New Minecraft 1.20 Preview brings shield customization and dozens of changes

What you need to know

• Minecraft 1.20 "Trails & Tales" is in full development, with a plethora of features heading to players in the near future.
• On Wednesday, Mojang Studios released the latest Minecraft Preview with a hefty changelog.
• The headlining feature is the ability to customize shields by combining them with banners.
• There are dozens of other changes, too, including Sniffers in normal gameplay and the new Pitcher Plant.

The next major Minecraft content update isn't too far off, now, with Mojang Studios officially leaving the 1.19 "The Wild Update" branch behind. The latest Minecraft Preview build contains a mighty changelog filled with changes, improvements, and even some new features, and it's available now to players.

Minecraft Preview 1.20.0.20 is rolling out across Xbox, Windows PC, iOS, and Android platforms, and it's an impressive release with a lot to discuss. There is a notable new feature in the preview build that adds on Mojang Studios' recent focus on player customization in Minecraft. Now, players can test full shield customization, with the helpful tools now able to be combined with colorful banners.

This is a feature carried over from Minecraft: Java Edition, and should pair very well with customizable armor trims to ensure that your Minecraft character is truly unique. The preview goes much farther than that, though, with dozens of tweaks to the Minecraft 1.20 "Trails & Tales" update arriving later this year. This includes new accessibility changes, alterations to archaeology, increased character limits for hanging signs, and so much more.

Sniffers are also no longer considered experimental features and are available in normal gameplay, which means Sniffers can now breed and lay Sniffer Eggs. Sniffers can also now sniff up the Pitcher Pod, which can grow into the new, decorative Pitcher Plant. There's no shortage of improvements in this build, all of which will come to one of the best Xbox games when the Trails & Tales update arrives later this year.

You don't have to wait even that long for new Minecraft, however. In case you missed it, Minecraft Legends releases on April 18, 2023. You can read Windows Central's Minecraft Legends preview to learn exactly why you should be excited for this upcoming action-strategy game.

The changelog for Minecraft Preview 1.20.0.20 includes:

Experimental features

Accessibility

• Potions, Tipped Arrows, and mob effects have had their colors adjusted to make them more distinguishable from each other

Archaeology

• Miner Pottery Shards can now be found as loot when brushing Suspicious Sand blocks in Desert Pyramids
• Shelter Pottery Shard now has the correct display string

Armor trims

• Untrimmed armor pieces now render correctly in-hand and in the world when carrying an equivalent armor piece with trim
• When swapping a trimmed armor piece with an equivalent piece without trims, both items now render correctly in the HUD hotbar
• When swapping a trimmed armor piece with an equivalent piece without trims, both items now render correctly in UI-slots

Brush

• Brushes can now be enchanted with Mending, Unbreaking, and Curse of Vanishing
• The Brush now displays a tooltip when aimed at Suspicious Blocks on touch devices
• Brushing other non-Suspicious blocks will now produce a generic brushing sound
• The Brush is now dealt damage upon brushing brushable blocks. No damage is taken when breaking blocks
• Use of a Brush will no longer be interrupted if clicking the left mouse button while brushing (holding right mouse button)

Bamboo

• Aligned the flammability of the Bamboo woodset to match the other woodsets

Blocks

• Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel do not drop anymore when falling on top of Daylight Sensors, Signs, Banners, Mob Heads, Conduits, or Campfires
• Rules for placing blocks on top of Decorated Pots are now aligned between Java and Bedrock
  • Decorated Pots no longer provide full support on their top face, meaning Scaffolding, Redstone Dust, Redstone Repeaters, Redstone Comparators, Levers, Glow Lichen, Sculk Veins, Pointed Dripstone, and Door Blocks can no longer be placed on top of them
  • Bells can only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Rails can no only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Amethyst Cluster blocks can only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Button blocks can only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Top Snow can only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Corals can only be placed on full faces of blocks
  • Sea Pickles can now be placed on top of Decorated Pots
• Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel do not drop anymore when falling on top of Sculk Sensors or Calibrated Sculk Sensors

Boats

• Mobs are now correctly positioned above the surface of Bamboo Rafts when riding them

Camels

• Camels now straighten their heads after sitting down, instead of looking up or down
• Camels' heads no longer clip into passengers when looking up
• The Camel's dash bar is now displayed in Pocket UI as well
• Camel's dismount hint is now properly localized

Cherry grove

• Cherry Grove biome can no longer generate with invisible Double Tallgrass blocks above Pink Petals
• Dandelions no longer generate in the Cherry Grove biome

Hanging signs

• Decreased the maximum number of characters allowed in Hanging Signs, while increasing their font size
• Arrows no longer get stuck shaking violently at the bottom of Hanging Signs
• Hanging Signs and other blocks can now be attached to Anvil (bottom), Chorus Flower (bottom), Mob Spawner (sides, and bottom), Grindstone (bottom when the Grindstone is hanging), Daylight Sensor (bottom), and Turtle Egg (bottom). Hanging Signs and other blocks can no longer be attached to the side of Dirt Path and Farm Land
• Hanging Signs attached to the bottoms of Decorated Pots now attach with a v-shaped chain to the Pot
• Increased the volume of sounds emitted by Hanging Signs
• Crimson, Warped, and Bamboo Hanging Signs now have custom sounds to match their wood type
• The UI background for Signs and Hanging Signs now always matches the material they are made of

Features & bug fixes

General

• Fixed an issue where a locally hosted dedicated server was not found by clients on the same machine
• Fixed a bug that caused player capes to stop flapping when moving forward and looking sideways
• Sugar Cane no longer generates air pocket when generated underwater
• Added `spawn_item_event` event to `minecraft:spawn_entity`
  • This event is called when an item is spawned
• Added a progress handler when loading into a world that will wait up to a total of 15 seconds for the primary users appearance to load
• Lowered the time it takes to start up and load into the start screen
• Added a new splash text to celebrate Render Dragon launching everywhere

Accessibility

• Screen reader now describes function of "delete world" button in storage menu
• Tweaked the contrast of the text inside of header for list of Worlds in Storage Settings menu

Blocks

• Wooden Logs generated in Woodland Mansions now have the correct facing
• Removed redundant `lava_cauldron` block
• The sounds emitted by players and mobs stepping, falling, jumping, or landing on top of Sculk Sensors are now affected by the "Players" sound slider

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where a Piston could become invisible in rare cases
• Players no longer take fall damage when falling through water at high speeds
• Players no longer fall through Farmland Blocks after jumping on them
• Players no longer fall through Mud Blocks or Farmland Blocks if they are standing on the block as it becomes a complete block
• Fixed an issue where placing blocks while sneaking on an interactable block was not working as intended with client authoritative movement
• Fixed an issue where an Armor Stands pose would not change when right clicked while the player has sneak held and flying
• Weighted Pressure Plates now update their signal strength immediately when multiple items are placed on top

Graphical

• Fixed an issue in RTX where underwater light shafts from the moon would originate from the opposite angle of the moon sprite

Item rendering

• Broken and unbroken Elytra now render in-hand, in the world, and in Item Frames with the correct icon

Mobs

• Ghasts now shoot fireballs out of their mouth instead of at eye level
• Boots do not z-fight anymore when worn by humanoid mobs and Armor Stands
• The "leg" and "belt" parts of Leggings do not z-fight anymore when worn by humanoid mobs and Armor Stands

Multiplayer

• iOS now requests Local Network access in order to find games on the local network

Pitcher Plants

• The Sniffer can now occasionally sniff up a Pitcher Pod item
  • This pod, when planted in Farmland, grows into a Pitcher Crop, which has five growth stages
  • Once fully grown, the Pitcher Crop can be harvested, yielding a two-block-tall Pitcher Plant

Player

• After choosing the Main Menu option on the death screen, the player hitbox will be the correct size when returning to that world

Shield customization

• A top Vanilla Parity feature request! A Shield can now be combined with a Banner to apply its pattern on it
  • The banner is consumed on use
  • A Shield can be combined with a Banner only if no pattern was previously applied

Sniffers

• The Sniffer and the Torchflower has now been “de-experimentified” and is available during normal gameplay
  • Removed the Sniffer Experimental toggle, since it has no active experimental content
• Sniffer Egg now available
  • When two Sniffers breed, they do not immediately spawn a Snifflet; instead, a Sniffer egg is dropped
  • Hatching
    • When placed on Moss, the egg will hatch after approximately 10 minutes
    • On all other blocks, it will hatch in approximately 20 minutes

Torchflowers

• Torchflowers placed by players now have visual random locations in their blocks, aligning with their hitboxes
• Torchflower Seeds can now be used in the Composter
• Torchflower grown from seeds now has a hitbox that matches the model
• Bees now pollinate Torchflowers and Torchflowers can now be used to tempt and breed Bees
• Using Pick Block on a fully grown Torchflower planted on Farmland now gives a Torchflower instead of Torchflower Seeds
• Suspicious Stew can now be crafted with Torchflower
• Chickens and Parrots can now eat Torchflower Seeds
  • Torchflower Seeds can now be used to tame Parrots
  • Torchflower Seeds can now be used to tempt and breed Chickens

User interface

• Loading animation for adding friends is now the correct size
• The block type icon now appears in the Command Block UI screen
• Don't show retry cloud sync prompt when encountering an out of space error
• Screen UI now always has a focus in control when using a controller
• Fixed a bug where the crosshair could be visible on the new death screen
• Fixed a bug where text formatting codes would be shown on the new death screen
• Fix bug where respawning in VR sometimes softlocked the player on the death screen
• Changed the overlay color on the new death screen in full VR
• Added a new camera effect on the new death screen
• Doubled the resolution of the world thumbnails
• Changed the world tag to no longer display "-experimental" on worlds that only use the Holiday Creator Features experiment

Vanilla parity

• Woodland Mansion's entrance now uses Cobblestone Slabs
• Iron Bars and Glass Panes now can connect to Pistons
• Dead Bush can now be placed on Grass Blocks and Moss Blocks
• The map color for Black Terracotta now matches Java Edition