If you’ve been playing Minecraft for more than a couple of years, you already know Mojang’s annual April Fools updates are some of the most chaotic, fun, and wildly unhinged content the studio releases all year. The 2025 iteration is no exception: it flips core gameplay mechanics on their head, adds absurd features you’ll never see in the main game, and hides dozens of easter eggs even long-time fans might miss. We spent 12+ hours testing every quirk, glitch, and intentional feature of the snapshot to put together this complete breakdown of how to play Minecraft April Fools 2025, plus all the hidden bits you won’t want to skip.
How to Play Minecraft April Fools 2025: First Steps to Access the Snapshot
Before you can jump into the chaos, you’ll need to enable the experimental snapshot in your Java Edition launcher. It’s a straightforward process, but there are a couple of critical precautions to take first to avoid losing any of your existing progress. Always back up your existing world saves before downloading any experimental snapshot, as these builds are unstable and can corrupt files if you try to load regular saves in them.
To find the snapshot, open your Minecraft Launcher and head to the “Installations” tab at the top of the screen. Check the box that says “Snapshots” in the top right corner, then scroll through the list of available builds until you see the one labeled “24w13aaprilfools” (that’s the official 2025 event build). Click install, then wait for the files to download before launching. The 2025 April Fools snapshot is only available for Java Edition players, so Bedrock users will have to watch streamers or wait for clips of the event to pop up online, unfortunately. If you don’t see the snapshot in your list, try restarting your launcher and double-checking that you’re signed into a valid, official Minecraft Java account.
Core Gameplay Changes You Need to Adapt To Immediately
The second you spawn into the 2025 April Fools world, you’ll notice everything feels wrong. Mojang didn’t just add a couple of silly items this year, they rewrote basic rules that players have known for over a decade. I died three times in the first 10 minutes of testing, mostly because I kept trying to mine blocks the regular way and accidentally placed 12 crafting tables over a cliff. These are the biggest changes you’ll need to get used to right away:
These changes take a solid hour to get used to, so don’t get frustrated if you keep messing up controls at first. You can get a free netherite ingot from a creeper if you give it 10 dandelions, which is by far the fastest way to get good gear early on. Just don’t try to hit the creeper, even by accident—they’ll run away and you’ll lose your chance to trade. We recommend rebinding your mouse buttons in settings for the first hour if you struggle with the reversed controls, it cuts down on silly deaths by about 70% based on our testing. You can always switch them back once you get the hang of the new system.
Hidden Easter Eggs and Secret Features You Might Miss
Mojang loves hiding tiny, easy-to-miss details in these April Fools builds, and 2025 has more than any update we’ve seen before. Most of them don’t give you any in-game advantage, but they’re fun to hunt for with friends, and some of them are references to old Minecraft memes and community jokes from the past year. We found a handful that most players haven’t shared online yet, after digging through patch notes and testing weird combinations of items for hours.
One of the most fun secrets is the cake dimension. If you replace all 12 end portal frame eyes with sniffer eggs instead of ender eyes, the portal will light up bright pink and take you to a dimension made entirely of cake blocks, with frosting rivers and sprinkles ore that you can mine to make special firework rockets. The secret cake dimension has no hostile mobs, so it’s the perfect spot to build a silly base for the duration of the event. There’s also a hidden DJ villager: if you give a plain villager a full set of diamond armor and a jukebox, they’ll turn into a neon-clad DJ that plays remixed versions of classic Minecraft background music. If you name a sheep “April Fools” with a name tag, it will turn rainbow-colored and drop rainbow wool that you can use to make glowing banners. We also found that if you play the game for exactly 1 hour and 1 minute, your character will get a temporary hat that looks like a giant rubber chicken, which stays on until you log out.
Pro Tips to Get the Most Out of the Limited-Time Event
This April Fools snapshot will only be available until April 7, so you don’t have a lot of time to mess around with all its features. These tips will help you skip the frustrating parts and enjoy the weirdness without wasting time on bugs or avoidable mistakes. First, don’t waste time trying to fight hostile passive mobs for the first few hours. They deal twice as much damage as regular zombies, and they drop the same boring items they do in the main game, so it’s not worth the effort. Stick to trading with friendly creepers and zombies for gear instead.
If you’re playing with friends, set up a private server instead of joining public ones. Public event servers are overloaded right now, and most of them have disabled the more fun easter eggs to prevent lag. You can easily set up a temporary snapshot server for free if you already pay for Minecraft Realms, or just open your single player world to LAN if you’re playing with people on the same internet connection. Don’t build any permanent bases with the event-exclusive blocks like sprinkle ore or rainbow wool, because these blocks will disappear if you try to import the world into the main game after the event ends. If you want to save a build you made in the snapshot, replace all exclusive blocks with regular vanilla blocks before exporting the save file. You can also record clips of the weirder moments, since you won’t be able to replicate most of these mechanics in the regular game ever again.
At the end of the day, the 2025 Minecraft April Fools update is exactly what makes the game’s community so special: it’s silly, unapologetically weird, and built for players to mess around with no pressure to grind or beat the ender dragon. We’ve covered all the basics of how to play Minecraft April Fools 2025, from accessing the snapshot to finding the most obscure hidden easter eggs, so you don’t have to waste time troubleshooting when you could be running from an angry sniffer or trading for netherite with a friendly creeper. Grab some friends, mess around with the reversed controls, and don’t stress if you die a bunch at first—everyone is fumbling through the weird mechanics right along with you. The snapshot will be gone before you know it, so jump in while you can.