Minecraft height level

19 December, 2022

Minecraft's system for locating entities and blocks relies on X,Y and Z coordinates. This is similar to a graph with three dimensions. Y-coordinates represent the object's height.

It can be crucial for Minecraft players to locate and remember certain coordinates in order to spot or recall certain locations, such as created structures or the location of a future construction project.

Finding the Y-coordinate of a location is easy enough. It requires only a quick press of a function keyboard in Minecraft: Java Edition or activation of a specific setting within Minecraft: Bedrock Edition. Players will need to learn how to interpret their coordinates once they have them.

Minecraft: Displaying coordinates, and finding the Y-level

It is easy to bring up the coordinates of a Minecraft player. To bring up the debug screen in Minecraft: Java Edition, players simply need to press F3 (default) to display their current coordinates.

These coordinates can be found under the title “XYZ”, in the left-hand corner of the screen. The coordinates themselves are broken down into three segments. The second segment is the current player's Y-coordinate. This can be saved for later, or used to watch how it changes with elevation.

This is especially important when mining because certain ores only spawn at specific elevations.

Minecraft: Bedrock Edition has a set of settings that display the player's coordinates. This should be true for Minecraft's Pocket Edition and Education Editions as well, since they are both based on Bedrock Edition's framework.

When creating a new world, coordinates can be turned on in the Game Settings menu under World Options. The slider “Show Coordinates”, which can be activated, will display in-game for players to locate their Y-coordinate.

Similar to Java Edition, the Y-level is represented by the second coordinate in the sequence. It's separated by commas.

It's easy to manually switch coordinates on Minecraft players who have already created their world. Players can access their settings by going to their in-game Pause menu. From there, they can go to their World Settings menu and enable the display of coordinates, much as if they were creating their world.

Players can also use “/gameruleshowcoordinates true” to display coordinates without using quotations. No matter how players activate their coordinate display, they should always use the Y-coordinate as the second coordinate. Players can then mark and navigate their Minecraft worlds at will.