relating to "Hopper" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.
Trivia[edit]
- A real-life hopper is a large, pyramidal shaped container used in industrial processes to hold particulate matter that has been collected from expelled air.
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