Walking

Walking is one of the fundamental methods of transportation in Minecraft, allowing for a reasonable movement speed while avoiding the hunger impact of sprinting, but without the fall safety of sneaking.

Performing

Walking is possible regardless of hunger level, and can be prevented only via obstruction by solid blocks or with a sufficiently high level of Slowness. Walking is accomplished by pressing the assigned key to move forward, backward, or left and right. Multiple adjacent keys can also be used simultaneously to walk in a diagonal direction, but opposite keys cancel out.

When in water more than 1 block deep, walking becomes swimming on the surface.

The majority of land-based mobs move via walking.

Usage

Assuming a non-slowing surface, no active status effects, no active enchantments, and no item is currently being used, walking speed is approximately 4.317 m/s, or minecraft:generic.movement_speed = 0.10000000149011612, which is about 30% slower than sprinting but almost three times faster than sneaking.

Walking speed can be modified by different factors. Blocks such as soul sand and honey blocks slow down walking, as does being inside a cobweb, sweet berry bush, water, lava, or mud. Walking speed can be increased by the Speed effect, and is crippled or even halted by Slowness. The Soul Speed enchantment increases movement speed at a durability cost for a player atop soul sand or soul soil, and Depth Strider does likewise when under water. Blocking, eating, drinking, charging back a bow, or using an eye of ender also slows down player movement.

References

pre-classic
rd-131655					Added walking.
Java Edition
1.11		16w32a			Walking no longer affects exhaustion, thus no longer decreases saturation or the hunger bar.