How to build an item sorter in Minecraft

This sorter takes mixed items from one chest and drops each kind into its own Barrel. Each slice is 1 block wide, so you can line up as many as you need. We built it on a Java Edition 26.3 server, sorted mixed items through it, then filled a barrel to make sure the overflow goes to the last chest without breaking the other slices.

Orientation used below: you stand in front of the barrels. Behind each barrel is a column of 3 hoppers, and behind that the redstone of the slice. The plan shows 3 slices; build one, test it, then repeat it to the side.

1. Put a row of Barrels on the floor, one per kind of item (layer 3 of the plan). Barrels never join together, unlike chests.
2. Behind each barrel, place a Hopper pointing into it: sneak and click the back of the barrel.

On each bottom hopper, place a second Hopper pointing away from the barrel, toward the back (layer 4). A hopper points into the block you click: put a temporary block behind the spot, sneak and click its front face, then break the temporary block. It must not point down: a hopper pushes into the one below even when that one is locked, and the filter would empty.

1. On top of the filter hoppers, place a line of Hoppers, each pointing into the next one along the row (layer 5). Start with the overflow chest at the far end and sneak-click each new hopper onto the previous one.
2. At the start of the line, add one more hopper with a Chest on top of it: this is where you put the items to sort.
3. At the end, the last line hopper points into a second Chest: the overflow chest, for items that have no slice.

1. Behind each filter hopper, place a block one level lower, then a Redstone Comparator on it, pointing away from the hopper (layers 3 and 4). It reads the filter.
2. Continue backward: two blocks in a row at the comparator's level minus one, with Redstone Dust on top, then a third block one level lower with the third dust on it (layers 3 and 4). The dust steps down at the end.
3. Under the second dust's block, place a Redstone Repeater pointing toward the hoppers, sitting on its own block (layers 1 and 2). It reads the block under the third dust.
4. In front of the repeater, a solid block. On the side of that block facing the hoppers, place a Redstone Torch (layer 2). It sits right under the comparator's block.

The lit torch powers the block above it, the comparator's block, which locks the bottom hopper next to it. When the filter gets an extra item, the signal reaches the repeater, the repeater turns the torch off, and the bottom hopper takes exactly one item.

1. Rename 4 items in an Anvil (1 level each), for example 4 Sticks called "Filter". A renamed item never stacks with a normal one, so nothing from the line can join it.
2. Put 41 of the item to sort in the first slot of the filter hopper, then one renamed item in each of the 4 other slots.
3. For an item that stacks to 16, such as Ender Pearls, put 10 in the first slot instead of 41.

The comparator signal of a hopper is the fill level of its 5 slots scaled to 1 to 15: 41 items plus 4 gives 2, one more gives 3, a full filter (64 plus 4) still gives 3. Three dust turn 2 into nothing and 3 into 1, and since the signal never goes above 3, the dust of one slice never sets off its neighbor.

Drop a mix of items in the top chest. Each hopper moves one item every 8 game ticks, so the line sorts 2.5 items per second. Each matching item ends in its barrel, the last one waits in the bottom hopper until the next arrives, and everything else reaches the overflow chest. To sort more kinds, copy a whole slice to the side and give it a new filter.

The filter counts come from the Java Edition comparator formula, and we tested the sorter on Java Edition 26.3 only. Bedrock sorters often use other counts: do not copy these numbers to Bedrock without testing them in a creative world.