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To my surprise, I could not find this by googling, but what is the arm reach of the player? As in, how far can you mine blocks while standing in one place?

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As of Minecraft 1.0, the reach distance seems to have changed. It appears to be 4 metres (blocks) in SSP (survival single player), and 5 meters in multiplayer (most likely to compensate for the lag, making combat and block placement easier).

In my testing, when mining directly in front of your character (at head level) and when right against the block you are mining, you can mine four blocks ahead of your player. (I was right against the red wool block, and I couldn't reach the cyan block at the end.)

Rainbow blocks! Third person view.

To further research the reach of the character, I experimented to see how far I could reach on the green block while still being able to mine it. I was able to reach about two-fifths on the block before I couldn't mine it anymore. (My cursor is on the very furthest point that I could still mine the block.)

Two-fifths by my estimation at least.

Because calculating his reach based on exactly where his arm is relative to the physics engine and how far exactly I reached on the green block would be difficult, I'm going to estimate that he reaches approximately 3.6 meters.

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  • This is good, but it doesn't tell me if the mining distance is just barely over 3 or just under 4.
    – El'endia Starman
    Aug 8, 2011 at 1:25
  • Good point. I'll do a little more research.
    – Kevin Yap
    Aug 8, 2011 at 1:27
  • I did my own experiment with this some time ago and came up with the same result. Also: 1) placing blocks has the same range, and 2) using a tool doesn't extend your range.
    – Ben Blank
    Aug 8, 2011 at 21:02
  • If you could reach 2/5ths of the blocks, wouldn't that mean his reach is 3.*4*?
    – John the Green
    Aug 9, 2011 at 16:31
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    @Arkive Good idea.
    – Kevin Yap
    Nov 27, 2011 at 2:37
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If you play Pocket Edition, like I do, its an average of 6 blocks (5.37 metres). In Xbox or PC, its 4 or 5 blocks (3.58 to 4.475 metres) Hope this answer helps!

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    Where did you get the idea 1 block != 1 meter?
    – Elias Benevedes
    May 12, 2015 at 22:42
  • He didn't say that. But blocks, unlike distance, have full number coordinates.
    – Tomáš Zato
    Jul 10, 2015 at 17:09
  • @Penguin At the time this question was posted, there was no Java/Bedrock split and we had one main [minecraft] tag. Plus, this answer could be useful to users finding this question through Google, regardless of how it is tagged. There was always going to be some overlap - not every question can or should be split cleanly down the middle.
    – Robotnik ♦
    Feb 11, 2021 at 6:01
  • @Robotnik okay, didnt realize timestamp, nvm that flag then, but the second part goes against this ("unofficial") agreement. Even though that's about questions the reverse would apply for answers
    – Penguin
    Feb 11, 2021 at 7:17
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    @Penguin It might be worth bringing this to meta ("Should old answers from before the minecraft tag split be deleted?") - but in general I'm very wary when deleting answers that help the people who are finding the questions through Google. We already allow different answers for people playing games on different platforms, I don't see why game versions should be any different.
    – Robotnik ♦
    Feb 11, 2021 at 10:18

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