How to Show Chunks in Minecraft

Featured Image credit: Mojang.

An amazing part about the Minecraft world is its sheer size and the ability to almost go forever without ever reaching the world’s end.

But sometimes, you want a more manageable way to interact with the world. That is where seeing chunks come in handy.

With this guide, you will learn how to show chunks in Minecraft and how they can come in handy for building, exploring, and mining.

If you find it difficult to maneuver precisely in Minecraft, check this guide on turning off mouse acceleration in the game.

What Are Chunks in Minecraft?

Due to the enormous size of Minecraft, it would be impossible to render every block all the time, so the Minecraft developers created chunks.

Chunks are block sections of the world that are 16×16, with the chunk’s height being 256 blocks tall!

Each of those world chunks is then broken down into 16x16x16 chunks in the chunk loader for easier rendering.

As such, chunks are simply Minecraft blocks of space. The border of the chunk is defined by colored lines.

What do the Colored Lines Mean?

What the colored chunk border lines mean
Yellow, Blue, Red, and Green lines. So many pretty colors! 
(Image credit: Mojang).

Every chunk’s wireframe comprises four colors: a yellow line, a blue line, a red line, and a green line.

Yellow lines represent the chunk boundaries, while the red lines represent the border edges of connecting chunks. 

But what about the blue and green chunk line?

Blue lines represent the 16x16x16 chunks within the world chunks, and green lines are 4×16 within the 16x16x16 chunks.

I know this is a very distracting way of viewing Minecraft at first. I had trouble correctly using the chunk border tool when I started.

Still, with a little practice, chunks are actually very helpful as they represent an easy way of navigating the world and keeping track of resources.

I’ll get back to this later.

Check out How to find mushrooms in Minecraft.

How to Show Chunk Borders in Minecraft Java

How to show chunks in Minecraft Java
Here I have pressed F3 + G to show border chunk borders. 
(Image credit: Mojang).

The easiest way to show chunks in Minecraft Java, press F3 + G.

Pressing F3 + the G key will turn on the chunk viewer, allowing you to see the lines of the chunk border. That means you can now see the edge of a chunk as a colored wireframe within your rendering distance.

This content was first published on GameDaft.com

As Minecraft players move through the world, new chunks will appear. You can change how many chunks your Minecraft actively shows by changing your render distance in your Settings menu.

Need a break from Minecraft? Check out how to log out on all platforms in this guide.

Showing Chunks: Minecraft: Bedrock Edition

While showing chunk borders is incredibly easy in Minecraft Java Edition, it is much harder to do in Minecraft Bedrock Edition.

This is because there is no way to turn on chunk border rendering in the Bedrock editions of Minecraft – as you can in Java Minecraft. 

Instead, you must rely on the world’s coordinates to figure out where you currently stand in specific chunks.

How to show Coordinates in Bedrock Minecraft:

1. Open your settings menu.

Open settings menu bedrock
(Image credit: Mojang).

2. Navigate to “Game” under “World.” Scroll down until you arrive at “World Preferences.”

Navigate to world preferences
(Image credit: Mojang).

Select the “Show Coordinates” option.

Navigate to world preferences
(Image credit: Mojang).

Now that you can see your current coordinates, you will want to break out a pen and paper; you should probably grab a calculator too.

Toggle on show coordinates
(Image credit: Mojang).

“Why,” do you ask? Because you have to do math to figure out your current chunk location.

There are three coordinates in Minecraft: X, Y, and Z. You want to look at the X and Z coordinates for figuring out a chunk’s borders. The Y coordinates are not important.

Here’s how you can figure out where you are in a chunk:

  • If both the X and Z coordinates are divisible by 16, you are in the northeastern corner of a chunk.
  • You are on a chunk’s edge if only one of the two coordinates is divisible by 16.

Finding Your Chunk Via “Chunk”

In recent Minecraft updates, when you pull up your coordinates and debug screen using the fn key + F3, there will be a string of numbers next to “Chunk.”

The first set of numbers, outside the brackets, is the chunk’s location in the world.

Inside the square brackets, the numbers represent the chunk’s location in your region file.

Using the debug screen to show chunks
You can find the Chunk coordinates near the middle of your coordinate screen.
(Image credit: Mojang).

Now right above the “Chunk” section, you will find the “Block” section.

The numbers in the square brackets represent where you are standing within a chunk.

So if you do not want to turn on chunk bounds, you can use this useful feature to figure out your position.

Show chunks without chunk borders
Here you can see the Block coordinates. 
(Image credit: Mojang).

Coordinates are also useful for finding the nearest village, which you can read about here.

Why chunks are important

Besides making the world generator not kill your machine when rendering, dividing the game into a set of chunks is also useful for you as a player when trying to make sense of the whole world.

As everything within the game is generated within chunks, showing them can be very helpful when trying to locate certain resources. For example, with the 1.19 update, ores are generated by chunk, and only a certain amount of ores will spawn per chunk.

So if you are mining for a specific ore, like iron, you will not waste time mining in the same chunk if you have Show Chunks on. The same is true for rare resources like Amethyst.

Showing chunk borders is also useful for building, especially when messing around with Redstone and mob farms.

Building in multiple chunks can sometimes cause Redstone designs not to work properly though it has gotten a lot better in recent updates. Even so, staying within a chunk’s borders is still good practice for small complex Redstone builds.

And finally, if you are the type who builds large projects, and you want to see all of a massive build you just spent six weeks building at once, you will need to ensure you are building it within chunks that will actively load together.

Conclusion

Showing chunk borders in Minecraft is a handy tool for revealing what segment of the world you’re in.

The loaded chunks not only help your computer handle the procedurally generated world of fancy graphics, but they also can help you locate resources and structure your larger building projects.

While the wireframe border can be intimidating at first, with a little practice, you will use them like a pro in no time.

If you enjoyed this guide on showing Minecraft chunk borders, check out other great Minecraft guides like How to Reload Minecraft Chunks.

Until next time, Happy Mining!


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jan has played video games since the early 1980s. He loves getting immersed in video games as a way to take his mind off stuff when the outside world gets too scary. A lifelong gamer, the big interest led to a job as a lecturer on game sound at the University of Copenhagen and several written articles on video games for magazines.

Read more on the About Page.