Minecraft Locator Bar: Complete Guide

How the Minecraft Locator Bar works — waypoint colors, transmit and receive range, the locator_bar gamerule, /waypoint, and Java vs Bedrock differences.

Last updated: 2026-07-23

The locator bar is the strip of colored dots that sits where your experience bar normally sits, showing you which direction other players are in. Mojang added it to Java Edition 1.21.6 (the "Chase the Skies" drop, released 17 June 2025) and to Bedrock Edition 1.21.90. It is the first time vanilla Minecraft has shipped a player-tracking HUD element without a map, a compass, or a mod.

This page is the reference for the whole feature: what the bar draws, where the colors come from, how far it reaches, how to turn it off, and every place the behavior differs between editions and versions. Every number and every identifier below is taken from Mojang's own changelogs or the Minecraft Wiki, and the sources are listed at the bottom.

What the locator bar actually is

The locator bar is a HUD element, not an item and not a screen. It renders in the same slot as the experience bar. When you are alone in a world it never appears — with no other players present, the experience bar simply behaves the way it always has. As soon as another player is in the world and is not hiding, the bar takes over that space.

Each tracked target is drawn as a waypoint: a small colored icon whose horizontal position on the bar tells you which way to walk. The bar covers roughly 120 degrees of your camera's facing, so it works like a compass rose clipped to your field of view rather than a minimap. Anything outside that arc is not drawn at all, which is the single most common reason people think the bar is broken.

Two pieces of information ride along with each dot:

Vertical direction. If the target is meaningfully above or below your camera's pitch, a small arrow appears on the indicator pointing up or down. There is no number — only the direction.
Distance, encoded as icon size. The icon shrinks in four discrete steps as the target gets further away. There is no distance readout anywhere in vanilla.

That is the entire information budget: direction, rough elevation, rough distance. No coordinates, no names, no lines on a map.

Why it keeps vanishing

The bar shares real estate with the experience bar, and experience wins. Whenever your XP total changes, or you close an anvil or enchanting table GUI, the game hides the locator bar for 100 ticks (5 seconds) and shows the experience bar instead. Mining a vein of coal or standing at an enchanting table will therefore make the bar flicker in and out. This is intended behavior, not a bug — it is documented on the Minecraft Wiki's Locator Bar page.

Pressing F1 hides the entire HUD, locator bar included. Bedrock Edition has an equivalent "Hide HUD" option. Neither edition has a client-side setting that hides only the locator bar; the toggles that exist are world-level, and they are covered in the guide to turning off the locator bar in Minecraft.

Waypoint icon sizes and the distances behind them

The four icon sprites are defined by a waypoint style, a JSON file that resource packs can override. The vanilla default, published verbatim in Mojang's 25w17a changelog, is:

near_distance — 128
far_distance — 332
sprites — minecraft:default_0, minecraft:default_1, minecraft:default_2, minecraft:default_3

Sprites are looked up under the prefix hud/locator_bar_dot/, i.e. the directory textures/gui/sprites/hud/locator_bar_dot. near_distance and far_distance are optional and fall back to 128 and 332; far_distance must be greater than near_distance.

Splitting the 128-to-332 band across four sprites produces the thresholds the wiki documents:

A full square from 0 to roughly 179 blocks.
A circle from roughly 179 to 230 blocks.
A small square from roughly 230 to 281 blocks.
A small circle beyond roughly 281 blocks.

That is why the icon stops changing once someone is far away: past far_distance every target draws with the smallest sprite, whether they are 400 blocks out or 40,000. Icon size is a coarse proximity hint, not a range finder.

A resource pack can define its own styles in the waypoint_style/ asset directory and set different near_distance and far_distance values, which is the only supported way to change how distance maps to icons.

Where locator bar colors come from

Color is the part of the feature people ask about most, and it works differently in each edition.

Java Edition. A waypoint's color is derived from the entity's UUID. The same account gets the same color in every world, on every server, forever — because the UUID never changes. That determinism is what makes a lookup tool possible at all: you can compute a player's default dot color from their name or UUID without ever joining their server. Our Minecraft locator bar color finder does exactly that, and the locator bar color checker puts a whole party side by side so you can see who is going to be indistinguishable before you set out.

Bedrock Edition. The color is randomly assigned to each player at every session. There is no stable mapping, nothing to look up, and no way to predict your own color before you join. Any site that claims to tell you your permanent Bedrock locator bar color is selling you something that does not exist.

Two things override the default in Java:

Team color. If a player or mob belongs to a scoreboard team that has a color, the waypoint uses the team color instead of the UUID-derived one. Mojang's 1.21.6 notes say this explicitly, and it is the intended way to color-code a whole group at once.
The /waypoint command. An explicit color set through the command overrides both the default and the team color, until it is reset.

The exact arithmetic Mojang uses to turn a 128-bit UUID into a screen color is not published in any official document. It is known only from reading the game's code, so treat any published formula — including the one behind our own tools — as a reconstruction that matches observed output rather than as an official specification. What is officially documented is the input: the UUID, in Java, and nothing at all, in Bedrock.

How the color is stored

On Java Edition the icon data lives in entity NBT under a locator_bar_icon compound with two fields: an int color, stored as a 32-bit signed value assuming full opacity, and a string style naming an entry in the resource pack's waypoint_style directory. This is why a color you set with a command survives a relog, even though the entity's tracked status may not.

Transmit range and receive range

The locator bar is a server-authoritative broadcast system. Mojang describes it as a "Server-authoritative Waypoint broadcasting system": the server decides who transmits a waypoint, who receives it, and whether any given pair are close enough for the packet to be sent. The client draws what it is told and nothing more.

Two entity attributes control the distances, both added in 25w17a:

minecraft:waypoint_transmit_range — how far away an entity can still be seen as a waypoint. Generic default 0.0, minimum 0.0, maximum 60,000,000.0. Players carry a base value of 60,000,000.
minecraft:waypoint_receive_range — how far a player will accept incoming waypoints. Generic default 0.0, minimum 0.0, maximum 60,000,000.0. Players carry a base value of 60,000,000. Only players have this attribute.

So the shipping default is "effectively unlimited in both directions". Mojang's own examples from the 25w17a changelog:

/attribute @s minecraft:waypoint_transmit_range base set 0 — stops a player transmitting, hiding them from everyone.
/attribute @s minecraft:waypoint_transmit_range base set 80 — lets a player transmit only up to 80 blocks, hiding them from anyone further away.
/attribute @s minecraft:waypoint_receive_range base set 0 — stops a player receiving anything, which switches off that one player's locator bar.
/attribute @s minecraft:waypoint_receive_range base set 120 — shows that player only waypoints within 120 blocks.

The two ranges are independent and both must be satisfied. If A transmits 80 blocks and B receives 60,000,000, B still loses A past 80 blocks. Range is negotiated per pair, not globally.

To restore vanilla behavior after experimenting, set the base value back to 60000000 — not to 0, and not by removing the attribute.

What counts as a waypoint transmitter

In Java Edition any entity with a transmit range above zero is a waypoint transmitter, and only living entities qualify: mobs, players, and armor stands. Item frames, boats, minecarts and blocks cannot transmit.

Since mobs default to a transmit range of 0, they are invisible on the bar until someone raises it. Give a mob a nonzero transmit range and it starts appearing on the bar exactly like a player — this is the supported route for map makers who want quest markers or a hunted-target indicator.

An entity is also counted as tracked, for the purposes of /waypoint list, if its color has been set explicitly this session even without a transmit range. That kind of tracking is temporary: it does not survive a world reload, and such an entity is listed without ever being drawn on the bar.

In Bedrock Edition only players are tracked. Other entities are not tracked by the game at all, and there is no attribute or command exposed to change that.

The `/waypoint` command

/waypoint is Java Edition exclusive. It needs permission level 2 and cheats enabled, which in practice means being an operator on a server or having cheats on in a single-player world.

The full syntax:

waypoint list — lists every tracked waypoint.
waypoint modify <waypoint> color <color> — sets one of the 16 standard color names.
waypoint modify <waypoint> color hex <hex_color> — sets a 6-digit RRGGBB value, for example FF0000 for red or 6495ED for cornflower blue.
waypoint modify <waypoint> color reset — returns the waypoint to its default, which may be the team color.
waypoint modify <waypoint> style set <style> — points the waypoint at a style from the waypoint_style resource pack directory. The default is minecraft:default.
waypoint modify <waypoint> style reset — restores the default style.

Four constraints trip people up:

The target must resolve to exactly one entity. @e[type=creeper] fails if more than one creeper exists; @e[type=creeper,limit=1] works.
The target must be a waypoint transmitter. A selector that matches a boat or an armor stand with zero transmit range will fail.
Since Java Edition 26.2 (16 June 2026), color names must be lowercase with underscores. dark_purple is accepted; darkpurple and DarkPurple are not. The same change applies to /team modify ... color. Older tutorials and command generators written for 1.21.6 will produce commands that now fail outright.
waypoint list prints white for anything without an explicitly set color — regardless of the random or team color the game is actually drawing. That is documented behavior, not a bug, and it is the most misread output in the whole feature.

The game does not validate style names. Setting a style that does not exist in any loaded resource pack gives you a missing-texture icon rather than an error.

If you would rather not hand-write these, the locator bar waypoint command generator builds valid /waypoint lines for the version you are on, including the 26.2 color-name rules.

There is also an unlisted icon in the game's textures called bowtie.png, reachable with waypoint modify <target> style set bowtie.

Hiding yourself from the locator bar

Four things hide a player, and all four work through the same underlying mechanism — they attach a modifier that multiplies the player's transmit range down to zero:

Sneaking. Applied as the modifier minecraft:waypoint_transmit_range_crouch, value -1.0, operation add_multiplied_total. It is applied when you start sneaking and removed when you stop.
Wearing a head item. Carved Pumpkin, Skeleton Skull, Wither Skeleton Skull, Player Head, Zombie Head, Creeper Head, Dragon Head, and Piglin Head all hide you when worn in the head slot. The wiki lists carved pumpkins and heads as carrying a minecraft:waypoint_transmit_range_hide modifier.
Invisibility. The Invisibility effect applies minecraft:effect.waypoint_transmit_range_hide, value -1.0, operation add_multiplied_total. A Potion of Invisibility hides you from the bar for as long as the effect lasts.
Spectator mode. Spectators are not shown to normal players at all. They are shown to other spectators, which is deliberate — moderators can still see each other.

Because sneaking and invisibility multiply the total, they beat any base value you set. Sneaking with a base transmit range of 60,000,000 still puts you at zero. Conversely, /attribute ... base set cannot cancel those modifiers; only ending the crouch or the effect does.

Note the asymmetry that catches groups out: hiding yourself changes what other people see. It does nothing to your own bar. To blank your own bar you have to drop your receive range, or turn the feature off world-wide.

The game rule, version by version

This is where most out-of-date guides go wrong, because the identifier has changed twice on Java and once on Bedrock.

Java Edition

25w15a (1.21.6 development, experimental): the rule was useLocatorBar.
25w17a through 1.21.10: renamed to locatorBar, default true. Mojang warned at the time that the rename "may break minor command related features in worlds created in the previous snapshot".
1.21.11 (released 9 December 2025) and later: game rules were moved into a registry and, in Mojang's words, "all game rules have been renamed from their previous camel case names to resource locations in snake case". The rule is now locator_bar — full identifier minecraft:locator_bar, type boolean, default true.

So /gamerule locatorBar false works on 1.21.6 through 1.21.10 and fails on 1.21.11 and later; /gamerule locator_bar false is correct on 1.21.11 through the current 26.x releases. If a command comes back as an unknown game rule, you almost certainly have the casing for the wrong version.

Setting the rule to false removes all existing waypoints from all players immediately, per Mojang's 25w17a notes.

In Java the rule lives under the Player category of the Edit Game Rules screen in Create New World. From Java Edition 26.1 (24 March 2026) the same screen is reachable in-game: the difficulty button in the pause menu was replaced with a World Options screen containing both difficulty and game rules, and a search bar was added at the top of the game rules list. That in-game screen is "available for all operators and otherwise disabled".

Bedrock Edition

Preview 1.21.80.25 (experimental): added the locatorBar game rule.
1.21.90: the locator bar left experiments and the locatorbar rule became generally available.
26.30 (released 16 June 2026), from Preview 26.30.20: the boolean locatorbar rule was removed and replaced by playerwaypoints, a string rule taking everyone (the default) or off. Worlds with locatorbar set to true migrate automatically to playerwaypoints everyone, and false migrates to off. Preview 26.30.29 renamed the matching UI toggle from "Locator bar" to "Player waypoints".

On the scripting side the same release removed the beta locatorBar: boolean property and added playerWaypoints: PlayerWaypointsMode.

Unlike Java, the Bedrock rule is listed as changeable without cheats, from the world menus, so toggling it does not cost you achievements.

Java Edition versus Bedrock Edition

The bar looks the same in both editions and behaves quite differently underneath.

Introduced: Java 1.21.6 — first in snapshot 25w15a behind an experimental data pack, then in 25w17a without it. Bedrock — Preview 1.21.80.20 behind an experimental toggle, generally available from Preview 1.21.90.23 in version 1.21.90.
Color source: Java derives it from the UUID and it is stable forever. Bedrock randomizes it per session.
Team colors: Java honors them. Bedrock has no equivalent.
/waypoint command: Java only. Bedrock has no command to recolor or restyle a waypoint.
Range attributes: Java only. Bedrock exposes no transmit or receive range.
Non-player entities: Java can track mobs and armor stands given a transmit range. Bedrock tracks players only.
Resource pack styles: Java only, through the waypoint_style/ directory.
Game rule: Java locator_bar (boolean, locatorBar before 1.21.11). Bedrock playerwaypoints (string, locatorbar boolean before 26.30).
Cheats: Java's rule needs operator permission. Bedrock's is changeable without cheats.

The practical takeaway: almost every tutorial about customizing the locator bar is a Java tutorial, whether or not it says so. On Bedrock the only thing you control is on or off.

The Java experimental toggle has a small footnote in history — it lasted 14 days, the shortest-lived experiment in any Minecraft version, and never appeared in a release build.

What the locator bar is not

Being precise about the limits saves a lot of frustration:

It is not a minimap. No overhead view, no terrain, no fixed north.
It gives no coordinates. Direction and a four-step distance hint, nothing else. If you want numbers, you still need F3 on Java, the coordinates display on Bedrock, or a locator map.
It does not name anyone. Two players in similar colors are genuinely ambiguous. Teams, or explicit /waypoint colors, are the fix — and checking a party's colors ahead of time with a locator bar color checker is faster than discovering the clash mid-raid.
It does not replace banner markers or maps. Banners on a map still mark fixed locations; the locator bar only tracks entities.
Cross-dimension behavior is not officially documented. Mojang's changelogs and the Minecraft Wiki say nothing about whether a player in the Nether appears on an Overworld bar. Waypoint broadcasting is server-side and per-level, and players widely report that waypoints do not cross dimensions, but we have not found an official source stating it and we are not going to assert it as fact.

Frequently asked questions

Which Minecraft version added the locator bar? Java Edition 1.21.6, released 17 June 2025 as part of the Chase the Skies drop. It first appeared in snapshot 25w15a behind an experimental data pack and became default in 25w17a. Bedrock Edition got it in 1.21.90.

Does the locator bar work in single player? Only if another player is in the world, which in practice means a LAN world or a server. Alone, you see the ordinary experience bar.

Can other players see me if I am sneaking? No. Sneaking zeroes your transmit range for as long as you hold it. The same is true of wearing a carved pumpkin or any of the seven head items, and of the Invisibility effect.

Why is my dot a different color to my friend's screen? On Java it should not be — the color is derived from your UUID and is the same for every observer, unless a team color or a /waypoint override is in play. On Bedrock colors are re-randomized every session, so they legitimately differ between sessions.

How do I see how far away someone is? You cannot get a number. The icon shrinks in four steps between 128 and 332 blocks, and that is the entire distance signal in vanilla.

Can I change my own locator bar color? Not by yourself. Colors are set server-side with /waypoint, which needs permission level 2. On a server you have to ask an operator, or join a team whose color you want. On Bedrock there is no mechanism at all.

How do I turn the locator bar off? Depends on the scope you want — world-wide, your own bar only, or just hiding yourself. All three are covered in how to turn off the locator bar in Minecraft.

The bar is on but nobody shows up. What now? Work through Minecraft locator bar not working, which walks the failure modes in order from most to least common.

References

Everything on this page was checked against these sources: