Minecraft 26.1 Snapshot 8: Wrapping Up Baby Mob Overhauls and Stone QoL Enhancements

Mojang has released Minecraft Java Edition 26.1 Snapshot 8, marking the final major gameplay features for the upcoming 26.1 "First Drop 2026" update. This snapshot completes the extensive baby mob visual revamp, introduces quality-of-life improvements to the stonecutter, and includes a slew of bug fixes and technical tweaks. Get ready for cuter Nether adventures and smoother building!

Baby Mob Updates: The Grand Finale

The highlight of Snapshot 8 is the completion of the baby mob overhaul. New models and textures have been added for the remaining baby variants, making every tiny creature in the game adorable and consistent.

Panda (all variants: normal, lazy, aggressive, worried, playful, weak, brown)
Hoglin
Zoglin
Strider (including cold/shivering variant)
Snifflet (baby sniffer)

Additionally:

Hitboxes for baby zombies, husks, drowned, piglins, zombified piglins, villagers, and zombie villagers have been adjusted to fit through 1-block-high and 0.5-block-wide spaces.
Adult horse blackdot markings updated to better match the new baby horse design.
Some adult sound assets refined for consistency.

Stonecutter Quality of Life Changes

Builders rejoice! The stonecutter now supports direct crafting for stone and deepslate variants, saving time and inventory space:

Deepslate → Cobbled Deepslate, Polished Deepslate, Deepslate Bricks, Deepslate Tiles
Stone → Cobblestone

These recipes streamline deepslate mining and stone processing, perfect for large-scale builds.

Other Gameplay and UI Improvements

Creative Mode: Ctrl + Pick Block on players/mannequins now mirrors /fetchprofile results.
UI: Input Method Editors (IME) candidates now display in-game (Windows/macOS). Fullscreen mode no longer exclusive.
Debug Screen: New "detailed_memory" entry for better memory monitoring.
Cat sounds fixed (stray_ambient and purreow now play correctly).

Technical Changes

Developer Note: Initial JVM heap size reduced to 2GB to cut down on crashes in recent snapshots.

Data Pack version: 99.2 (NBT text components improved: pretty-printing, new "plain" option, better parsing)
Resource Pack version: 81.1 (new UI sprites and entity textures)
New command: /fetchprofile entity <selector> for entity profiles (players/mannequins only)

Bug Fixes

21 bugs squashed, including long-standing issues and snapshot-specific ones. Key fixes:

MC ID	Description
MC-98631	Shield heights in first-person now consistent across hands.
MC-99647	"below_name" scoreboard works on non-players.
MC-306345	Baby zombies/husks can traverse 1-block-high passages again.
MC-305989	Golden dandelions now stop baby brown mooshrooms from aging.
MC-306314	Glowing effect restored.

Full list available on the official feedback site.