How to Make a Clock in Minecraft and What It Shows

A clock takes 4 gold ingots and 1 redstone dust on a crafting table. Put the redstone in the middle square and a gold ingot directly above, below, left and right of it; the four corners stay empty. You get one clock.

Getting the gold and redstone

Gold is the part that slows people down. Gold ore shows up below about Y 32 in most of the Overworld and is much more common in badlands biomes, where it also generates high up. You need an iron pickaxe or better to mine it, then smelt the raw gold in a furnace. If you have been to the Nether, nether gold ore gives nuggets you can turn into ingots (9 nuggets per ingot), which is often faster than hunting for Overworld gold.

Redstone dust comes from redstone ore deep underground. Our guide to finding redstone covers the best Y levels; one ore block drops several dust, so a single vein covers this recipe many times over.

What the clock actually tells you

The dial shows the position of the sun and moon. When the sun is at the top, it is noon; when the dark half fills the window, it is night. That sounds trivial on the surface, but it matters underground. After an hour of mining you have no idea whether it is safe to walk home, and a clock in your hotbar answers that without a trip up.

The most practical use is timing sleep. You can only sleep in a bed at night or during a thunderstorm, so glancing at the clock tells you whether heading back now will let you skip the night.

A few other details:

• Clocks only work in the Overworld. In the Nether and the End the hand spins randomly.
• In an item frame, a clock keeps working, so it makes a decent wall clock.
• Piglins treat clocks as a gold item they love, so they will pick one up and admire it if you throw it near them.

Clock or daylight detector?

If you want something to react to the time of day, a clock cannot do it; it is an item, not a redstone component. For automatic streetlights or night-only farms, use a daylight detector instead. The clock is for you to read; the detector is for your circuits.

The clock’s sibling item is the compass, which uses the same layout with iron instead of gold. Many players carry both on long caving trips. For more recipes like this one, browse the guides hub.