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. If mined with anything but a pickaxe it will not drop itself.
| 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 visual feedback of which direction the hopper will output items to if a container is present. To place a hopper, use the Place Block control while aiming at the surface to which its output should face (a hopper will not automatically orient itself to point at a container). To place a hopper so that it faces a container (or other block which has a Use Item interaction), sneak while placing the hopper. A hopper placed while aiming at the bottom of a block will re-orient to face down instead. Hoppers won't change their direction after being placed and aren't "attached" to the container they are facing—the container can be removed and the hopper will continue to face in the same direction.
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 can be used to collect in item entities above it, or to transfer items to or from other containers.
Hoppers are redstone mechanisms and can be activated by:
- An adjacent active power component: for example, a redstone torch (except that a redstone torch will not activate a hopper it is attached to), a block of redstone, a daylight sensor, etc.
- An adjacent powered block (for example, an opaque block with an active redstone torch under it)
- A powered redstone comparator or redstone repeater facing the hopper
- Adjacent powered redstone dust configured to point at the hopper (or on top of it) or directionless; a hopper is not activated by adjacent powered redstone dust that is configured to point away from it.
A hopper's behavior is the opposite of most redstone components, in that it performs actions while not activated and stops performing actions when activated. Thus, an unactivated hopper is described as enabled and an activated hopper is described as disabled.
An enabled hopper can do three things:
- 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 is facing
Hoppers with containers above them to pull from (furnaces, chests, other hoppers, etc.) do not collect in item entities above them (and don't even check for them, reducing the number of updates required by hoppers). Item entities can be collected in if they are anywhere within the block's space above the hopper, so they can be collected in even if sitting on a partial block above the hopper (for example, on a slab) or even if inside a full block above the hopper (because they are rising up through solid blocks or because they were summoned there). Item entities will not be collected in if they are more than one block above the hopper (for example, an item on a block of stone above a hopper will not be collected in). Hoppers check for item entities above them every game tick and can collect them in even before the item entities are destroyed by lava above the hopper, or before they are picked up by players.
Hoppers have a "transfer cooldown" time. After pulling or pushing items, a hopper will wait 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 will 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 top left available slots of containers before the bottom right slots, and will stop pushing items if there are no available slots to push items into.
Some containers interact with hoppers in specific ways:
- Brewing Stand
- A hopper above a brewing stand will only fill the top ingredient slot and will only push potion ingredients into that slot. A hopper to the side of a brewing stand will only push water bottles and potions into the bottom three slots (and if there is an ingredient in the top slot, only if the item could be brewed by that ingredient), or push blaze powder into the fuel slot. A hopper underneath a brewing stand will only pull from the bottom three slots, whether the brewing is finished or not – keep the hopper disabled to allow potions to finish brewing.
- Chest
- Trapped Chest
- Large chests and large trapped chests are treated as a single unit: a hopper placed on a large chest will fill up the whole chest, and a hopper underneath a large chest will empty the whole chest. Trapped chests being accessed by a player will disable any adjacent hopper (which is normal behavior for a hopper next to an active power source).
- Furnace
- A hopper above a furnace will only fill the ingredient slot but will push any items, even items that can't be smelted in a furnace. A hopper to the side of a furnace will only fill the fuel slot and will only push items into that slot that can be used as fuel in the furnace. A hopper below a furnace will only pull from the furnace's output slot (except that it will also pull empty buckets from the furnace's fuel slot left over from using a lava bucket as fuel). A hopper removing items from a furnace will leave experience points as 'stored' in the furnace so any amount of smelted items removed will give the player all the experience points.
- Hopper
- A sequence of three or more hoppers, each pushing items into the next, is known as a hopper pipe. Horizontal hopper pipes simply transfer items at the expected rate of 2.5 items per second, but vertical hopper pipe behavior can be difficult to understand because the hoppers are both pulling and pushing items between them. If a vertical hopper pipe pulls items from a container, it will simply transfer items at 2.5 items per second (because the transfer rate is limited by the first hopper pulling items from the container), but if a stack of items is in a vertical pipe (because an item stack entity was collected in, or placed there by a player) the items will 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.
- Because pulls and pushes occur in the same game tick, a redstone comparator measuring the fullness of a hopper in a hopper pipe will usually simply stay powered as a continuous stream of items flows through (instead of blinking on and off for each item), but certain hoppers in a vertical hopper pipe may never power their comparators even with a continuous stream of items because their items get pulled out of them one game tick after the items are pushed into them, which doesn't produce a state long enough for a comparator to measure (comparators need inputs at least 1.5 redstone ticks long to produce an output).
- Minecart with Chest
- Minecart with Hopper
- Hoppers will fill minecarts with chests or hoppers if any part of the minecart is in the space the hopper is pointing at. Hoppers can also take items from minecarts above them (rails can be placed directly on top of hoppers). A hopper will not unload a minecart that is on a detector rail above the hopper, because the detector rail will disable the hopper (which is normal behavior for a hopper next to an active power source).
- Jukebox
- [Bedrock Edition only]
- Will 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 remove items from or place items into ender chests. They do not interact with them 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 | 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 will 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 will 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.
