5 Best Uses of Shears in Minecraft

Shears are an important Minecraft tool that allows you to achieve things you cannot otherwise. In our guide on making shears, we focused on the required items and the crafting recipe for this tool. And here, we will be covering all the ways you can use shears in your Minecraft world, from getting wool from sheep to removing saddles and harnesses.

1. Shearing Mobs and Blocks

The most obvious use of shears is, well, shearing animals. You can obtain its wool by right-clicking or using the secondary action button on a sheep with a shear. You can do the same by killing them, but using shears allows you to get up to three wool.

Once the sheep eats more grass, you can shear it again. This mechanic is used in a wool farm, so you can obtain this block automatically.

Wolf armor is an epic item that provides a lot of protection to a tamed wolf by absorbing the incoming damage. You can equip this item on your tamed wolf by right-clicking on it. But the only way to remove it from your dog is by using shears.

If you happen to come across one of the rarest Minecraft biomes, i.e. mushroom fields, you can also use shears on mooshrooms. Once you do that, you will receive five mushrooms or the corresponding color, and the mooshroom will turn into a cow.

Shears can also be used to remove the pumpkin head from a snow golem and reveal its goofy face to the world. Also, you’ll get the carved pumpkin back. Furthermore, a beehive or bee nest full of honey can be sheared to collect three honeycombs. However, make sure you first place a campfire below the beehive so the bees don’t get mad at you.

If you use shears on a pumpkin block, you’ll receive four pumpkin seeds and the pumpkin will turn into a carved version. You can use this block as a helmet to hide from others in the new Minecraft player locator bar and as a jack o’lantern, one of the best light source blocks.

2. Placing Shears in Dispensers

The reason why so many items can be obtained automatically is that dispensers can use shears. If there is something in front of the dispenser that can be sheared, like a sheep or beehive, and you activate the dispenser, it will trigger and shear the mob or block.

Furthermore, if there is nothing to shear in front of the dispenser and you trigger it, the shear will not lose durability.

3. Shearing the Tip of Cave Vines

In Minecraft Java Edition, it’s possible to stop certain plants from growing. By using shears on cave vines, kelp, weeping vines, or twisting vines, you’ll prevent their further growth. This can allow you to choose exactly how long your decorative plants will be, instead of all of them reaching the same length.

4. Use Shears to Get Minecraft Blocks

The only way to obtain some blocks is by using shears. They might drop something else when you break them without shears, but this tool allows you to gather the block itself.

In addition, you can acquire four of those blocks without shears, but the shears give you a certain advantage while breaking them. Here are the blocks you can get using shears:

• Cobweb (breaking cobwebs with a fist drops nothing, with a sword drops string and with the shear drops the cobweb block)
• Dead Bush
• Fern
• Short Grass
• Nether Sprouts (breaking Nether sprouts with a fist in Bedrock edition drops this block, so you don’t need shears)
• Leaves
• Tripwire (breaking the tripwire that’s attached to tripwire hooks with shears does not trigger a redstone signal)
• Vines
• Wool (wool also drops if you mine it with a fist, but it’s faster to use shears)
• Sea Grass
• Glow Lichen
• Hanging Roots
• Twisting Vines (using shears will guarantee that this block is dropped)
• Weeping Vines (using shears will guarantee that this block is dropped)

5. Take off Saddle, Harness, and Leash

In the Minecraft Summer Drop 2025, the shears now have a brand new use in Minecraft. You can use the shears to remove the saddles from the horses, donkeys, pigs, and any mob that uses them.

Furthermore, they can be used to cut off leashes from bounded animals or from the fences they are attached to. Lastly, you can also remove the harnesses from the happy ghasts using the shears. All of these techniques require you to right-click using your shears on the specific mob or the leash you’re trying to remove.

Now you know what you can use the shear for and what blocks it can break in Minecraft. All in all, shears can help you obtain certain blocks and automate the gathering of some resources. With that, what do you use shears for most frequently? Let us know in the comments below!