Piston
| Stackable | Yes (64) |
|---|---|
| Hardness | 0.5 |
| Blast resistance | 0.5 |
| Luminous | No |
| Block ID | 33 |
Piston is a block that pushes the blocks in front of it one space when it is powered.
Obtaining
Crafting
Breaking
Breaking the head of an extended piston breaks the whole piston, which drops as one item.
Usage
Placing
A piston faces the player who places it, in any of six directions. When placed within 2 blocks of the player horizontally, it faces up if it is below the player's feet, and down if it is above the player's head.
Crafting ingredient
| Result | Recipe |
|---|---|
 Sticky Piston |  |
Behaviour
Power
A piston extends when it is powered from any side but its front, or would be if it stood one block higher, which is quasi-connectivity. It retracts when that power goes. It checks only when it gets a block update, and then moves in the same tick. An extended piston also gets the block updates sent to its head.
Power reaching a piston only by quasi-connectivity sends it no block update, so the piston does not move until its next one. Pistons of one kind, normal or sticky, also ignore every block update sent while another piston of that kind is extending, including those from anything its push sets off, such as a torch it breaks or dust it switches on. A piston whose power such a push takes away or brings stays as it is. See missed updates.
Pushing
An extending piston pushes the blocks in front of it one space, up to 12 in a line. It does not extend if the line is longer, or if anything would move into y=0 or y=127. Moving blocks travel for 2 ticks and settle on the tick after. Entities in the way of the head or the pushed blocks are pushed along.
These blocks stop a piston from extending:
- obsidian, bedrock and portal blocks
- an extended piston
- blocks with a block entity: chests, furnaces, dispensers, note blocks, jukeboxes, signs and monster spawners
A furnace can be pushed in the tick it lights or goes out; see Furnace#Behaviour.
A retracted piston can itself be pushed.
Timed piston movements can duplicate sand and gravel.
Two pistons whose pushes meet in the same space can give a block another block's metadata; see Block Transmutation.
A piston can also move an extended piston, a piston head or a moving block that appears in its line between its check and its push. A moving block caught this way can land as an invisible moving piston with no block entity, removed with a right-click; see Block Data Corruption.
These blocks break instead of moving, and drop their items:
- plants: saplings, flowers, roses, mushrooms, tall grass, dead bushes, crops and sugar cane
- cactus, pumpkins, jack 'o' lanterns, leaves, cobwebs, cake and snow layers
- torches, redstone torches, redstone dust, repeaters, levers, buttons, pressure plates, doors and ladders
- beds
- water, lava and fire
Rails of every kind are pushed like other blocks.
Data values
- Block ID:
33,34head,36moving block - Translation key:
tile.pistonBase