Chests, barrels, and shulkerboxes all exist in Minecraft to help players store their possessions. With the vast amount of blocks available in the game, it's still very easy to become disorganized. Rather than spending countless hours sorting and re-sorting your items, build this auto-sorter!
An auto-sorter will gather material that you place in a chest and sort it into different chests that you can easily access to grab what you need. This auto-sorter includes enough chests to store five different materials. Below, check out the materials needed, as well as a step-by-step guide to building your very own auto-sorter.
Materials Needed
To make this auto-sorter, you will need the following materials:
- 22 Chests
- 22 Hoppers
- 15 Redstone dust
- 5 Repeaters
- 3 Comparators
- 5 Redstone torches
- 25 Building blocks
In addition to these items, you will need blocks to create your filter. This will require an anvil and at least 20 blocks. We will go over making the item filter later.
Steps To Make An Auto-Sorter
Once you have all the required material, you can start building your auto-sorter. First, place down five double chests. On top of the five double chests, place five more.
You should have two rows of chests now, totaling ten double chests. From the back of your build, attach a hopper to each chest. This should add up to ten hoppers as well.
Looking toward the hoppers, leave block space and then lay down five of your building blocks. Directly next to the blocks, add five repeaters facing the build.
To place them in this direction, stand behind the five placed building blocks, facing the hoppers. Placing repeaters from this position will point them toward the build. After placing the repeaters, add five additional blocks to frame them in. Above, you can see the building block and repeater placement.
In the space between the building blocks and hoppers, place five redstone torches. The torches will be attached to the building blocks, facing toward the hoppers. This will power the build.
Using 15 building blocks, make a 3x5 rectangle coming from the back of the hoppers. This platform should be covering the redstone torches and repeaters.
On the block closest to the hoppers, place five comparators. You will want the two switches to face the hopper. To do this, stand on the hoppers and place the comparators in front.
Now, stand on top of the chests facing the comparator. Attach a hopper to each one, as shown above. To get this positioning right, hold shift and attach the hopper to the side of each comparator.
On every remaining block, place restone dust.
From the front of your build, place two temporary blocks coming off the side of your hopper. These can be any block because they will be removed after this step.
Attach hoppers coming from the top block. The hoppers should be directly over the row below. To do this, just attach the first hopper to the block, and then continue placing hoppers off of each other while holding shift.
Remove these blocks after placing the hoppers.
You're almost done! From the front, attach two hoppers to the right side of the build. On the rightmost hopper, place a chest. This is where you will put items to be sorted.
The material in this chest will filter through the hoppers in the top row, finding the spot for the given item. If you don't have a chest created for certain items, it will funnel to the very last hopper. Just attach a chest directly to the last hopper in the top row to gather these unsorted items.
That's all there is to the main part of this build. You have completed the frame, but we still have to create a filter. Check out how to create a filter below.
Preparing The Item Filter
The first step to creating a filter is to have filter blocks. At an anvil, you will need to rename at least 20 blocks as filter blocks. They can really be named anything, but it doesn't need to be anything more complicated than just 'filter.'
Your build should have a 5x4 wall of hoppers. The bottom two hopper rows attach to the chests, while the other two are over the chests. To create a filter system, you will need the hopper row second from the top. This is also the hopper row that you attached to the side of the comparators. Above, you can see the correct row for creating the filter system highlighted.
After opening a hopper menu, you will see five spaces for blocks. Using four filter blocks, fill the last four spaces.
In the first space, place a stack of blocks that you want to be sorted. Place a full stack (64) of blocks in this space. The items should filter, and you will be left with 41 blocks. Keep these blocks here.
The stack you place will become the item that the chests below will carry. Above, you can see dirt placed. This means that the chest in front will be sorted to only hold dirt blocks.
Continue doing this for each hopper. Each hopper should have four filter blocks, and then a stack of 41 blocks. You can place anything that you want to be sorted in this first space.
Once you've finished this filter system, you're done! Place unsorted blocks in the right-hand chest, and wait for them to be sorted.
Expanding The Sorter
This item sorter will sort five different types of blocks, which isn't very much. Fortunately, you can easily expand this build.
Essentially, you will just need to widen the build. Instead of working in rows of five, you will increase it to the number of items that you want. It will be very easy to increase this build, just make sure that you have enough material!
Now, you should know how to make a basic auto-sorter. This build is a great addition to your base. Try building it inside or underground to hide the redstone wiring in the back. Overall, if you have a lot of items, this is the perfect build for you.