- Minecraft has a new Player Locator Bar, which can help you easily find your friends on the server.
- The bar will lie on the XP bar and display all your friends as tiny colored squares.
- If you don't want to reveal your location, try sneaking, wearing a Mask, or use a Potion of Invisibility.
With the first major Minecraft drop of 2025 approaching, Mojang has announced a much-needed new feature for the update. Minecraft now has a handy new Player Locator Bar UI in the game that makes it easy to find your friends on the server. Although this feature is in beta testing phase, you can try it out by installing the latest Minecraft Bedrock Preview. Being excited about it myself, I quickly installed the Bedrock version and tested out the player locator bar.
How Does the Minecraft Player Locator Bar Work?
The new Minecraft locator bar makes finding other players on your server much easier. Put simply, the new UI overlays the experience bar. Nearby active players will now appear as tiny squares above the inventory. This is possible when the player is inside the 120-degree space from your viewpoint.
Furthermore, if you are 30 meters above or below another player, the tiny squares will have a small arrow signifying the respective direction. I tried looking straight up and down while my friend was in front of me, and apparently, the arrows also appeared for this instance.
If you are still confused about how you will be able to see your XP while the tiny squares are active, then worry not. As long as you are actively gaining experience points, your level will be visible on top of the locator bar, and once it stops, the player level will disappear.
I personally feel that the new bar is a much-needed QoL update in Minecraft. Sometimes, it can get really frustrating toggling the F3 menu, checking my coordinates, and then moving towards where my friend is. With the locator bar, I can simply follow my friend’s dot and reach where he is currently mining.
Another aspect of this feature is that it will make locating all the griefers and pranksters far easier than before—unless, of course, they’re using tricks to stay hidden. This will help me take revenge on all those who have destroyed my base in my absence.
How to Hide from the Minecraft Player Locator Bar
Speaking of being hidden, if you like staying Incognito, prepare for some loopholes. You can disappear from the Minecraft player locator bar of other players in three ways: Sneaking, Wearing a Mask, or becoming invisible.
However, every method above has its own caveats. For instance, using the sneak key might get tiring after a while. And while you can wear a mask using a Minecraft mob head, this makes you more vulnerable to attacks.
The last method is quite expensive, but it can guarantee that you stay out of the radar. You must craft a Potion of Invisibility using a Night Vision Potion, Fermented Spider Eye, Blaze Powder, and a Brewing Stand. Finally, you can use the Spectator game mode to turn invisible from the locator bar. However, your friends might not like playing with you if you use cheats.
Minecraft Community Reacting to the Locator Bar
As was expected, most of the crafters reacted positively to the introduction of the locator bar in the Bedrock Preview. Previously, they feared getting lost while following their friends’ coordinates. Some even stuck to using the teleport command, as it was quite frustrating to follow directions, especially if the one giving them is not good with landmarks.
This feature is helpful for those who don’t like the nerdy text covering the whole screen when you press the F3 key for XYZ coordinates. Many gamers prefer to follow a small orange dot rather than clutter their screen just to get the right direction using the coordinates.
However, in Bedrock, you do have the option to simply see three sets of coordinates rather than the whole F3 screen. Therefore, people have claimed that the locator bar will be more useful in the Java edition than Bedrock. Furthermore, a few claim that this feature might break the PvP aspect of the game and it should be toggleable when released in the stable update.
The Minecraft Player Locator Bar is currently available on the Bedrock Preview release and should out for Java soon. That said, are you excited to see this new feature? Let us know in the comments below!
