Minecraft is a great game that you will undoubtedly spend hours playing on. However, with the expanse of an open world with limitless possibilities, it’s reasonable that you might be enjoying too much and end up making your device suffer from a total lack of storage
However, fret not, as the base game of Minecraft only takes up around 900 MB – 1 GB of storage. This amount will increase depending on a lot of other factors, such as mods, resource packs, and the worlds that you have on your device. Read on to know the actual storage space that your Minecraft takes up!
How many GB Does Minecraft Take Up?
If you are downloading a fresh installation of Minecraft: Java Edition on Windows, the game will only occupy around 525 MB of storage space, which expands to around 1 GB or more once you install it. Minecraft on Windows 10, or Bedrock Edition, lists out with a download size of 900 MB.
However, you should note that these numbers are only the base game and the download file size, not including the many add-ons that you might want to add like mods and resource packs.
For a quick overview, a mod is a piece of add-on that adds new functionality to a world, may it be a new item or a new weapon. A resource pack, on the other hand, is a way to modify the visual and even audio aspects of Minecraft, allowing great customizability to the look and feel of a world.
Basic mods and resource packs may not take up a lot of space. However, over the course of your playtime, you will undoubtedly come across many mods and resource packs that will help you out in your game. These will then start to put a dent on your disk space.
To see how much space YOUR Minecraft installation takes up in Windows, follow these steps:
1. Press Win + R, then on the dialog, enter the following string (without the quotation marks):
- If you are using Java Edition: enter “%AppData%/.minecraft”
- If you are using Bedrock/Windows 10 Edition: enter “%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\minecraftWorlds”
2. This will open a window that contains all your Minecraft files. Right-click on any blank space on the window and go to Properties.
- Alternatively, you can easily access Properties on the ribbon tab on the window.
3. This will open up another window that will show the total amount of storage your Minecraft installation has taken up.
How Much Storage Does a Minecraft World Take Up
Much of a Minecraft installation’s storage will be taken up by the worlds that you have stored in your device. This will include all single-player worlds that you have generated and all multiplayer worlds that you have joined.
However, this doesn’t mean that Minecraft holds all data in the worlds that you’re in. Minecraft stores world data smartly by only generating new areas as you explore them, then storing those data into the disk. This way, the game doesn’t spend huge computational power creating the entire world at once and storing them into terabytes of storage.
Minecraft actively generates new chunks as you explore to manage the world data size.
That means that each world in your device will only contain data from areas that you have already explored. The amount of data will also increase depending on the contents of the area that you have explored, so a chunk of a basic biome will have less data than that of a chunk of your base containing a lot of blocks like chests.
A well-explored single-player world will usually occupy around 400-500 MB. If you’ve played with a Minecraft world for at least a year and explored it enough, it can reach 1-2 GB.
For multiplayer worlds that you don’t host, the game will still only store world data of the places that you’ve explored, and will have a similar world storage size (not including the mods and resource packs that might come with it).
However, active multiplayer worlds that you host on your device can also easily reach more than 2 GB depending on how much the players have explored.
How Many GB is Minecraft on Android
Minecraft’s other editions also have different sizes. For instance, Minecraft on Android and other mobile devices actually have different sizes depending on the device.
For Android, the size varies per device, so you might want to check out the Google Play Store to see its size before installing it.
Minecraft on an Android device lists out a 116MB download.
For iOS and iPadOS, the App Store currently displays the app size as 358.5 MB for version 1.18.2
For Fire OS or the Kindle Fire tablets, the Amazon Appstore displays the app size as 132 MB for version 1.18.2.
Again, this app size is usually the base game only. Often, the game will also decompress some data, which will lead to the final game size being larger than what is stated in the app stores. The indicated size will also not include the worlds that you will generate once you play the game.
How Much Space Does Minecraft Bedrock Take Up
Minecraft: Bedrock Edition is the former name for the version of Minecraft that is available for the many platforms that Minecraft now supports outside of those that can run the Java Edition. This includes the gaming consoles where Minecraft is now playable.
Currently, Minecraft is also available in three major gaming consoles: Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo.
Minecraft as seen in the Xbox Store
In the Xbox One and X/S, the Xbox Store displays 1.18.1 with a download size of 839.25 MB.
For the Nintendo Switch, Minecraft actually has a large 1.1 GB game file size.
The download size for the PlayStation 4 is 1.7 GB.
Conclusion
Minecraft, despite being a game with the possibility of creating infinite worlds, doesn’t actually take up a lot of space by itself. However, if you often play on a lot of worlds, the world data of these worlds will definitely take up a chunk of your disk storage.
Unless you are hosting a multiplayer world where you expect a lot of players playing, a basic gaming set-up will suffice for most players, and you will not need a separate dedicated storage for Minecraft itself.
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