Minecraft Strings

This is a tool to manipulate strings in a Minecraft world.

Installing

• Install Go, following the instructions at https://golang.org/doc/install.
• Run the following command:

go install github.com/bwkimmel/mcstrings@latest

NOTE: See https://golang.org/ref/mod#go-install for details on where this installs executables. You may need to add this directory to your PATH. Alternatively, use git to clone this repository and use go run . in place of mcstrings in all of the commands below.

Commands

For a list of commands, run:

mcstrings help

For help on a specific command, run:

mcstrings help <command>

Extract

The extract command outputs strings to a CSV file. See Strings File Format below.

mcstrings extract [<flags>...] <world>

• <world> (required): The path to the world (i.e., the directory containing level.dat).
• -filter: Include only specific entries. One of:
  • all: Output all strings.
  • user_text: User-generated strings (e.g., signs, books, renamed items, etc.).
• -invert: Include only entries not matching the filter.
• -header: Include a header row in the output.
• -output: The file to write results to. If not specified, results are written to stdout.

Patch

WARNING: This command will modify your world in-place. You should make a
backup of your world before proceeding.

The patch command patches strings from a CSV file into a Minecraft world. See Strings File Format below. Strings in the world that are not present in the CSV file are left unmodified.

mcstrings patch -strings <csv_file> <world>

• <world> (required): The path to the world (i.e., the directory containing level.dat).
• -strings (required): The path to the CSV file to patch into the world.

Compact

WARNING: This command will modify your world in-place. You should make a
backup of your world before proceeding.

The compact command removes unused 4kB sectors from a Minecraft world. The region files for a world contain 4kB sectors. The first 4kB of the file contains a lookup table indicating in which sectors to find the data for each chunk. It is therefore possible for there to be sectors that are not referenced in the lookup table. These orphaned sectors could contain stale data. The compact command removes this data and shrinks the region files accordingly. See Region file format.

mcstrings compact <world>

• <world> (required): The path to the world (i.e., the directory containing level.dat).

Strings File Format

The strings are written as a CSV file having the following columns:

• dimension: indicates the dimension containing the string. One of:
  • 0: Overworld
  • -1: Nether
  • 1: The End
• chunk_x, chunk_z: The coordinates of the chunk in which the string is located.
• nbt_path: The path in the NBT tree for that chunk that contains the string.
• value: The string.

Use Case: removing private user-generated text from a world

WARNING: These instructions will modify your world in-place. You should make a
backup of your world before proceeding.

Suppose you have a world you want to distribute (located in /path/to/world in this example), but it contains private information that you would like to remove before doing so.

NOTE: The following instructions only modify text in the world (e.g, signs, renamed mobs, books or renamed items in chests or dropped on the ground, etc.). It does not affect player data (e.g., items in player inventories or ender chests). For this, you should remove the contents of the playerdata directory from your world.

First, extract the user generated text from your world:

mcstrings extract -filter user_text -output strings.csv /path/to/world

This should capture everything that might be user-generated. If you wish, you can double-check that nothing of interest was missed by listing all of the strings that were omitted by the above command:

mcstrings extract -filter user_text -invert /path/to/world

Import strings.csv into your spreadsheet program of choice, or edit the file by hand if you prefer. Edit the contents of the value column to your liking: either blanking out values or redacting just the information you wish to hide.

NOTE: Some strings contain serialized JSON (e.g., sign text will appear as {"text":"A line of text"}). If modifying these, it is important that the modified text is still valid JSON. As an exception to this rule, sign text (which can be identified by one of Text1 through Text4 at the end of the NBT path) may be blanked out entirely without damaging the sign.

Export your changes as a CSV file (e.g., redacted.csv). Then patch your changes back into the world:

mcstrings patch -strings redacted.csv /path/to/world

This command may tell you that chunks were resized or relocated, and recommend that you run the compact command. This command removes orphaned sectors from your world's region files, which may contain stale data. It is a good idea to run this even if the patch command does not tell you to do so:

mcstrings compact /path/to/world

Open the world up in Minecraft to verify that your changes have been applied, and/or re-run the extract tool:

mcstrings extract -filter user_text /path/to/world