Minecraft: Bedrock Edition 1.19.50 update arrives with Spectator Mode, new skins, and more

What you need to know

• Minecraft: Bedrock Edition 1.19.50 is the latest patch update, available now to all players.
• The update includes a bevy of new features, including Spectator Mode, improved touch controls, a Vex mob redesign, new default skins, and more.
• There are also dozens of vanilla parity changes, quality-of-life improvements, and bug fixes.
• The update should be rolling out on every platform, and is approximately 242 MB in size on Xbox.

It has been a while since we've been treated to a new public update for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, and Mojang Studios is breaking the silence with a pretty major release. No, this isn't the still-mysterious Minecraft 1.20 update, of course, but it Minecraft: Bedrock Edition 1.19.50 is now rolling out to players — and it's packed with changes, fixes, and even some brand-new features.

Minecraft is a game-as-a-service, meaning it's constantly being updated by Mojang Studios to make the game even better. The 1.19.50 update is a sizeable effort to do just that, with Mojang Studios implementing new features, community feedback, various improvements and fixes, and more. This is a humungous update, and there's a lot to cover!

The headlining features of the 1.19.50 patch include the new Spectator Mode, which is finally coming over from Java Edition and allows players to spectate Minecraft worlds — without being able to interact with the world or be perceived by players, of course. Touch controls are also being massively improved, and are now enabled by default for all touch-enabled devices, complete with a brand-new tutorial.

The Vex, a hostile mob summoned by deadly Evokers, is getting its sleek redesign that makes it more Minecraft-y, and it now resembles an evil version of the friendly Allay. Steve and Alex are also being joined by their seven new friends, Makene, Efe, Noor, Kai, Ari, Sunny, and Zuri, who are Minecraft's latest default skins that can now be selected by all players.

You're not going to find any new features from the Minecraft 1.20 update in this release, but players who prefer to experiment with pre-release Minecraft features on the public build are being treated with the "Next Major Update" toggle, which allows you to create a world with some Minecraft 1.20 features like camels, chiseled bookshelves, hanging signs, and more.

Minecraft is one of the best Xbox games of all time, attracting millions of players every month, and the 1.19.50 update aims to make it greater still. If you're looking for Minecraft-related gifts for yourself or a Minecraft fan in your life, be sure to check out Windows Central's favorite Minecraft toys and gifts.

The full changelog for Minecraft: Bedrock Edition 1.19.50 includes:

New features

Spectator Mode

• Spectator Mode has made its way into Minecraft: Bedrock Edition!
  • This feature has been experimental for a little while but has now made its way into the game with no experimental toggle required
• Here’s a quick write up of this new game mode and how it can be used:
• When cheats are enabled, players can go in and out of Spectator Mode using the Personal Game Mode option in World Settings or the `/gamemode spectator` command
• Spectators have a reduced HUD that does not show the crosshair, hotbar, XP, health, hunger, or armor
• Players’ inventory, health, held items, etcetera, are unchanged when switching in and out of Spectator Mode
• Spectators are always flying and cannot be grounded
• Spectators pass through solid blocks and entities without collision
• Spectators can see out of solid objects when inside blocks
• Spectators cannot take damage and are not affected by any blocks, mobs, items, portals, or effects
• Spectators cannot use items or interact with blocks or mobs
• Spectators cannot open their inventory or interact with block screens, like Chests or Furnaces
• Spectators cannot be seen by mobs or other players, except other players in Spectator Mode
  • Spectators appear as a transparent floating head to other players in Spectator Mode
• Spectators are not needed to sleep to pass the night
• When playing in first person perspective, spectators do not see their arm or held item
• Spectators generate chunks, if they fly to new chunks
• Spectators do not spawn any mobs
• Non-persistent mobs around spectators will check for distance to any non-spectators when deciding if they should despawn
• Commands can select and act on spectators

Touch controls

• New touch controls are now enabled on touch devices by default
• Players can choose between "Joystick & tap to interact", "Joystick & aim crosshair", or "D-Pad & tap to interact"

Default skins

• New characters have joined Steve and Alex! These character skins can be selected in the Dressing Room

Vex redesign

• Updated the model and texture of the Vex
• The Vex retains a slightly larger hitbox to make it easier to fight

Vanilla parity

Blocks

• Wooden Doors, Iron Doors, Wooden Trapdoors, Iron Trapdoors, and Fence Gates now use the same opening and closing sound effects as Java Edition
• Updated Pressure Plates to have different pitches based on their behavior to match Java Edition
• Added unique button click sound for Wooden Buttons to match Java Edition
• Crimson and Warped block sets now have a unique set of sounds
• Chiseled and Cut Red Sandstone now have smooth undersides
• Projectiles landing on Mud will no longer shake repeatedly
• Amphibious mobs no longer have trouble pathfinding around Mud Blocks
• Mud and Soul Sand Block bounding boxes now matches their visual bounding boxes for when a player places the blocks
• Lily Pads now pop with sound and particles when run into by a Boat
• Most blocks destroyed from lack of support now have visual particles, audio effects, and cause vibration events
• Coral Fans can no longer be placed on the side of Slab blocks
• Coral Fans can now survive on top of solid transparent blocks like Glass
• Fixed a bug where placed Light Blocks were invisible even while selecting a Light Block

Mobs

• While playing tag, baby Villagers will now run at a quicker speed that matches Java Edition

Spectator Mode

• Open container, Command Block, or Structure Block screens now close when players enter Spectator Mode
• Spectator Mode now appears on the list of Personal Game Modes in Settings
• Allays no longer throw items to spectators

Experimental features

General

• Introducing the next major update experimental toggle! Enable the “Next Major Update” toggle in world settings to enable this content
• These features are a work in progress and are still in active development. The design and functionality of these features will likely change before they’re released
• Please remember: Worlds that have used experimental toggles will always be flagged as “Experimental”
  • We recommend keeping these experimental worlds as separate copies from your main saves

Bamboo wood blocks

• Added the Bamboo family of blocks as a wood type and use for Bamboo
• Added Bamboo Raft

Camels

• Added Camels, which can spawn in desert villages
• Two players can ride Camels together
• Camels are tall animals and riders are high enough off the ground, out of range from mob melee attacks
• Camels can walk and sprint, or dash with a short burst of speed
• Camels randomly sit down for short periods of time and flick their ears about

Chiseled bookshelves

• A new, chiseled variation of the Bookshelf
• Can store Books, Book and Quills, and Enchanted Books
• Holds up to 6 Books. Keeps the stories and lore of your world safe
• Comparators can detect the last book placed / removed. Perfect for hiding secrets in your spooky library

Hanging signs

• A new type of Sign that can be placed beneath and on the side of blocks
• Hanging Signs are available for all wood types
• Hanging Signs can also be placed under narrow blocks with center support, like Fences

Bug fixes

Blocks

• Dirt Path and Farmland collision are now one pixel lower
• Players now sink in Soul Sand and Mud blocks
• Sugar Cane will now break on next random tick when its water source is removed
• Piston arms now extend more smoothly
• Blocks attached to Pistons now move more smoothly
• Huge Fungus blocks will no longer replace partial blocks when growing from Nylium
• Fixed an issue where an entity at coordinate 0,0,0 prevented Pressure Plates from being placed
• Fixed blocks flickering when moved by Pistons
• Fixed an issue where signs would not play a placement sound when placed
• Bubble columns are now properly generated above underwater Magma Blocks
• Swimming above Mud blocks no longer causes the screen to get blocked

Gameplay

• When stuck inside a block, players will now be pushed towards the nearest open area
• Maps corrupted by black pixels can now be repaired by revisiting corrupted areas
  • Previously affected maps can now be repaired by holding in main or off hand
• Fixed a bug that could cause the player to teleport back to a portal after exiting it
• Fixed a bug that could cause players to get stuck on the "Building Terrain" screen when changing dimensions
• Fixed improper LevelChunk blending when upgrading pre-1.18 worlds
• Fixed Xbox controller thumbstick deadzone and sensitivity

Graphical

• Applied ambient light to blocks moved by Pistons
• Mob shadows now render properly on Android devices using certain GPUs
• Added D3D12 support for Intel Integrated/Dedicated Graphics for compatible drivers

Items

• Freshly crafted tools and armor now work the first time they are used
• Weapons, tools, and armor can now be dropped from the players inventory the first time after being renamed
• Fixed issues with Book & Quill not able to be signed and closed
• Fixed a bug where fully charged items were lost when going through a portal
• Using the Anvil to enchant or fix items will no longer rename items unintentionally
• Fixed a bug where Slimes and Magma Cubes could break Shield durability every tick
• Fixed a bug where Pufferfish could break Shield durability every tick

Mobs

• Increased Enderman follow range from 32 to 64
• Jump Boost now consistently affects mobs ridden by players
• Slow Falling now consistently affects mobs ridden by players
• Fixed an issue where breeding mobs with applied effects would result in the offspring having the effect bonuses permanently applied
• Fixed Bat resting location being offset when at negative world height
• Armor Stands now drop their offhand item upon destruction
• Fixed a bug that caused the Ender Dragon to not load if the world was saved and loaded while it was alive

Realms

• Shortened text when uploading worlds and add-ons so it fits in the dialog prompt
• You will no longer get an error message when joining a Realm that has been empty for several minutes

Stability & performance

• Fixed several crashes that could occur during gameplay
• Fixed a crash that could occur when navigating down in the Villager screen with the keyboard
• Fixed an issue where game would crash when Ender Dragon breath attack hadn't hit blocks or fell into the void
• Navigating through the Recipe Book when the player had items that contain mobs in their inventory (like Bees in Beehives) no longer causes significant drops in performance
• Reduced server lag with items going in and out of Hoppers
• Fixed frame rate dropping when hovering over item slots on the Creative inventory screen
• Fixed a crash that would occur if Education Edition items were rendered without the Education Edition toggle turned on
• Fixed a crash that could occur when actors with a non-player owner went through End Portals
• Fixed a crash that could occur when loading into some Marketplace worlds on low memory devices

Touch controls

• Re-enabled the new stack splitting functionality for touch devices
• "Split Control" option will only appear in Classic control mode and only affect the Classic control scheme
• Fixed an issue where hotbar slots could not be touched in Crosshair and Touch control schemes in certain situations
• Scrolling the inventory screen is easier as the dwell time has been increased to 180 milliseconds (was 120 previously). The dwell time is the length of time an item must be held before a drag action begins
• Untangled the connections between "Lock Joystick", "Joystick Always Visible", and "Joystick Visible When Unused"
• Added toggle "Delayed Block Breaking (Creative Only)" in Touch Settings to control this functionality
• Fixed an issue where double tapping touch control buttons can be difficult on high refresh rate screens
• Improved the way that button presses and camera movements work in tandem in the new Touch Controls
• Action buttons now show up when in a Boat while using Crosshair mode
• Fixed the Dismount button in the new touch control schemes appearing blurry
• Fixed an issue which prevented items from being discarded in the extended Creative Mode inventory by dropping them on another item
• Fixed an issue with touch controls when swimming and charging a Bow, Crossbow, or Trident no longer launch the weapon immediately
• Fixed an issue where joystick gestures were stopped if your finger overlapped with the hotbar
• Resolved an issue where players couldn't interact with the hotbar in some resource packs with the new touch controls
• The sprint and descend buttons in Crosshair Mode now have the same colour as other buttons
• Resolved an issue where quickly tapping "Ascend" and "Descend" would cancel flying in the new touch controls. Going forward, double tapping "Descend" is how flying is cancelled
• Status icons now follow the screen safe zone when in touch mode
• Adjusted status icons to form in one row across width of screen when in touch to account for new touch controls
• Removed the action delay from Attack and Interact buttons
• When the joystick is unlocked, the draggable range has been changed to be the same as the when the joystick is locked
  • In both modes, if auto-sprinting is enabled, it will start when the joystick is dragged slightly above the background
  • The auto-sprint will disengage if the joystick control is subsequently moved back into the joystick background area
• A tap gesture will now fire a charged Crossbow. Previously, it was necessary to hold the gesture for 400ms before the bolt would fire
• Fixed an issue where players couldn't drag / drop on the Anvil screen

User interface

• Added a new Mobile Data Blocked screen on Android / iOS when mobile data is available but disabled in-game and Wi-Fi is not connected
• Players can now rebind the copy coordinate keys with Full Keyboard Gameplay and the Enable Copy Coordinate UI settings enabled
• Fixed a bug where the boss bar name would not update when the boss name changed until the bar was reloaded by the player
• Fixed a bug on the Pocket UI Inventory screen where items could not be dropped back into the inventory in Creative Mode
• Fixed a bug on the Pocket UI Inventory screen where the `Craftable/All` toggle could only be changed in the Search tab but not in any other tab
• On Xbox, camera movement with mouse no longer changes mouse position when the inventory screen is reopened
• Text color for a selected item stack count is now white instead of yellow
• A warning now appears when the player is about to lose changes when moving away from the Create New World screen
• Changed the error handling of copying worlds to display a modal pop-up instead of a toast notification
• Fixed a bug causing the HUD to not rotate with the player's direction while riding in a Boat in VR
• Changed the color of the description text for the “Allow mobile data for online play” option to be more readable
• Fixed a contrast issue of the little arrow in dropdown components on hover, the unselected toggle components and the toggle/sliders in chat settings

Technical updates

General

• Actor (Entity) Properties are no longer experimental (This includes Molang queries and property filters, but not Permutations)
• Fixed a crash that would occur if the `texture_index` of a spawn egg was out of bounds. Now a content log error will be presented instead
• Min / Max distance values in sound events now only affect the sound event and not all events using the same sound
• Added client-side-chunk-generation-enabled toggle to `server.properties`
• Fixed an issue where changing the subpack of Resource Packs that have subpacks would not apply changes until the game was restarted
• Recipes that have the same inputs but have different outputs will now display content errors (excludes Crafting Table and Stonecutter recipes)

AI goals

• Exposed new data parameters for the `minecraft:offer_flower` AI behavior to specify such things as the time that the mob offers the flower for, the chance that the goal will start, and the dimensions of the AABB used to search for a mob to offer a flower to
• The `minecraft:offer_flower` AI behavior can now be used by any mob, not just the Iron Golem
• The `minecraft:offer_flower` AI behavior will now search through all mobs in the specified range rather than just the closest one, meaning that this goal has the potential to be used more consistently than before
• Exposed new data parameters for the `minecraft:take_flower` AI behavior to specify such things as the conditions to be met to start the goal, the min and max wait times before taking the flower, and the dimensions of the AABB used to search for a mob to take a flower from
• The `minecraft:take_flower` AI behavior can now be used by any mob, not just baby Villagers

API

• Initial APIs are releasing out of beta and will be usable without an experimental flag
• The first module to release is `@minecraft/server` as version 1.0.0. The APIs included with this are listed below:
  • Non-beta APIs like those included in the `@minecraft/server0.0` module do not require the Beta APIs experiment to be turned on, and will be more stable over time
  • This initial API set is narrow, but we intend to add more APIs into non-beta modules over the coming months
• `@minecraft/server` will continue to develop in Beta and those Beta APIs have been incremented in version to `1.1.0-beta`; if you wish to continue to use Beta `@minecraft/server` APIs, `manifest.json` references will need to be updated to 1.1.0-beta
• APIs included in the `@minecraft/server` version 1.0.0 release:
  • `System` type (Exposed via `systemglobal` instance)
    • `run()` — runs a function on the next tick (can be used to maintain a game loop tick over tick)
  • `World` type (exposed via `worldglobal` instance)
    • `getDimension()`
    • `getAllPlayers()`
  • `MinecraftDimensionTypes` type
    • `nether`
    • `overworld`
    • `theEnd`
  • `Dimension` type
    • `id`
    • `runCommandAsync()`
  • `CommandResult` type
    • `commandResult`
  • `Entity` type
    • `id`
    • `typeId`
    • `dimension`
    • `runCommandAsync()`
  • `Player` type
    • `name`

Commands

• Using the `/enchant` command to apply the same level of enchantment no longer results in a higher level being applied
• Fixed an issue where `hasItem` wouldn't correctly detect an item with a data value if `hasItem` wasn't provided a data value
• Running `/execute as` from Command Blocks no longer inherits rotation from entity
• Fixed a bug where Chain Command Blocks would not activate when Delay in Ticks was greater than 0
• Running `/execute align xyz entity` now produces a command error instead of crashing

Data-driven blocks

• Released `BlockCollisionBoxComponent` outside of experimental toggle in JSON formats 1.19.50 and higher
• Released `BlockCraftingTableComponent` outside of experimental toggle in JSON formats 1.19.50 and higher
• The Crafting Table UI now updates when a block changes to a permutation with a different `minecraft:crafting_table` block component
• Removed the functionality of the `minecraft:breathability` block component. Component will have no effect on the custom defined block

Data-driven items

• Blocks using the `minecraft:placement_filter` component now produce particles, sounds and vibrations events when they are removed due to their placement condition failing

`/execute` command syntax

• Removed the Upcoming Creator Features requirement for the new `/execute` command syntax
• Version 1.19.50 is now required to run the new command syntax
• Creators currently using the new `/execute` command syntax in command blocks will have to go modify those command blocks in order to update those commands
• Creators currently using the new `/execute` command in behavior packs will need to change the min engine version to 1.19.50
• The previous `/execute` command syntax can still be used by using version 1.19.40 or less

Mobs

• `input_ground_controlled` no longer implies increased auto step when controlled by player
  • The `variable_max_auto_step` component can be used instead
  • To have consistency with previous versions, use `base_value`: `1.0625` and `jump_prevented_value`: `0.5625`

Molang

• Fixed `has_property` to return `1` when a property exists and `0` when not, rather than the opposite of that

Networking

• Added server property `enable-lan-visibility` to disable the explicit LAN discovery by clients
  • This will prevent unexpected port conflicts when running multiple dedicated servers on a single host
  • Clarified port use in server logs and made error messaging more clear

Structure block import

• Structure Blocks can now import structures from `.mcstructure` files on Windows

Updated add-on template packs

• Updated Add-On templates for 1.19.50 with new resources, behaviors, and documentation

Experimental technical updates

Scripting, APIs, & GameTest Framework

• Fixed `velocity` property not returning correct values in certain situations
• Added function `canPlace` — Returns if it is valid to place the desired block type or block permutation at a specified location (and optional face of the block)
• Added function `trySetPermutation` — Attempts to place the desired block permutation at a location by first checking `canPlace`
• `Entity`
  • Removed function `runCommand`. Consider `runCommandAsync` as an alternative
• `Dimension`
  • Removed function `runCommand`. Consider `runCommandAsync` as an alternative
• Converted `BlockRaycastOptions` to an interface
• Converted `EntityEventOptions` to an interface
• Converted `ScoreboardObjectiveDisplayOptions` to an interface
  • Location type updated to IVec3
• `Vector`
  • `add` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `cross` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `distance` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `divide` — updated `a` argument to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `lerp` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `max` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `min` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `multiply` — updated `a` argument to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `slerp` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type
  • `subtract` — updated `a` and `b` arguments to accept an IVec3 interface type

Minecraft: Bedrock Edition

The Minecraft 1.19.50 update is a sizeable patch packed with features and improvements, and it's available now for free to all Minecraft: Bedrock Edition players.

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