Description:
In the latest beta version 26.50.25, changes were made that removed the ability for comparators to detect containers through honey blocks, sniffer eggs, and chains (the chain issue has already been reported separately). This directly breaks many existing redstone contraptions that rely on these blocks as transparent, signal-conductive intermediaries for container detection. This behavior is a regression from previous versions and should be reverted to maintain functionality of established builds.
How to Reproduce:
Place a container (e.g., chest) with items inside.
Place a honey block or sniffer egg directly adjacent to the container.
Place a comparator on the opposite side of the honey block or sniffer egg, facing it.
Observe the comparator output.
Observed Result:
The comparator fails to detect the container and outputs no signal (0), even though items are present.
This occurs with both honey blocks and sniffer eggs.
Previously, these blocks allowed comparator signal transmission through them, enabling compact and creative redstone designs.
Expected Result:
Comparators should be able to read inventories through honey blocks and sniffer eggs, as they did before beta 26.50.25.
The behavior should be consistent with how these blocks historically interacted with redstone comparators.
Reverting this change is necessary to prevent widespread breakage of existing contraptions and redstone builds.
Additional Notes:
The impact of this change is significant, affecting numerous redstone designs across the Bedrock technical community. The chain-related aspect has already been reported separately, and the honey block and sniffer egg issues warrant equal attention. Since these blocks were previously usable as comparator-transparent intermediaries with no indication this was unintended, restoring the prior behavior is critical to maintain design compatibility and avoid frustrating players who rely on these mechanics.
Linked issues
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Comments 17
This bug has trashed tens of thousands of complex redstone designs from countless players – years of work, hundreds of hours each. Some can never be recreated. Others will now lag servers to death. This is a disaster.😡😡😡
This change is a bad one. It will break a lot of redstone machines that have been working for a long time. Different blocks having distinct properties is part of what makes redstone fun. Mojang should listen to players' feedback instead of going their own way.
I very strongly hope that these changes can be reverted. They have almost ruined many machines in my Minecraft world. Keeping the original features is the best, and I request that no modifications be made.
The reason this occurred is because cushions use the same solidity property as comparators for detecting if they should break, and so to fix issues with them breaking when inside honey blocks, sniffer eggs, and chains, they just changed the comparator properties (doesn’t affect redstone conductivity, as bedrock edition for some reason has at least 2 seperate solidity properties for different purposes). The optimal solution would be to either switch the cushion to use the redstone conductivity property instead (which would still cause issues with bells and big dripleafs breaking cushions placed inside, or creating a seperate property entirely for what blocks should allow cushions or not (more work, but overall better).
This did also fix ladder, vine, twisted vine, and kelp placement, (which for some reason use the comparator reading property instead of whether the block surface can be used as support, like all other support blocks), however, those placement issues should have been fixed by changing these blocks to use block surface support normally, fixing other issues like being unable to be placed on glass and trapdoors.
I do agree with ru4red about having independent fundamental properties. At the moment, there are roughly around 20 unique blocks with special properties, that fit into 3 categories:
Not conductive while allowing comparator readings (pistons, chorus plants and fruits, farmland, and path blocks) (Chains and sniffer eggs used to fit in this category)
Conductive while denying comparator readings (Bell, target block, big dripleaves, and now honey blocks as of the preview) (the wool slabs and stairs when placed in the lower half of the block fit this category in the 26.40 experemental, but that has been patched in the preview, and was honestly the most interesting feature/bug in the update for me)
Not conductive while cutting redstone lines (Copper bulb, all mob heads, and shelves)
Optimally, all of the solidity related properties would be split up and made editable individually for add on creators, and (maybe) more vanilla blocks would be given unique properties, instead of waiting for the devs to forget a property for a new block, and it go unreported/unfixed until release (basically what I am doing now).
Overall, the above paragraph is more of a feature request, but at minimum the comparator properties for honey blocks and chains need to be reverted (sniffer eggs honestly don’t matter), and the cushion placement ability be determined either by redstone conductivity instead, or by a new property for cushions specifically.
“then the majority of players will likely abandon Bedrock Edition” is definitely an exaggeration though. The people affected mostly include redstoners who have done mechanisms (from the above comments, mostly sulker box related contraptions) using this mechanic, and the limited number of players who followed tutorials for these contraptions in their worlds. Most Bedrock Edition players don’t build heavy and expensive redstone contraptions in their worlds, and are likely substantially more casual.
Despite how much redstone I have done (500+ hours at least), I can’t place myself in the category of those affected, since I haven’t built much large redstone storage systems, and rarely have shucker boxes in my survival worlds.
This issue has been reviewed by our team.
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If a fix is implemented, it will be listed in our official changelogs.
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related bug report from 2021 MCPE-138549
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