April Fools' Day jokes

These features are exclusive to Java Edition, with 2024 as an exception.

This is a list of April Fools' Day jokes along with summaries of their features and changes.

List of April Fools' jokes[edit | edit source]

2010[edit | edit source]

In 2010, Notch wrote that he had planned to make a video announcing "Minecraft 4D" for April Fools', but ran out of time due to moving into a new home.^[1]^[2]

In 2011, a fake "Minecraft Store" website was created. This was linked to by the locked chest, a block that was implemented for this purpose, as it was implied that keys had to be bought from said store to unlock these chests.

Message displayed upon opening the chest.
The "Minecraft Store".
The store after it goes into "seizure-mode".
The window popup about the "seizure-mode".
How the store appeared after April Fools'.

2012[edit | edit source]

In 2012, for April Fools', Notch created a hoax website for a new game entitled Mars Effect.^[3]

“	After several weeks of trying to come up with a good name for the game, we finally decided not to learn from previous experiences and pick a name that's already kind of in use by a huge existing franchise. After playing around with names like "Elight", "Wind Commander", and "Steve Online", we finally settled on the very catchy name "Mars Effect".	„
	— Notch

This was a joke referencing a recent lawsuit by Bethesda, developers of The Elder Scrolls franchise, regarding the name of the Mojang game Scrolls.

This game was later revealed to be an actual upcoming game, entitled 0x10^c, though it was cancelled the following year, and never released.

2013[edit | edit source]

During 2013, Mojang released a pre-release for a fake future version containing numerous joke features to various YouTubers.^[4]

The 2.0 version banner.
A pink wither.
A talking block of coal.
The "redstone bug" mob.
2.0's "super hostile" mode.

2014[edit | edit source]

A post was added to Mojang Studios' blog^[5] for the joke.

“	The long-nosed villagers introduced in Minecraft beta 1.9 have become sentient. They have taken over our skin servers and content delivery networks (CDN), so unfortunately you will not be able to change your skins until we fix the problem. We are desperately trying our best to pull the plugs, but we should prepare ourselves to serve under our new villager overlords. Singularity may be upon us.	„
	— *The Minecraft* Team**

This caused all players' current skin to be replaced with the various villager skins, and caused users to be unable to change their skins unless they modified the launcher .json file. Different career villager skins were used, including the then-unused green robe of a nitwit villager.

In-game, villagers still acted the same, but they made different sounds. All noises were replaced with the sound effects of Element Animation's "T.E.A.V.S.R.P" (The Element Animation Villager Sounds Resource Pack). Mojang Studios also added in-game villager music. The title screen music contains a parody of the Game of Thrones theme, due to the new series starting in early April and also because of its being included in the original trailer for "T.E.A.V.S.R.P." Jeb also claimed the villager got his Twitter account.^[6]

Grumm released the villager skins on Reddit on April 1, 2014. There were seven variants, including a base skin.

An updated version of T.E.A.V.S.R.P., complete with the new music, was released by Element Animation on April 2, 2014.

Soon afterward, Element Animation released this video, and the skins and the sounds were reverted to the way they were before on April 2, 2014.

One of the villager skins (at the time, the nitwit was unimplemented).
A server during the event.
The base villager skin.
The butcher villager skin.
The farmer villager skin.
The librarian villager skin.
The priest villager skin.
The smith villager skin.
The nitwit villager skin.

One of the Pocket Edition developers, Johan Bernhardsson, also shared an image of the player bouncing a basketball in-game.^[7]

2015[edit | edit source]

15w14a was released as an April Fools' joke for version 1.10, when the next update was supposed to be 1.9. This "update" is called the Love and Hugs Update.^[8] There was also a QR code written in the snow that generated in a superflat world that, when scanned, reads "Minecraft 1.9: The Combat Update". Swords were replaced with "hearts". The only world name available was "There can only be one". Survival was called "Existence". Players were also unable to take damage from the void.

Showing the modified menu screen. Note that the text reads "Play World" and "Reset World".
Banners, obsidian boat, normal boat, and diamond heart.
An explosion of heart particles from an end crystal.
Zombie pigmen wielding heart swords.
Dungeons were replaced with "houses".
The pink wither returns.
The "Minescreeper" minigame.
The hidden QR code.

2016[edit | edit source]

1.RV-Pre1 was released as an April Fools' joke for the update 1.RV. This "update" was called the "Trendy Update".^[9]

A player wearing this version's new equippable items.
Signs get a more modern appearance.
What signs look like while wearing reality vision goggles.
Viewing a sign through reality vision goggles.

2017[edit | edit source]

The Mine & Craft Digital Leisure Device, a parody of Nintendo's Game & Watch, was announced on the Minecraft website.^[10]

2018[edit | edit source]

A version of Minecraft's textures was released for Java Edition. The new textures are available in versions of Java Edition 1.12.x and versions from Java Edition 17w43a to Java Edition 18w11a. It was announced that all editions of Minecraft would get the new version of textures.

The new textures are the original textures using 8-bit color, leading to a drastic reduction in detail.^[11] The splash text for this day also shows any of the following:

Cleaner!
Simplified!
Perfected!amazing
Art directed! (by robots)
Machine learned textures!
Not blurry!
Not bubbly!
Not cartoony!
Photorealistic!
Hand-painted!

The textures and the splashes were reverted to the way they were before on April 2, 2018.^[12] However, this update cannot be reactivated by setting the computer's date to April 1, 2018.

For block and item renders of these textures, see Category:April Fools 2018. Archive as a resource pack (taken down).

The menu screen, featuring a unique splash.
Some of the textures used during the 2018 April Fools' event.
An example of the way the world looks with these textures.
A village with these textures.
A ravine with these textures including the overlay.
A Java Edition 1.14 village with these textures.
Underwater terrain with these textures.
The inventory with these textures.
A desert pyramid and the sun with these textures.
The chest room in a desert pyramid with these textures.
A jungle temple with these textures.
A swamp hut with these textures.

2019[edit | edit source]

An April Fools' version officially called "Minecraft 3D" was released,^[13] containing many references to gaming in the 1990s, primarily Doom.

Cover art.
The loading screen.
The title screen.
Difficulty options.
Death screen.
A nerd creeper.
The UI with the default resource pack.
The UI with the programmer art resource pack.
Ingame image of the Minecraft dev team.

2020[edit | edit source]

Snapshot 20w14∞ was released, adding 2,147,483,647 dimensions that can be accessed by throwing a book and quill that was not specially customized or written book into a nether portal.^[14]

The 20w14∞ version banner.
The "ant" dimension.
The "sponge" dimension.
The "library" dimension.
The "bridges" dimension.
The "isolation" dimension.
The "slime" dimension.
The "skygrid" dimension.

2021[edit | edit source]

Minecraft Plus! for Windows, a screensaver collection that references screensavers from older versions of Windows, was announced on the Minecraft website. This April Fools joke was inspired by Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP ^[15]

Minecraft Plus! (Box Art).
A flying glow squid screensaver.
A flying creeper face screensaver.
A screensaver featuring random block textures.
A screensaver featuring bouncing blocks.
A screensaver featuring bouncing items.
A screensaver featuring a rotating block.
A screensaver featuring liquid tiles.

2022[edit | edit source]

For April Fools 2022, Mojang Studios released a "One Block At A Time" snapshot (22w13oneBlockAtATime), which replaces the inventory with holding blocks, items or mobs function directly.^[16]

Player wearing a glass block.
Footsteps when walking.
Player holding a bee.
Player holding a spyglass.
Player holding a sugar cane.
Player holding a sugar cane from a first-person perspective.
Player holding a sheep.
Player holding a skeleton with spyglasses on its eyes.
Player riding the ender dragon in The End dimension.

2023[edit | edit source]

Minecraft website[edit | edit source]

On the minecraft.net website, two chickens appear on the bottom left and bottom right of the page. Clicking on both of them causes them to breed and spawn numerous chickens, covering and spamming across the entire screen, sometimes crashing the user's browser.

This joke feature toggled on or off and after breeding and spawning chickens, the "Close" button on the bottom can be hit to return to minecraft.net home page.

Minecraft website on April 1st, 2023 before...
...and after breeding the two chickens.

Minecraft Launcher[edit | edit source]

The Minecraft Launcher was set on fire spreading across the screen. On the left sidebar of the launcher, players could click at the water bucket and then click on the fire to extinguish them.

This joke feature can be toggled on or off, players can also mute the fire cracking and water bucket sounds.

Minecraft Launcher "on fire" on April 1st, 2023

April Fools snapshot[edit | edit source]

Mojang Studios also published and released a joke snapshot - 23w13a_or_b, which was named "The Vote Update" a few hours later. The gameplay of this update revolves around a voting system, where the player chooses from many possible scenarios that change the state of the world.^[17]

The surface of the Moon in snapshot 23w13a_or_b.
A player who has transformed into a charged creeper.
A player's inventory after transforming into an ender dragon.
The Moon after it has been enlarged so much that it pulls mobs and players toward it.
The Overworld can be seen in the sky from the Moon.
A glowstone portal, which was inspired by the Aether mod.