Minecraft: How Do You Keep Items After You Die?

Item loss is sometimes inevitable in Minecraft, especially from meeting one’s unfortunate end in lava; however, there is a way to keep a player’s inventory items upon death. Modifying this in-game effect could be a godsend for some, as losing one’s high-tier gear could make or break a playthrough. Not to mention, dropped items in Minecraft will despawn if not picked up within five minutes, meaning players who unexpectedly die thousands of blocks away from their spawn point may have no chance of getting their inventory back. Thankfully, there’s a quick and easy solution for toggling the option to keep your items after you die in Minecraft.

Keeping Your Items After You Die in Minecraft

To keep your items after you die in Minecraft, make sure to first enable cheats within the in-game menu. After loading into a world, open the console and input the command, “/gamerule keepInventory true.” As a result, inventory items will now never be lost upon death.

For Minecraft players who become more confident in the game and wish to turn this “item loss” option back on, use the command, “/gamerule keepInventory false” in the in-game console. This will revert the world’s settings to removing all items from one’s inventory upon death. Be sure to type the two commands above precisely as shown, as any Minecraft commands are case-sensitive.

For toggling this option for an entire Minecraft server, the console commands are the same. Inputting and entering them will allow all players within the server to keep their items after death. Changing this feature could be useful for various kinds of roleplaying Minecraft servers with players who do not want to go through the inconvenience of constantly losing their items to others. 

To learn how to respawn instantly after dying in Minecraft, consider checking out our Minecraft: How to Remove the Death Screen guide.

Minecraft is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox One X|S, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS.