Minecraft:Sign

A sign is a non-solid Minecraft:block that can display text, and can be placed on the top or side of other blocks. The text of signs can be customized with Minecraft:dyes and Minecraft:glow ink sacs, and they can be Minecraft:waxed to prevent its text from being edited by any player.

Obtaining

Breaking

Signs can be broken with any tool or without a tool, but an Minecraft:axe is fastest. Template:Breaking row

A sign also breaks and drops itself as an Minecraft:item if the block the sign is attached to is moved, removed or destroyed.

Natural generation

An oak sign can be found in Minecraft:igloo basements. Spruce signs can be found in taiga Minecraft:village houses, as part of a chair but the sign says nothing.

Usage

Signs can be used to display text; they can be used to label storage, display information to other players or note areas of interest. Signs are also not destroyed by Minecraft:water or Minecraft:lava and therefore may be used to control the flow of these fluids.

Placement

Signs may be placed on the top or side of other Minecraft:blocks (including semi-solid and non-solid blocks such as Minecraft:fences, Minecraft:trapdoors and other signs). To place a sign, Template:Control a sign Minecraft:item while pointing at the block the sign should be attached to, enter the desired text (or none), and click the "Done" button,Template:Only press anywhere outside the sign texture,Template:Only, press "escape" on a keyboard, or Template:Xbtn on an Xbox controller, Template:Psbtn on a PlayStation controller, or Template:Nsbutton on a Nintendo Switch controller. Closing the virtual keyboard on a mobile device also exits the typing menu. To place a sign on a block that can be interacted with by the Template:Control control (for example, Minecraft:chests, Minecraft:note blocks, etc.), Template:Control while placing the sign.

Signs on the top of a block stand on a short post and face toward the player who placed it, in any of 16 different directions. Signs placed on the side of a block simply float there, even if the block doesn't make contact with the sign.

For more information about the blocks signs can be placed on, see Minecraft:Opacity/Placement.

Text

File:Oak Sign GUI.png

Oak Sign editing.

Placing a sign opens an editor interface resembling a magnified view of the sign. Up to four lines of text can then be entered using a keyboard (hardware or on-screen). The editor supports limited editing, including moving the cursor and inserting and deleting characters. Template:IN, Minecraft:formatting codes can also be used to apply decorative effects such as color, bold, italic and obfuscated to various bits of the text. Depending on the edition and platform in use, copy and paste operations may be supported and the editor may also support keyboard entry of Alt-codes for displaying Unicode characters.

Text can be added to the back side of a sign by interacting with that side of the sign after placing it and editing the front.

Signs can be waxed by Template:Control a Minecraft:honeycomb on it. Once waxed, a sign cannot be unwaxed or edited without being broken and placed down again or by using commands like /data

After placing and affixing text on a sign, a player can change the text color by Template:Control a Minecraft:dye on it. When colored with dye, the text color may differ from any color specified by formatting codes. These values are hard-coded in the game's code, each dye color maps to one of these. The dye color on the sign's face is applied to all 4 lines of text. Any text that has been colored with Minecraft:text component format overwrites this color, effectively making the 'dye' color be used as a base color for any unstyled text.

File:Glow Ink Sign with Orange Dye JE2.png

Oak sign with glow ink and orange dye applied in Template:JE.

A player can Template:Control a Minecraft:glow ink sac on a sign to make its text glow and have an outline. The glowing text is not affected by lighting. The player can use a regular black Minecraft:ink sac on the sign to remove the glowing effect. If the text has been colored with Minecraft:text component format the glow outline still shows the default white or the color of underlying dye that was used on the sign.

In Minecraft:Creative mode, the combination Template:Key + Template:Control on Windows/Linux, or Template:Key + Template:Control on macOS, can be used to copy an already-placed sign, including its text (with decorations), into the player's inventory.

A dyed sign facing east or west has text that appears more saturated and bright than a sign facing north or south. However, it is actually the sign that is dimmer, because Minecraft's lighting engine uses side lighting to make the world appear less flat, but the text on signs is not affected by this.

Template:IN, inappropriate words or phrases in a sign's text are displayed as hashtags if the "Filter Profanity" setting is enabled.

Template:IN, signs can be created with Minecraft:text components, which allows complex formatting (colors, bold, italic, etc.), hover and click events, localized translation (for Minecraft technical terms, like "Redstone Repeater", otherwise translations must be provided in language files in resource packs), and the incorporation of scoreboard values into text. Use the Template:Cmd command to create or alter text component-based signs.

Example: Template:Cmd

Signs can post the success count of text hover and click events to Minecraft:scoreboard objectives. The objectives to be used can be specified by running the Template:Cmd command or by modifying the sign's NBT data directly with the Template:Cmd command.

Interaction

Signs can be edited after being placed by Template:Control them, which opens the edit sign message GUI.

Signs are destroyed and drop as an item when pushed by a Minecraft:piston.Template:Only

Signs are non-solid and have no collision, so Minecraft:items and Minecraft:mobs can move through sign blocks. Other Minecraft:blocks (including other signs) can be placed on any edge of a sign.

Minecraft:Water and Minecraft:lava flow around signs. Lava can create Minecraft:fire in Minecraft:air blocks next to signs as if the signs were flammable, but the signs do not burn (and cannot be burned by other methods either, except Template:In).

Fuel

Overworld signs can be used as a fuel in Minecraft:furnaces, smelting an Minecraft:item per sign. Nether signs (crimson and warped), cannot be used as fuel in a furnace.

Note blocks

Signs can be placed under Minecraft:note blocks to produce a "bass" sound.

Sounds

Unique

Template:Edition: Template:SoundTable

Data values

ID

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Template:Edition: Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table2 Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table Template:ID table

Block data

A sign has a block entity associated with it that holds additional data about the block.

Template:El: Template:See also

<section begin="block data" />

• Template:Nbt Block entity data
  • Template:Nbt inherit/blockentity
  • Template:Nbt: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the text is locked with Minecraft:honeycomb.
  • Template:Nbt: A compound that describes front text.
    • Template:Nbt: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the sign has been dyed with a Minecraft:glow ink sac.
    • Template:Nbt: The color that has been used to dye the sign. The default value is Template:Cd One of Template:Cd.
    • Template:Nbt: Only in Minecraft:Realms. The lines of text shown to players with the profanity filter turned on instead of the regular lines. This tag is automatically set to Template:Code for lines containing blocked words and to the line's normal contents for the other lines when a player with the profanity filter turned off edits the sign, so players with the filter on cannot see the blocked words. If a player with the filter on tries to use blocked words in one or more lines, the line(s) in Template:Nbt containing blocked words are set to Template:Code, which makes them render completely blank, and this tag is also given the same contents. If multiple lines have been edited before the sign editing GUI is closed, only the lines containing blocked words are blanked.
    • Template:Nbt: A list of text for each line.
      • Template:NbtTemplate:NbtTemplate:Nbt: Text for each line. Must be a Minecraft:text component. The length limit when messages are typed out or displayed in-game depends on the width of the characters in the font you are using, with a hard limit of 50 characters when typing. However, this character limit is not enforced onto the text components, so they can be arbitrarily long (though they may not fully be displayed).
  • Template:Nbt: A compound that describes back text.
    • The same structure as Template:Nbt.

• Template:Nbt Block entity data
  • Template:Nbt inherit/blockentity
  • Template:Nbt: 1 or 0 (true/false) - true if the sign has been dyed with a Minecraft:glow ink sac.
  • Template:Nbt: The color that has been used to dye the sign. The default value is "black". One of "white", "orange", "magenta", "light_blue", "yellow", "lime", "pink", "gray", "light_gray", "cyan", "purple", "blue", "brown", "green", "red", or "black".
  • Template:Nbt: First row of text.
  • Template:Nbt: Second row of text.
  • Template:Nbt: Third row of text.
  • Template:Nbt: Fourth row of text.

Template:Collapse<section end="block data" />

Template:El:

See Minecraft:Bedrock Edition level format/Block entity format.

History

Gallery

Screenshots

• Sign GUI Template:In.
  Sign GUI Template:In.
• All signs and hanging signs.
  All signs and hanging signs.
• Test of signs in early Minecraft:Java Edition Classic.
  Test of signs in early Minecraft:Java Edition Classic.
• Oak sign with glow ink in the dark in Minecraft:Java Edition 21w03a.
  Oak sign with glow ink in the dark in Minecraft:Java Edition 21w03a.
• Difference in visibility of a lime text, from left to right, in a lit birch sign, unlit birch sign, lit dark oak sign, and unlit dark oak sign.
  Difference in visibility of a lime text, from left to right, in a lit birch sign, unlit birch sign, lit dark oak sign, and unlit dark oak sign.
• The comparison between glow text and non-glow text.
  The comparison between glow text and non-glow text.
• Shading differences
  Signs being different shades depending on orientation.
• All sixteen colors of glow text. It uses Template:W, a placeholder text.
  All sixteen colors of glow text. It uses Template:W, a placeholder text.
• Showcase of different ways to style a sign using a dye and a glow ink, text formatting and a set of Unicode characters to use as an alternative font.
  Showcase of different ways to style a sign using a dye and a glow ink, text formatting and a set of Unicode characters to use as an alternative font.

Mojang screenshots

• Another early sign image.
  Another early sign image.
• First image of sign blocks during Infdev.
  First image of sign blocks during Infdev.
• First image of signs on Minecraft:Pocket Edition.
  First image of signs on Minecraft:Pocket Edition.
• First image of editing text on Minecraft:PE iOS.
  First image of editing text on Minecraft:PE iOS.
• First image of editing text on Minecraft:PE Android.
  First image of editing text on Minecraft:PE Android.
• File:Pocket Edition v0.6.0 alpha Development sky.png
• A sign placed on a door.
  A sign placed on a door.
• A sign being broken.
  A sign being broken.
• A dark oak sign with black text.
  A dark oak sign with black text.
• A dark oak sign with white text.
  A dark oak sign with white text.
• A sign using blockdata to dynamically change.
  A sign using blockdata to dynamically change.
• First image of a sign using JSON text.
  First image of a sign using JSON text.
• First image of a sign using width based character limits.
  First image of a sign using width based character limits.
• Signs with glowing ink in several colors.
  Signs with glowing ink in several colors.
• More signs with glowing ink.
  More signs with glowing ink.
• File:This is a post.jpeg
• File:Ti-sign-header.webp
• Crafting signs.
  Crafting signs.
• File:Get out of my swamp.jpg

In other media

• A sign in Template:Amcm.
  A sign in Template:Amcm.
• A Minecraft:copper golem holding up a sign promoting Minecraft:Minecraft LIVE – September 2025.
  A Minecraft:copper golem holding up a sign promoting Minecraft:Minecraft LIVE – September 2025.

See also

• Minecraft:Chalkboard
• Minecraft:Hanging Sign

External links

• Template:Mcnet