Glass

Overview

Glass is smelted sand, and it is the block that makes windows, greenhouses and anything you want to see through. It is fully transparent, passes light at full strength, and — importantly for farms and lighting — it does not block a beacon beam, which is why coloured beacon beams are made by placing stained glass in the beam's path. Mobs cannot spawn on glass, which makes a glass floor or roof a cheap spawn-proofing measure over a large area. The catch every player learns once is that glass breaks into nothing: mined without Silk Touch it simply shatters and drops no item at all, so a large glass build must either be planned carefully or dismantled with a Silk Touch pickaxe. Glass panes are the thinner version, 16 panes from 6 blocks, and they connect to each other and to walls, which is usually what you want for a window. Sixteen dyed variants exist, plus tinted glass, which is made with amethyst shards and blocks light entirely while still being see-through — the only block in the game that does that.

Windows, greenhouses and lantern housings, mob-proof floors and roofs, colouring a beacon beam with the stained variants, and any build where light needs to pass through but entities do not.

In Minecraft 1.21.4, Glass is a transparent block. With a hardness of 0.3 it gives way immediately under almost any tool. Any tool works, and so do bare hands.

Because it is transparent it does not block light. A blast resistance of 0.3 means a single creeper will clear it away. It stacks to 64.

A furnace turns Sand into it. 22 recipes call for it, including Beacon, Black Stained Glass, Blue Stained Glass and 19 more.

How to get it

Smelt 1 sand into 1 glass in a furnace; red sand smelts into ordinary glass, not red. 6 glass blocks make 16 glass panes, which is by far the more material-efficient way to build a window.

Tips

Glass drops nothing without Silk Touch — always carry a Silk Touch pickaxe before dismantling a glass build.
6 glass make 16 panes, so panes are nearly 3 times more area per block of sand than solid glass.
Mobs cannot spawn on glass, which makes it the cheapest way to spawn-proof a large flat roof.
Stained glass in a beacon's beam colours it, and stacking several colours blends them into a new shade.

Properties

With 0.3 blast resistance Glass goes down to any nearby explosion. It is transparent to light and produces no light. One inventory slot holds 64, the normal full stack.

Transparent: Yes
Required tool: Any

How to get it

Furnace · 10s · 0.1 XP

Sand

Glass

Used to craft

Glass is an ingredient in 22 recipes, producing Beacon, Black Stained Glass, Blue Stained Glass, Brown Stained Glass, Cyan Stained Glass, Daylight Detector, End Crystal, Glass Bottle, Glass Pane, Gray Stained Glass, Green Stained Glass, Light Blue Stained Glass, Light Gray Stained Glass, Lime Stained Glass, Magenta Stained Glass, Orange Stained Glass and 6 more.

Beacon