April Fools' Day jokes

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

List of April Fools' jokes

2010

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.

2011

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. It is heavily inspired by the Mann Co. Store from Team Fortress 2.

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  Message displayed upon opening the chest.

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  The "Minecraft Store".

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  The store after it goes into "seizure-mode".

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  The window popup about the "seizure-mode".

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  How the store appeared after April Fools'.

2012

The logo from the Mars Effect site.

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

“	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

During 2013, Mojang released a pre-release for a fake future version of Minecraft containing numerous joke features to various YouTubers.

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  The 2.0 version banner.

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  A pink wither.

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  A talking block of coal.

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  The "redstone bug" mob.

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  2.0's "super hostile" mode.

2014

A post was added to Mojang Studios' blog 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.

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.

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  One of the villager skins (at the time, the nitwit was unimplemented).

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  A server during the event.

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  The base villager skin.

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  The butcher villager skin.

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  The farmer villager skin.

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  The librarian villager skin.

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  The priest villager skin.

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  The smith villager skin.

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  The nitwit villager skin.

The image that Johan posted on April Fools' 2014.

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

2015

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. 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.

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  Showing the modified menu screen. Note that the text reads "Play World" and "Reset World".

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  Banners, obsidian boat, normal boat, and diamond heart.

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  An explosion of heart particles from an end crystal.

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  Zombified Piglin (at the time known as "Zombie pigmen") wielding heart swords.

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  Monster Rooms (at the time known as "Dungeons") were replaced with "houses".

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  The pink wither returns.

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  The "Minescreeper" minigame.

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  The hidden QR code.

2016

1.RV-Pre1 shows the tech items and the USB charger block.

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

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  A player wearing this version's new equippable items.

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  Signs get a more modern appearance.

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  What signs look like while wearing reality vision goggles.

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  Viewing a sign through reality vision goggles.

2017

The Mine & Craft Digital Leisure Device from April Fools 2017.

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

2018

A comparison of some textures.

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. 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. 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. Archived as a resource pack (taken down).

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  The menu screen, featuring a unique splash.

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  Some of the textures used during the 2018 April Fools' event.

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  An example of the way the world looks with these textures.

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  A village with these textures.

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  A ravine with these textures including the overlay.

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  A Java Edition 1.14 village with these textures.

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  Underwater terrain with these textures.

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  The inventory with these textures.

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  A desert pyramid and the sun with these textures.

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  The chest room in a desert pyramid with these textures.

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  A jungle temple with these textures.

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  A swamp hut with these textures.

2019

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

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  Cover art.

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  The loading screen.

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  The title screen.

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  Difficulty options.

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  Death screen.

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  A nerd creeper.

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  The UI with the default resource pack.

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  The UI with the programmer art resource pack.

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  Ingame image of the Minecraft dev team.

2020

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.

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  The 20w14∞ version banner.

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  The "ant" dimension.

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  The "sponge" dimension.

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  The "library" dimension.

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  The "bridges" dimension.

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  The "isolation" dimension.

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  The "slime" dimension.

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  The "skygrid" dimension.

2021

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

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  Minecraft Plus! (Box Art).

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  A flying glow squid screensaver.

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  A flying creeper face screensaver.

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  A screensaver featuring random block textures.

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  A screensaver featuring bouncing blocks.

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  A screensaver featuring bouncing items.

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  A screensaver featuring a rotating block.

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  A screensaver featuring liquid tiles.

2022

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.

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  Player wearing a glass block.

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  Footsteps when walking.

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  Player holding a bee.

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  Player holding a spyglass.

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  Player holding a sugar cane.

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  Player holding a sugar cane from a first-person perspective.

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  Player holding a sheep.

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  Player holding a skeleton with spyglasses on its eyes.

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  Player riding the ender dragon in The End dimension.

2023

Minecraft website

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.

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  Minecraft website on April 1st, 2023 before...

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  ...and after breeding the two chickens.

Minecraft Launcher

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.

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

April Fools snapshot

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.

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  The surface of the Moon in snapshot 23w13a_or_b.

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  A player who has transformed into a charged creeper.

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  A player's inventory after transforming into an ender dragon.

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  The Moon after it has been enlarged so much that it pulls mobs and players toward it.

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  The Overworld can be seen in the sky from the Moon.

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  A glowstone portal, which was inspired by the Aether mod.

2024

Minecraft website

The minecraft.net website was updated to feature several intractable poisonous potatoes across the home page. When clicked, they deplete the health bar below the Minecraft logo, losing 1.5 - 2 hearts per click. When health bar gets fully depleted, the user is greeted with a "You Died!" screen saying "You awoke the Toxifin", showing the score (consuming a potato gives you 1500 score [?] ) and a big "Respawn" button. Clicking the "Respawn" button takes the user back to the minecraft.net and resets all the poisonous potatoes.

This joke feature can be toggled on or off by clicking "Turn off potatoes" on the top left corner.

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  Minecraft website on April 1st, 2024.

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  ... when zooming all the way out.

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  "You Died" screen after consuming too many poisonous potatoes.

Minecraft Launcher

The loading animation has been changed to a spinning poisonous potato with poison effect particles. Rarely​, however, the loading screen can appear as a regular potato instead. Additionally, when clicking in the launcher, 1 to 10​ potatoes fly out from where the mouse is clicked and fading out.

The Play & Install buttons, the menu tab, and the headline's text had been changed from Noto Sans to Potatis. Additionally, all the E's, R's, and N's have been drawn backward. This may or may not​ be intentional, but there has been no confirmation and there may not be.

These joke features can be toggled on or off by toggling the "Enable April Fools 2024" checkbox in the launcher settings.

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  Minecraft Launcher spinning animation on April 1st, 2024.

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  When clicking on the Launcher on April 1st, 2024.

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  The new potato fonts for menu tab, headlines, and Play/Install button.

April Fools snapshot

Mojang Studios released the snapshot 24w14potato, also called the "Poisonous Potato Update". The snapshot adds potato-related blocks, food, tools, armor and weapons, as well as the Potato dimension. Players can teleport to the dimension by going into a potato portal. The dimension consists of floating islands made of potato blocks and has naturally spawning potato mobs, animals and villagers in potato villages.They also added potato themed structures.

April Fools add-on

The Poisonous Potato Add-On, created and released by Jigarbov Productions, was made available on the Marketplace. It adds new poisonous potato themed blocks, items and entities.

2025

2025's April Fool's update, the CraftMine update, allows the player to use the new Mine Crafter to craft randomly generated levels, or "mines", to play through. The goal of each mine is to find the exit by finding the exit structure, marked by a blue beam of light, in the Overworld and craft the next mine. The mines appear to be generated similarly to the dimensions added in the Infinite Dimensions update in 2020. Additionally, the launcher received a new leveling system. This leveling system consists of 31 levels however, the 31st level is said to be the 9001st level. The leveling works as follows; the icon which represents how for you are from completing a level, is the same as that of the player icon on a map. It travels from the left side of the screen to the right. Each time it makes it the right screen you 'level up.' Additionally, upon each level the speed of which one obtains a level slows. You also recieve a 'launcher skill.' Launcher skills are modifications made to your launcher from the leveling system.

Minecraft website

The home page for the minecraft.net website was updated to include a Mob Animator, with the splash text "How does it work? We don't know!". An option to spawn a mob was added and would summon a random mob, which was animated and could be dragged everywhere in the page.

The Mob Animator relies on a Microsoft A/B testing system that includes tracking, which means ad blockers, strict privacy protection mode in Firefox and rejecting cookies on Minecraft.net will cause it not to appear. There are also references to the rollout only being available to 66% users in the API responses, but this is not confirmed to be the case.

Combining a majority of mobs with the "animate mobs" tab by dragging the mobs and placing them in the empty slot would cause the second mob to disappear and the first mob to appear in the output slot, but with potion particles, which then shortly cause the affected mob to explode.

The giant 3D TNT block.

An option to spawn blocks was also included. Out of the Blocks, only TNT can be combined with TNT, which results in a giant 3D TNT block. This can be used to explode other UI elements on the website.

Moving TNT over anything except TNT causes the TNT to explode and both to vanish. Dirt and Stone both have a darker version, with the Dirt having a gradient with darker color at the top and lighter at the bottom, and the Stone looking almost entirely black. The splash text "Conveniently placed!" can be seen in the top left corner under the Mob Animator section in the sky.

The arrow in the Mob Animator is grey by default, and it turns red when a mob combination is inputted. When certain combinations are inputted, the arrow will turn green, which signifies the combination will go through successfully. It is also possible to obtain larger versions of several different mobs by combining specific variants of those mobs (e.g. rotation direction, walking direction), though not all variants can be combined together successfully.

List of mobs that can be spawned in the Mob tab:

• Bee
• Chicken (3+ variants)
• Creeper (2+ variants)
• Pig (2+ variants)
• Slime (cannot be combined)
• Skeleton (4+ variants)
• Zombie (3+ variants)

List of blocks that can be spawned in the Blocks tab:

• Dirt (dark, light)
• Stone (dark, light)
• TNT

• The combination of spawned blocks and mobs in 2025.

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  Background to drop mob and blocks

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  Size comparison of several mobs and their large counterparts.

Minecraft Launcher

The Minecraft Launcher has been updated with a new "skill" system, akin to that of an RPG game, where any user interaction increases their Exp Point count. These "skills" can be toggled under the "Select Skill" menu and apply various modifiers to the launcher itself. The higher your level, the more skills you unlock.

The launcher is capped at level 30, after which you're unable to gain any more experience points. It is possible to set a higher level (Up to level 9001, which in itself is a reference to "It's Over 9000!") by editing the properties in the JSON file. Functionally this does not unlock anything else and anything over level 30 defaults to level "LAUNCHER HACKER", while any level over 9001 automatically rolls back to level 0.

You can change these properties inside the launcher_prefs.json located within your .minecraft folder:

{
    "currentExperiencePointsPleaseDontHackThis": number, // (Current XP Count within Level, the amount required to level up scales per level)
    "currentLauncherLevelPleaseDontHackThis": number, // (Current Level)
    "enabledSkills": string[], // (Currently Applied "skills" to the launcher)
    "formatVersion": number,
    "version": number
}

These features can be toggled within the settings using the "Launcher Leveling System" toggle.

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  Launchcraft Introduction

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  The Launcher Leveling System in the launcher.

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  Launcher Skills.

• A video showcasing the April Fools 2025 launcher.

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  The "Creator Spotlight" modifier.

April Fools snapshot

Mojang Studios released the snapshot 25w14craftmine, also called the "Craftmine Update". 2025's April Fool's update, the Craftmine update, allows the player to use the new Mine Crafter to craft randomly generated levels, or "mines", to play through. The goal of each mine is to find the exit and craft the next mine. The mines appear to be generated similarly to the dimensions added in the Infinite Dimensions update in 2020.