How to Pick Up a Spawner in Minecraft: You Can't, Here's Why

You can’t pick up a monster spawner in survival. Mining one with any pickaxe, Silk Touch included, destroys it and drops only experience, on both Java and Bedrock. Pistons can’t move it either. The only ways to get a spawner as an item are the Creative inventory and commands.

So if you’ve found a spawner you want to use, the answer is to build around it where it is.

What happens when you mine one

Breaking a spawner with a pickaxe drops 15 to 43 XP and nothing else. Any other tool, or your hand, drops nothing at all. A golden pickaxe breaks it fastest. Silk Touch makes no difference: spawners are one of the few blocks it can’t collect, along with budding amethyst.

The same goes for trial spawners in trial chambers. You can break one, slowly, but it drops nothing at all, and pistons can’t move it.

Before you mine a spawner, think about whether you’ll want it. Once it’s gone, there’s no getting it back without cheats. A zombie or skeleton spawner near your base is worth more as a farm than as 30 XP.

What to do with a spawner instead

Turn off for now

If a spawner is in your way while exploring, you don’t need to break it. Light disables it:

• Zombie, skeleton, spider and cave spider spawners: a torch on top or on any side stops it, because these mobs need darkness.
• Blaze and silverfish spawners: these need light level 12 or more around the spawner, which takes a lot more torches or a few glowstone blocks around it.
• Magma cube spawners: fill the space around it with solid blocks so there’s no room to spawn.

A disabled spawner stays where it is, ready for when you want it.

Build a farm around it

Spawners only run when a player is within 16 blocks, and they spawn a few mobs every 10 to 40 seconds in a small area around them. That’s ideal for a farm: you gather the mobs with water, drop them to low health and finish them for XP and drops.

• A dungeon skeleton or zombie spawner: see the skeleton farm guide.
• A Nether fortress blaze spawner: see the blaze farm guide.
• A mineshaft cave spider spawner: these make compact farms too; the cave spider page explains how to approach one safely.

If the spawner is far from your base, it’s usually easier to move your base than to wish you could move the spawner. For other XP options, see our XP farm guide.

Getting a spawner in Creative or with commands

In Creative mode, a monster spawner is in the Creative inventory (search “spawner”). A spawner placed from there is empty; use a spawn egg on it to choose the mob.

With cheats on, you can give yourself one:

• Java: /give @s spawner
• Bedrock: /give @s mob_spawner

The give command guide covers the rest of the syntax. After placing it, use a spawn egg on it to set the mob.

On Java, pressing Ctrl + middle mouse button on an existing spawner in Creative copies it with its mob data, so you can paste a working skeleton spawner somewhere else.

Changing a spawner’s mob

Using any spawn egg on a spawner changes what it spawns, and this works in survival as well as Creative. The problem is that spawn eggs aren’t obtainable in survival at all. They only come from the Creative inventory or commands. So in a normal survival world, a skeleton spawner stays a skeleton spawner.

On Bedrock, fish spawn eggs only work on a spawner that’s waterlogged.

Servers and plugins

Some multiplayer servers let players pick up spawners with Silk Touch. That’s a server plugin, not vanilla Minecraft, and it won’t work in single player or on a Realm. If a server advertises it, it’ll say so in its rules or help commands.