Building structures is one of the most exciting parts of playing Minecraft. You can plan your own adventure maps or even create a model of Earth in Minecraft. The possibilities are endless. But if you are anything like me, the task of placing around thousands of blocks to create a structure feels overwhelming. Luckily for both of us, the game has a special feature. If you know how to use the fill command in Minecraft, then arranging, placing, and replacing blocks can feel like a piece of cake. This can save you days, if not weeks, of real-world time that goes into large builds. But even with such potential, it can’t help you with your architectural planning. For that, our list of best Minecraft house ideas is the only solution. With that said, let’s learn how to use the fill command in Minecraft and change building forever!
Unlike most popular Minecraft commands, “fill” has a lot of additional attributes to it. So, we have divided its guide into several sections to explain how the fill command to its full potential. Use the table below to explore the topic with ease.
Enable Commands or Cheats in Minecraft
How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft BedrockHow to Enable Cheats in Minecraft JavaUse Cheats in MinecraftHow Does the Fill Command Work in MinecraftFind Your Coordinates in Minecraft
Java EditionBedrock EditionHow to Use Fill Command in Minecraft
Use Fill Command without the CoordinatesWhich Blocks Can You Use in Fill CommandMinecraft Fill Command Keywords
How to Replace Blocks with CommandsDestroy Command in MinecraftHow to Spawn Hollow Structures in MinecraftOutlineKeepFrequently Asked Questions
How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft BedrockHow to Enable Cheats in Minecraft JavaUse Cheats in Minecraft
Java EditionBedrock Edition
Use Fill Command without the CoordinatesWhich Blocks Can You Use in Fill Command
How to Replace Blocks with CommandsDestroy Command in MinecraftHow to Spawn Hollow Structures in MinecraftOutlineKeep
Enable Commands or Cheats in Minecraft
Commands in Minecraft work basically the same way as cheats function in other video games. So, you must enable cheats in your world to use any command. Without doing so, you can’t use the fill command in Minecraft.
Follow these steps to enable cheats in Minecraft Bedrock. The steps are the same for all Bedrock platforms, including consoles, PCs, and MCPE.
- Next, within the “Game” section of the settings, look for the “Cheats” section by scrolling down. Under this section, toggle the “Activate Cheats” option.
How to Enable Cheats in Minecraft Java
Follow these steps to enable cheats in an existing Minecraft Java world:
- Then turn on the “allow cheats” option by clicking on it. Once done, click on the “start LAN world” button.
Use Cheats in Minecraft
After you have enabled cheats in your Minecraft world, it’s simple to use them. You just need to open the chatbox on both Minecraft Java and Bedrock edition. If you are on a PC, you can do so using the “T” key. Meanwhile, the console users have to press their dedicated chat key to open it. As for the MCPE users, Minecraft has a dedicated chat button captured in the following screenshot.
Within the chat, you just have to type “/” (slash but without quotation marks) followed by your command and its attributes. For example, sending a text that reads “/summon sheep” in your chat spawns a sheep right in front of you. As you will see later, we can add a variety of attributes to make such simple commands way more useful.
The fill command, as the name reveals, is used to fill areas in Minecraft with a set of blocks. But that’s not all. You can use this command to destroy and replace existing blocks as well. With that ability, you can create a variety of basic structures without manually placing a single block by hand. But before we dive deeper, here are a few basics of the fill command that you should know:
Find Your Coordinates in Minecraft
As you can guess, the fill command depends heavily on using the in-game X, Y, and Z coordinates to place blocks. The “Y” stands for the vertical height within the world, while Z and X stand for horizontal distance from the (0,0) coordinates or the center of your Minecraft world. So, before we use the fill command in Minecraft to make basic structures, let’s learn how to locate these coordinates.
Things are much simpler for players on the Java edition. Press the “F3” key within your world and the current coordinates will be visible in the informational overlay. The coordinates are displayed in the dimensional format, denoting X, Y, and Z values clearly (see screenshot below).
Bedrock Edition
Bedrock users don’t have a dedicated key to make their coordinates visible. Instead, they have to turn on the “Show Coordinates” option within the game or world settings. Once done, their current coordinates will be visible at the top left corner of the screen.
How to Use Fill Command in Minecraft
Now that all the basics are out of the way, it’s time to understand the fill command to create a basic structure in Minecraft.
Go to a specific corner of the area you want to fill and record its coordinates. Then go to the opposite corner of that area and record its coordinates. It has to be diagonally opposite to the first corner you selected. You need to note down the X, Y, and Z coordinates of both spots separately.
Then, open up the chat menu and type the following command:
Here x1, y1, and z1 are the coordinates of the first corner, and similarly, x2, y2, and z2 are the coordinates of the second corner. Meanwhile, the “blockname” has to be replaced with the name of the in-game block you want to use to fill that given area. For example: “/fill -28 108 99 -40 125 111 dirt” will spawn a huge cuboid made of dirt blocks.
Use Fill Command without the Coordinates
Now that you know how to use the fill command in Minecraft, it’s time to make it a bit easier. Instead of going from corner to corner, you can also make a structure next to yourself if you know its size. Let’s assume you want to make a cuboid, which is twenty blocks in height, ten in width, and five in breadth. So, the command you need to use will look like this:
Here the “~” symbol denotes your current coordinates. Then the integer next (~10) to it is perceived as a number of blocks before or after that position. So, ~ ~ ~ is your current position. Meanwhile, ~ ~-10 ~ is ten blocks below you, and ~ ~20 ~ is twenty blocks above you.
Usually, Minecraft structures can be built using only common building blocks – planks, stones, and others. They are complete square blocks with no additional features. But that’s not the case with the “/fill” command. This command allows you to use every placeable block in the game to make a structure. The game even suggests the name of such blocks while you are typing the command.
Do keep in mind that blocks such as veins and buttons might break when placed mid-air. That’s because they have to be attached to other blocks to be placed properly. Similarly, using liquids like lava or water to make structures won’t stop their flow after being spawned. Also, you can use some unplaceable entities like light and air with this command.
Once you get hang of the basic “/fill” command, you can take it a step further by changing how the game handles each structure. There are some keywords or subcommands that you can write after the fill command to customize it. Let’s go over each of these keywords.
The most common way to use the fill command in Minecraft is with the “replace” keyword. By default, the structures you place using the fill command replace every single existing block in that area. But with the “replace” keyword, only the targetted blocks are removed. Its syntax is:
Here, X, Y, and Z are coordinates of the target area, as we’ve covered earlier. Meanwhile, “blockA” is the block you want to place in your structure. And “blockB” is the existing block you want to replace with “blockA”. If you use air to replace a certain area, you can basically clear chunks of your structure in Minecraft.
You can use the “destroy” keyword to remove all existing blocks in the target area. When used underground, the result looks similar to the pattern of stripped mined areas. Its syntax is:
/fill x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 block destroy
The major difference between the regular fill command and the one with “destroy” is that each replaced block gets dropped as an item you can pick.
Next up, “hollow” is an interesting keyword to use with the fill command in Minecraft. With it, only the external layer of the structure is spawned. So, instead of a fully filled one, you get a hollow cuboid. Its syntax is:
If you are wondering about the existing blocks within the structure, they get instantly replaced with air. So, the resulting structure is hollow even if it had existing blocks in its empty area.
Outline
The “outline” keyword is quite similar to “hollow”. It also only spawns the external structure of your command. But if you use “outline”, the existing blocks on the inside of the structure remain intact. This is a useful option to trap existing mobs and structures in hollow cuboids. The syntax goes as follows:
Keep
Finally, the last modifier keyword of the fill command in Minecraft is “keep”. It ensures that none of the existing blocks in the area are affected by the spawned structure. Its syntax is
Another way to understand “keep” is that if you don’t have empty or air blocks in the target area, then parts of your structure won’t spawn. The existing blocks of the area won’t be destroyed or replaced.
Note: On the Bedrock Edition, you have to type “1” before every keyword for it to be activated. So an outline command would look like /fill x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 block 1 outline on the Bedrock edition. This number gives you additional information on the block’s behavior in a binary format.
Q. Can you undo a Fill command in Minecraft?
/fill x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z3 air
