Hopper

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A hopper is a low-capacity storage block that can be used to collect item entities directly above it, as well as to transfer items into and out of other containers. A hopper can be locked with redstone power to stop it from moving items into or out of itself.

A hopper drops itself and its contents if mined with a pickaxe. Using any other item to mine a hopper drops only its contents.

A hopper can be crafted from a chest and 5 iron ingots.

Hoppers generate above barrels in the trial chambers.

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 is 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 downward. With some blocks, such as the furnace and brewing stand, the hopper has multiple uses. A hopper 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.

In Java Edition, hoppers cannot be moved by pistons. Despite not having a full top surface, a few redstone components that require a support can be placed on top of hoppers (but not on their sides).

A hopper can be used as a container and has 5 slots of inventory space.

To open the hopper GUI, use it. 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 key, B button or circle button, depending on the device.

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, in Java Edition, 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"'}).

In Java Edition, a hopper's GUI 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 that matches the item predicate in the lock tag. 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:{components:{"custom_name":"Steve's Key"}}}.

While a hopper is neither powered by a redstone signal nor in cooldown, it operates with three functions:

• Push a single item from its own inventory into a container it faces
• Pull a single item into its inventory from a container above it
• Collect item entities (free-floating items in the world) into its inventory from the space above it

A hopper first attempts to push any items inside it. Afterward, it checks if the block above it is a type of container. If so, it attempts to pull from it. Otherwise, the hopper attempts to collect item entities. Notably, hoppers can push to and pull from other hoppers, forming hopper pipes or hopper chains, which allow transporting items across several blocks and are further discussed below.

When a hopper receives a redstone signal, all three of its functions stop: in this situation the hopper is locked/disabled. Once the hopper loses power, its activity resumes as it goes back to being unlocked/enabled.^[1] Depowering a locked hopper does not affect its cooldown time. Therefore, unlocking a hopper that was not already in cooldown results in it starting to pull, push, or collect items as soon as it gets ticked.

In Bedrock Edition, the hoppers can only be locked on the input/consume redstone tick (C-tick).

While a locked hopper does not push or pull/collect items, it may still receive items from droppers, crafters and other hoppers, and may have its items pulled out by another hopper beneath it. Hence, the item flow in a horizontal hopper pipe may be stopped by locking just one of the hoppers, but stopping a vertical hopper pipe requires locking two adjacent hoppers at the same time, such that both the pushing of the top one and the pulling of the bottom one are stopped.

A hopper does not output any redstone signals by itself, but its fullness can be read using a redstone comparator, which needs to be placed next to it and facing away from it. An empty hopper outputs a signal strength of 0 and a completely full hopper outputs a signal strength of 15. Notably, a single stackable item (16 or 64) outputs a signal strength of 1 and a single non-stackable item outputs a signal strength of 3. A table with all signal strengths can be found in the comparator article.

In Java Edition, if the hopper being read is part of a horizontal hopper pipe, the comparator can individually read each item passing through the chain, because items are pushed through the hoppers one by one at a speed that is manageable by the comparator. If there is an uninterrupted stream of items, the comparator does not switch off in between items. On the other hand, in a vertical hopper pipe, some of the hoppers may never produce a reading above 0, even with a continuous stream of items, because pushes and pulls both occur in the same game tick: The hoppers' items get pulled out a single game tick after they're pushed in and this isn't measurable by a comparator, because comparators need measurements lasting at least 2 game ticks (0.1 seconds, barring lag) to produce a reading.

A hopper collects items dropped inside itself or on top of it if the space above the hopper is occupied by a non-storage block. Items dropped inside the hopper are picked up regardless of the block above.

In Java Edition, items are only collected if the block above is not a full block or is in the block tag #does_not_block_hoppers (bee nests and beehives by default).

In Bedrock Edition, items are also collected from full blocks, a situation that might come from items rising up through solid blocks or being summoned.

Items are gathered from the entire 1 block space above the hopper, meaning that items sitting on partial blocks such as soul sand directly above a hopper can be collected.^[2]

Collected items are placed in the leftmost empty slot of a hopper's inventory. If there are multiple dropped items above the hopper, the hopper collects them in the order they entered the chunk containing the hopper. This can be observed by pushing items onto a locked hopper from an adjacent chunk: regardless of which item lands first, the hopper will always collect the one that entered the chunk the earliest.

Hoppers usually check for dropped items every game tick and they can collect items even before they are picked up by a player or destroyed by lava. After collecting an item (or stack of items), a hopper enters a cooldown period that lasts 8 game ticks (0.4 seconds, barring lag).

Hoppers collect groups of items all at once rather than collecting them as single items one at a time. As a result, hoppers can collect item entities much faster than they can pull items from a container. Pulling from a moving minecart with chest or minecart with hopper is even slower, since the minecart is not always above the hopper.

A hopper with a storage container above it (such as a furnace, chest, dropper, composter, or another hopper) attempts to pull from the container instead of checking for floating items above it, and hence can not collect dropped items. A hopper always tries to push or pull items using the leftmost available slot. When a hopper is removing items from a chest, the items disappear from left to right. Similarly, when filling up a chest, the chest fills up from left to right. Hoppers prioritize pulling from the first slot of a container over pulling into the first hopper slot. If a hopper has stone in its first slot and nothing in its second while the container it is pulling from has chicken in its first slot but stone in the second, the hopper pulls the chicken from the first slot of the container into its empty second slot. However, if the hopper is unable to pull the chicken, such as if all slots are filled with stone, the hopper pulls the stone from the second slot of the container instead. Similarly, hoppers prioritize pushing from their first slot over pushing into the first slot of a container. If a hopper has stone in its first slot and chicken in its second while the container it is pushing to has chicken in its first slot but stone in the second, the hopper pushes stone from its first slot into the second slot of the container.

In Java Edition, the checks done by a hopper while pulling generally require less processing than the checks done by a hopper attempting collection. Therefore, a chain of hoppers topped with composters, storage containers, or full blocks (keep in mind that full blocks do not prevent hoppers from checking if there are minecarts with chests or minecarts with hoppers above them) rather than air/non-full blocks has better performance and lower potential for processing lag. ^[3] The performance improvement achieved is correlated with the number of storage slots the container has - for example a dropper will have better performance than a barrel. The single best block for performance is the composter.^[3] In Bedrock Edition, a chain of hoppers with air or non-container blocks on top has better performance than a chain of hoppers topped by container blocks.^[4] This may be because, even though hoppers with containers on top do not check for items, they do check for hopper-minecarts and chest-minecarts to pull from, and that involves scanning the chunk entity list.^[5]

Item pushes and pulls are processed in the same game tick, but pushes are processed before pulls. In the schematic, the empty hopper first pulls an item from chest A as it cannot push anything into chest B. After the cooldown, the hopper first pushes its item into chest B before pulling another item from chest A, both pushing and pulling in the same tick, and the process repeats. The hopper stops pulling when A is empty, and stops pushing when B becomes full.

After pulling and/or pushing items, a hopper enters an 8 game tick (0.4 seconds, barring lag) cooldown period (a transfer rate of 2.5 items per second, barring lag).

In Bedrock Edition, when an item is pushed into an empty hopper (a player manually placing the item in the hopper does not count), it starts an 8-game-tick cooldown period. In Java Edition, when an item is pushed into an empty hopper, the cooldown of that hopper lasts 7 game ticks (0.35 seconds, barring lag) instead. Pushing an item into a hopper that isn't empty does not trigger its cooldown.

Normally, hoppers do not attempt to collect items when a solid block is placed on top of them. However, hoppers attempt to collect items when bee nests and beehives are placed on top of them. This allows hoppers to collect honeycomb when bee nests and beehives are sheared by the player or a dispenser. If a dropper or dispenser ejects an item into a bee nest or beehive above a hopper, the hopper usually collects the item. If a dispenser or dropper ejects an item into a different solid block above a hopper, the item phases through the solid block and is not collected by the hopper.

Some containers interact with hoppers in specific ways:

👁 Image
Barrel, 👁 Image
boat with chest, 👁 Image
dispenser, 👁 Image
dropper

Hoppers interact normally with barrels, dispensers, droppers, and boats with chests.

👁 Image
Brewing stand

A working hopper on the top face of a brewing stand deposits only into the ingredient slot and it can push only valid brewing ingredients. A hopper on side face of a brewing stand can deposit only blaze powder or bottles (including empty bottles) into the three brew slots. A hopper underneath a brewing stand always extracts from the three brew slots, whether brewing is finished or not—The hopper must be locked to allow potions to finish brewing.

👁 Image
Chest, 👁 Image
trapped chest

Large chests and large trapped chests are treated as a single container: 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 lock any adjacent hoppers, per the standard behavior of a hopper next to an active power source.

👁 Image
Chiseled bookshelf

Hoppers and minecarts with hoppers can insert and remove books from the bookshelf. As with any other container, items are taken from the first slot that has an item that can fit in the hopper and are inserted into the first empty slot.

👁 Image
Composter

Hoppers above composters can push compostable items into the composter's top face, with a chance of increasing the compost level as if the player used the item on the composter. Items that are not compostable cannot be pushed into the composter. Hoppers below the composter can pull bone meal when the composter is in stage 8, emptying the composter and resetting it to stage 0. Hoppers to the side of a composter do not interact with it.

👁 Image
Crafter

Hoppers can insert ingredients in the crafting grid. Items are distributed in enabled slots, going left to right starting from the first row; if the crafter has all item slots filled then items are added to the lowest count item stack of the same type. A hopper below a crafter collects the ingredients from the crafting grid, not the resulting item.

👁 Image
Decorated pot

Hoppers can deposit up to a stack of a single type of item into a decorated pot. Items are not pushed if the decorated pot is full or the pot contains a different item. Using a hopper (or a minecart with hopper) is the only way to retrieve items from a decorated pot without breaking it.

👁 Image
Ender chest

Hoppers cannot interact with ender chests in any way.

👁 Image
Furnace, 👁 Image
blast furnace, 👁 Image
smoker

A working hopper pointing into the top of a furnace deposits only into the ingredient slot. It can push any item, including items that can't be smelted by the furnace. A hopper pointing into the side of a furnace deposits into the fuel slot, and only items that are usable as fuel. A hopper below a furnace pulls everything from the output slot and empty buckets from the fuel slot left over from using lava buckets as fuel. When a hopper removes items from a furnace, the experience points are 'stored' in the furnace until a player removes at least one smelted item, or the furnace block is broken.

👁 BlockSprite hopper.png: Sprite image for hopper in Minecraft
Other hoppers

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, 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.

👁 Image
Shelf

Hoppers and minecarts with hoppers can insert and remove items from the shelf. Items are inserted into the first empty slot and extracted from the first slot that contains items, following standard container behavior.

👁 Image
Jukebox

Hoppers can insert music discs into jukeboxes, and extract the music discs after they finish playing. A jukebox emits a redstone signal while playing a disc, locking any adjacent hoppers.

👁 Image
Lectern

Hoppers cannot remove or place books on lecterns. The redstone pulse emitted from a lectern when a page is turned can temporarily lock hoppers.

👁 Image
Minecart with chest, 👁 Image
minecart with hopper

Unlocked hoppers fill minecarts with chests and minecarts with hoppers if any part of the entity's hitbox is within the hopper's target block-space. Hopper minecarts try to pull items from the hopper at high speed. Hoppers can pull items from minecarts above them so rails can be placed directly on the top faces of a hoppers. If a detector rail is in the right position, it could lock the hopper per standard redstone-hopper behavior.

👁 Image
Shulker box

Hoppers cannot put shulker boxes into other shulker boxes. This allows for the creation of certain item filters.

Otherwise, hoppers interact with shulker boxes normally.

Despite being composed almost entirely of iron, hoppers do not use iron sounds.^[6]

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Java Edition

Bedrock Edition: None

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

A hopper has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.

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

• A real-world hopper is a large, pyramidal or cone-shaped container used in industrial processes to hold particulate matter, like dust, gravel, nuts, seeds, etc., and can then dispense them from the bottom.
• A hopper can transfer 9000 items per hour, or 150 items per minute.

• 👁 Facing north
  
  Facing north
• 👁 Facing east
  
  Facing east
• 👁 Facing south
  
  Facing south
• 👁 Facing west
  
  Facing west

• 👁 Facing north
  
  Facing north
• 👁 Facing east
  
  Facing east
• 👁 Facing south
  
  Facing south
• 👁 Facing west
  
  Facing west

• 👁 In snapshot 13w01a, the hopper item uses a 'WIP' sprite, though the item still reads "Hopper".
  
  In snapshot 13w01a, the hopper item uses a 'WIP' sprite, though the item still reads "Hopper".
• 👁 The 13w02a banner includes a minecart with TNT and a hopper.
  
  The 13w02a banner includes a minecart with TNT and a hopper.
• 👁 The hopper's crafting recipe as shown in the Block of the Month Minecraft.net article.
  
  The hopper's crafting recipe as shown in the Block of the Month Minecraft.net article.

• "Block of the Month: Hopper" by Duncan Geere – Minecraft.net, April 12, 2025.