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How Disguises Work
Charm8er edited this page Oct 9, 2026
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Every secret block wears a disguise: it looks like another block. This page covers how a secret block picks its look, how to change it, and what it keeps.
- A secret block has six faces, and each face has its own disguise.
- When you place a block, all six faces get the same look. The one exception is One Way Glass.
- Each face shows the matching side of the copied block. Logs, furnaces and other blocks with different sides line up with the block you copied.
- You can change one face at a time with the Switch Probe.
A secret block copies the block you click to place it.
- A full block: the secret block copies it. Place a block against bricks and it looks like bricks on every face.
- Glass, stained glass and leaves count as full blocks and are copied too.
- A partial block (slabs, stairs, fences, glass panes, chests, dirt paths, farmland, soul sand and anything else smaller than a full block): the secret block shows stone.
- Another secret block, of any kind: the new block copies the face you clicked. Click a face disguised as amethyst and the new block is amethyst on every face.
- Tall grass, a snow layer or another plant that your block replaces: the secret block copies the block underneath, such as the grass block.
- A second Secret Slab placed into a Secret Slab keeps the first slab's look.
- Doors get the same look on both halves.
- One Way Glass gets glass on the face toward you, and the copied look on the other five faces.
- Placed normally, the glass goes on a side face, the one facing where you stand, even when you place it on a floor or a ceiling.
- Sneak while you place it to put the glass on the top or the bottom: the glass goes on the face toward you along your look. Look down at a floor and the glass is on top; look up at a ceiling and it is underneath. If you look more across than up or down, it still goes on the side facing you.
- From the glass side you can see through the block. From the other side it looks like the disguise and hides what is behind it.
A face shows stone when it has nothing better to show:
- the block was placed against a partial block;
- the face was given a side that is not a full face, such as the top of a bottom slab, a fence or a flower;
- the block has no disguise at all, for example after
/setblock.
A secret block is never invisible. If it has no usable disguise, it shows stone.
The Switch Probe copies a look from one block and pastes it onto one face of a secret block.
- Copy: use it on any block. The probe stores that block and the side you clicked.
- Copy from a secret block: use an empty probe on one of its faces. The probe stores the block that face shows, and the side you clicked.
- Paste: use a loaded probe on a face of a secret block. That face takes the stored block and shows the stored side.
- The probe stays loaded, so you can paste the same look onto many faces.
- A loaded probe used on a normal block stores the new block instead.
- A loaded probe used on a secret block always pastes. To copy from a secret block again, empty the probe first (see below).
- Sneak and use the Switch Probe while pointing at nothing (at the sky, for example). It becomes a Rotator Probe. Do it again to switch back.
- Switching empties the probe: any stored block is lost.
- Use the Rotator Probe on a face of a secret block to turn that face's texture by 90 degrees. Four uses bring it back to where it started.
The Camouflage Wand is for creative mode and operators.
- Load a look: sneak and use it on a block. On a secret block, it loads the face you clicked.
- Load another look at any time the same way. The wand then gives that look to the next blocks you convert.
- Convert: use it on a vanilla block that has a secret version, such as a door, chest or repeater. The block becomes its secret version, with the loaded look on every face.
- Convert back: use it on a secret block to turn it back into its vanilla block.
- Some blocks cannot be converted, such as the Dummy Block, which has no vanilla version. Tools lists them.
- Saving the world: disguises, probe edits and rotations stay after you save and reload.
- Changing its state: opening a door, pressing a button, powering a block or changing a repeater's delay keeps the look.
- Pistons: the secret blocks a piston can move keep their look while they slide and after they land. Pistons and Gates lists which ones move.
- Breaking it: the block drops as a plain item. Placing it again picks a new look from the block you click.
A secret block gives itself away no more than its look does.
- Sounds: it sounds like the block it looks like when you walk on it, land on it, hit it, break it or place it.
- Particles: the chips that fly while you mine it, the burst when it breaks, the dust when you sprint over it and the puff when you land on it all match its look.
- Mining time: it takes as long to mine as the block it looks like, with the same tool. A secret block that looks like stone is slow by hand and quick with a pickaxe; one that looks like dirt is quick with a shovel.
- Explosions: it stands up to a blast as the block it looks like. One that looks like obsidian survives TNT; one that looks like dirt does not.
- Which face counts: the face you are mining, or the face toward the explosion. Footsteps, landings and sprinting use the top face.
- Mined, it always drops itself, whatever tool broke it, even by hand. A secret block that looks like stone is slow to mine by hand, as stone is, but you still get it back.
- Blown up, it drops itself only sometimes, as vanilla blocks do: less often in a bigger blast.
- Nothing becomes unbreakable: a look that cannot be broken, such as bedrock or a barrier, counts as stone.
- A face that shows stone (no disguise, or a partial block) sounds and mines like stone.
- Light follows the look. A secret block lets light through when every face looks like something light passes through: glass, stained glass, ice or leaves. Then what is behind it is lit, and grass under it stays grass, as under real glass.
- If any face looks like something solid (stone, tinted glass, or no disguise), the block blocks light like a solid block, and grass under it turns to dirt.
- One Way Glass, the Ghost Block and the Secret Clamber always let light through. Secret Doors and Trapdoors let light through, as vanilla doors and trapdoors do.
- Faces between blocks are drawn or hidden as between the blocks they look like. Secret glass beside real glass, or beside other secret glass, shows no seam between them; a face behind a solid-looking secret block is hidden; and a block beside secret glass still shows through it.
- Each face is drawn by the block it looks like, so it looks exactly like that block in the same spot: grass and leaves take the biome's colour, sand and dirt take the same random turns as the ground around them, and logs show their bark and rings.
- Stained and tinted glass disguises are see-through and colored, like the real blocks. A leaves disguise follows your graphics setting as real leaves do: see-through gaps on Fancy, solid on Fast.
- Doors and trapdoors show their disguise on their thin panels. Every other secret block, including the stairs, slab, buttons, lever and pressure plates, looks like a full block.
- A face turned with the Rotator Probe, or showing another side of its block than its own (set with the Switch Probe), is drawn from that block's texture as before, so it does not join up with connected textures.
- Secret Goggles show moving rainbow stripes on every secret block in view.
- Builder's Goggles fade each secret block and show the real block inside it.