Minecraft

Minecraft Ender Eye Trivia (Must-See for Beginners)

Qing Shang Feng·2/8/2026
Ender Eye
Ender Eye

The Ender Eye (Eye of Ender) is a craftable item used to locate and activate the End Portal inside a Stronghold.

Uses

The Ender Eye can be used to locate and activate the End Portal, and can also be used to craft Ender Chests and End Crystals.

Locating the Stronghold

The Ender Eye can be used to locate the End Portal (and the Stronghold containing it):

Hold the Ender Eye and press the use key. The Ender Eye will fly towards the nearest Stronghold, traveling about 12 blocks, passing through necessary blocks, and leaving a trail of purple particles in its path, identical to those of an Ender Chest.

In Java Edition, when a Stronghold is first generated, the Ender Eye flies towards the room containing the End Portal. If the world is exited and reloaded, the Ender Eye will then fly towards the first generated room in the Stronghold—the spiral staircase.

In Bedrock Edition, the Ender Eye will fly towards the five-way intersection, which is the second generated room in the Stronghold.

If the distance to the End Portal is far, the Ender Eye will fly higher to more clearly indicate the vertical path the player must take.

As the player approaches the vertical axis (Y-coordinate) of the End Portal, the Ender Eye will fly more precisely to locate this Y-axis. This means the Ender Eye might fly downwards, indicating the player is above the End Portal and needs to dig down.

After flying for 2-3 seconds, the Ender Eye will hover briefly, then fall, becoming a collectible item, or disappear in mid-air (with a 20% chance of disappearing). Therefore, the expected number of uses for one Ender Eye is 5.

The Ender Eye's flight function only works in the Overworld; it does not work in the Nether, the End, or in worlds without Strongholds.

The End Portal requires Ender Eyes to activate. Pressing the use key on an End Portal Frame block places an Ender Eye. When all 12 frames are filled, the End Portal activates. Each End Portal Frame block has a 10% chance of already containing an Ender Eye upon generation. Once placed on an End Portal Frame, an Ender Eye cannot be removed.

Sounds

Java Edition Sounds
Java Edition
Bedrock Edition Sounds
Bedrock Edition

Entity Data

ID

Java Edition ID
Java Edition
Bedrock Edition ID
Bedrock Edition

The Ender Eye has associated save data containing many of the entity's properties.

History

Java Edition

  • 1.0.0 Beta 1.9-pre3: Added the Ender Eye with no use. In worlds generated before this version, the Ender Eye would mislead you to a location that was not a Stronghold. This was mostly because the Ender Eye would guide to the area where a Stronghold should have generated based on the seed, and the seed differed significantly from the version that originally generated the world. Therefore, if you saved the seed of an old world and used the same seed to generate a Stronghold in a new version, the Ender Eye would guide to that Stronghold.
  • Beta 1.9-pre4: The Ender Eye can now be placed into a portal block or used as a tool to safely return to the Stronghold.
  • 1.0.0: Changed the sound when throwing an Ender Eye.
  • 1.3.1 12w21a: The Ender Eye can now be used to craft Ender Chests.
  • 12w22a: Ender Eyes can now be purchased from villagers.
  • 1.6.4 1.6.3-pre: The Ender Eye now guides to Strongholds based on structure data saved in the world file, rather than calculating the Stronghold's location from the seed. Therefore, even if Stronghold generation rules change, Strongholds generated in older versions can still be found by the Ender Eye.
  • 1.8 14w02a: With changes to villagers and the trading system, Cleric villagers now sell one Ender Eye for 7-11 emeralds as one of their tier 3 trades.
  • 1.9 15w41a: Cleric villagers no longer sell Ender Eyes.
  • 15w44b: The Ender Eye can now be used to craft End Crystals.
  • 1.11 16w32a: Entity ID changed from EyeOfEndersignal to eye_of_ender_signal.
  • 1.13 17w47a: Before the flattening, this item's numerical ID was 381.
  • pre5: The Ender Eye's entity ID was changed to eye_of_ender.
  • 1.14 18w43a: Changed the texture.

Pocket Edition

  • 1.0.0 0.17.0.1: Added the Ender Eye.

Bedrock Edition

  • 1.10.0 1.10.0.3: Changed the texture.

Legacy Console Edition

  • TU7 CU1 1.0 Patch 1: Added the Ender Eye.
  • 1.90: Changed the texture.

New Nintendo 3DS Edition

  • 1.7.10: Added the Ender Eye.