Silk Touch in Minecraft: What It Can and Can't Pick Up

Silk Touch makes blocks drop themselves instead of their usual drop. Stone drops stone instead of cobblestone, glass drops glass instead of nothing, and diamond ore drops the ore block. It has one level, goes on pickaxes, shovels, axes and hoes, and conflicts with Fortune.

Blocks that need Silk Touch

These are the ones players actually use it for:

• Glass and glass panes, which otherwise break into nothing. Handy for moving a build without smelting new glass.
• Ice, packed ice and blue ice. Breaking ice without Silk Touch turns it into water (or destroys packed and blue ice).
• Ender chests. Without Silk Touch they drop 8 obsidian. With it, you keep the chest; your stored items are safe either way.
• Bee nests and beehives with bees inside. The bees come along, which is the easy way to move a hive. See how to get honey.
• Grass blocks, mycelium, podzol and paths instead of dirt.
• Bookshelves, which otherwise drop 3 books.
• Ores, so you can carry them home and break them later with Fortune.
• Sculk blocks from the deep dark: sculk, sensors, catalysts and shriekers drop only XP without it.
• Turtle eggs, mushroom blocks, glowstone, sea lanterns, coral, deepslate and stone.

What Silk Touch can’t do

• Spawners drop nothing in survival; see whether you can pick up a spawner for what to do instead.
• Budding amethyst drops nothing.
• It doesn’t work on swords, fishing rods or Java shears.

How to get it

Silk Touch rolls on the enchanting table, though it’s one of the rarer results. Books come from fishing, monster room and other loot chests, and librarians. Under the experimental Villager Trade Rebalance, it’s the master-level special book of snowy librarians.

Which tool to put it on

A pickaxe covers most uses: glass, ice, ores, ender chests and stone. Many players also keep a Silk Touch axe for bee nests and mushroom blocks, and a shovel for grass and mycelium. Add Efficiency V, Unbreaking III and Mending to whichever tool you’ll keep.