Pressure plates in Minecraft are non-solid blocks that can detect items and entities placed on them. They are important in creating traps and controls mechanics for farms, doors, and the like. In this article, we are going to showcase how to use pressure plates in Minecraft.

Table of Contents

Pressure plates trap
Pressure plates can be the best trap for other players.

1 - How to get pressure plates in Minecraft

Players can either craft or mine the pressure plates from various places in the environment. They can be mined with any type of pickaxes. The pressure plate also drops as an item if the block below it is destroyed.

  • One stone pressure plate is generated naturally in each desert pyramid.
  • Oak pressure plates can generate in some plains village houses.
  • Acacia pressure plates can generate in some savanna village houses.
  • Spruce pressure plates can generate in some snowy tundra village houses.

To craft a pressure plate, players only need 2 pieces of the matching stone, ingot, or planks. Just place them next to each other in the crafting menu to get one plate.

The 9 Tnt Rigged Under The Stone Pressure Plate
The 9 TNT blocks are rigged under the stone pressure plate in a desert pyramid.

2 - Types of pressure plates

There are five variants of plates you can create:

  • Wooden pressure plates can detect all entities, giving out a signal strength of 15 when one is atop it.
  • Diamond pressure plates can only be activated by players.
  • Stone pressure plates can detect only players and mobs, giving out a maximum signal strength just like their wooden counterparts.
  • Light-weighted pressure plates (gold) can detect all entities, and the signal strength that it outputs increases as more entities are added.
  • Heavy-weighted pressure plates (iron) are similar to the light-weighted pressure plate, but measures groups of 10 entities.
Variants
Variants of pressure plates can be used for multiple purposes.

3 - How to use pressure plates in Minecraft

As previously stated, pressure plates detect entities that were placed on top of them. When that happens, the plates will emit a Redstone signal, triggering other Redstone contraptions connected to it. Because of this feature, pressure plates are popular tools to open doors, activate TNT blocks, create traps... or run the scripts of a command block.

Pressure plates and redstone
Pressure plates and Redstone interaction is the easiest way to learn Redstone crafting in Minecraft.

As each pressure block type has different conditions for activation, they are great tools for automating your farms. For example, heavy-weighted pressure plates will deliver the goods every 10 drops instead of 1.

A pressure plate can be attached to:

  • the top of a hopper, fence, nether brick fence, an upside-down slab, or upside-down stairs.
  • the top of any full solid opaque block (stone, dirt, blocks of gold, etc.), including full-block mechanism components.

Interested in more of our articles related to Minecraft? Please check this post to find out more about the List Of All Sculk Blocks Revealed For Minecraft The Wild Update.