The quiet workhorse of every farm and storage room. A hopper moves items between containers with no input from you, and almost every contraption in the game leans on it.
1Pulls items from
the chest above
2Holds five slots
3Pushes one at a
time into the furnace
4Redstone
locks it
A hopper funnels items from the chest into the furnace, all on its own.
The recipe
Five iron ingots in a V around a chest in the middle.
Everything a hopper does comes down to three moves.
01Pull
It drags items out of any container sitting directly on top of it, and scoops up items that land in its funnel.
02Hold
Five inventory slots buffer the items as they pass through, so nothing is lost in transit.
03Push
It feeds one item at a time into whatever it points at, about two and a half items every second.
What to build with it
Auto-smelter
Hopper into a furnace top to feed ore, a hopper under it to pull finished ingots into a chest.
Item sorter
Lock hoppers with a redstone comparator so each one only keeps its assigned item. The backbone of storage rooms.
Farm collector
A line of hoppers under a crop or mob farm sweeps every drop into one chest while you are away.
Minecart hopper
A hopper minecart rolls along a track and vacuums up items off the ground and out of chests above the rail.
The redstone trick
A hopper given a redstone signal locks and stops moving items. Pair that with a comparator reading a container and you get an item sorter: each hopper holds onto its one assigned item and passes the rest along. It is the single most important redstone behaviour for storage builds.
Quick answers
What is the recipe?
Five iron ingots in a V with a chest in the centre. Quite cheap once you have an iron farm or a few ore veins.
How do I aim a hopper?
Sneak and place it onto the block you want it to feed. Onto a chest's side it points sideways; onto the ground it points straight down.
How fast does it move items?
One item every four game ticks, about 2.5 per second. Two hoppers feeding one container double that throughput.
How do I stop a hopper?
Give it a redstone signal. A powered hopper locks and stops moving items, which is exactly how item sorters single out one item type.
Can hoppers pull upward?
No. They only pull from directly above and push down or sideways. To move items up you need water streams or droppers.
Do I need a chest for the recipe?
Yes, a full chest in the centre. You get the chest back only by mining the hopper, so it is consumed into the craft.
A hopper is five ingots plus a chest, so a sorting system is measured in stacks of iron rather than in blocks placed. This is the reason most players build an iron farm before they build storage, and why the first sorter is usually smaller than the one that replaces it.
It pulls from above and pushes where it faces
A hopper takes items out of the inventory directly above it whether or not that inventory wants to give them, and pushes into whatever it points at. Placing one while crouching aims it, and a hopper aimed at the wrong block is the most common reason a chain silently stops moving items.
A comparator reads how full it is
Because a comparator reads a hopper's contents as signal strength, a single item held in a hopper is a detectable state. Almost every item filter and sorter in the game is built on that one behaviour rather than on anything the hopper does with movement.
Comparator
Minecart
Redstone
Dropper
Furnace