Lever — Minecraft block

Overview

A lever is the simplest thing in redstone: a switch that stays where you put it. Flip it and it emits a strength-15 signal in every direction, powering the block it is attached to strongly, which means it will fire a piston, open an iron door or light a lamp through that block. Flip it again and the signal stops. That permanence is what separates it from a button, which fires a pulse and resets itself, and it is why a lever is the correct control for anything that should hold a state — a door that stays open, a farm that should keep running, a light that should stay on. It can be placed on the floor, on a wall or on a ceiling, and it can be attached to almost any full block. Levers are also the standard debugging tool: when a circuit is not working, replacing the input with a lever tells you immediately whether the problem is upstream or downstream. In generated structures they appear in jungle temples as part of the puzzle mechanism, which is where most players first see redstone used deliberately by the game itself.

Holding a circuit on or off permanently: iron doors, piston doors, lamp banks, farm shut-offs, and any mechanism you want to leave running while you walk away.

Lever counts as a redstone block in Minecraft 1.21.4. Lever has a crafting recipe, so it is renewable as long as you can source its ingredients. With a hardness of 0.5 it gives way immediately under almost any tool.

Any tool works, and so do bare hands. Mining it returns the block itself, so it is safe to relocate. It is transparent, which matters when you are managing light levels.

With a blast resistance of only 0.5 it will not survive an explosion. Sixty-four fit in one inventory slot. The recipe calls for Stick and Cobblestone.

It is not used in any crafting recipe.

How to get it

Craft a lever from 1 cobblestone and 1 stick, which makes it available on the first day of any world. Levers also generate in jungle temples, mineshafts and woodland mansions.

Tips

A lever strongly powers the block it is attached to, so it will fire a piston or open a door through that block.
Use a lever rather than a button whenever the state must persist — a button's pulse lasts about 1 second.
Placing a lever on a redstone block or a note block is a fast way to test whether a circuit's input is the problem.
Levers can be placed on ceilings, which is the tidiest way to hide a switch above a doorway.