How to Use a Tripwire Hook in Minecraft for Traps and Alarms

A tripwire hook needs a partner. Place two hooks on blocks facing each other in a straight line, then place string on the ground between them to connect them. When a player, mob or item touches the string, both hooks send out a full-strength redstone signal. That’s your trigger for traps, alarms and doors.

Crafting the hooks

Stack an iron ingot, a stick and a plank vertically in one column of a crafting table (iron on top, plank on the bottom). You get 2 tripwire hooks. One craft is exactly one tripwire.

For the string, kill spiders or break cobwebs with a sword.

Setting up a tripwire

1. Place the first hook on the side of a solid block.
2. Place the second hook on another block, in a straight line, facing back toward the first.
3. Walk along the gap and place string on each block between them. Up to 40 string fit in a line.
4. When the line is complete, both hooks click into their extended position. If a hook still looks folded up, the line is broken or not straight.
5. Run redstone dust, a repeater or a mechanism straight from either hook, or from the block it’s attached to.

The hooks output power 15 while something is on the string, and turn off when it leaves.

Hiding it

String is thin and hard to see, especially on a dark path or across a doorway. A few tricks:

• Hide the hooks behind blocks that match the wall.
• Lay it across a doorway or a one-block-wide tunnel, where nobody can walk around it.
• Use a redstone repeater to send the signal somewhere out of sight.

What to build with it

• Dispenser traps. Wire the hook to a dispenser full of arrows or lava buckets. The classic jungle temple trap works exactly this way.
• Alarms. Connect it to a note block or bell so you hear when someone or something comes in.
• Hidden doors. A tripwire across a hallway can open a piston door as you walk up. Add a timer if you want it to close again.
• Item detectors. Dropped items trigger the string, so a tripwire in a water stream can count or react to farm output.

Disarming one

If you find a tripwire in a jungle temple or a friend’s base, cut the string with shears. Shears break it without sending a pulse, so nothing fires. Breaking the string any other way sends a short pulse and sets off the trap. Breaking a hook itself doesn’t create a pulse.

Java and Bedrock

The basics are identical. Small differences: in Bedrock, hooks can be waterlogged, while in Java flowing water knocks them off. Java also ignores a few entities that Bedrock counts, such as thrown eyes of ender. If you want the theory behind signals and power levels, read redstone basics. Other redstone and crafting guides are on the guides hub.