Drop Stacker

A Fabric mod for Minecraft that automatically stacks dropped item entities on the ground into a single entity, reducing entity lag and keeping your world tidy.

Features

• Instant Merging: New drops are absorbed into a nearby pile the moment they spawn — in the same tick, not after a scan interval. A mob's drops collapse before you see them land.
• Whole-Pile Collapse: Each merge pass drains every compatible neighbour at once, so a 100-item pile becomes one entity in a single pass instead of one item per pass.
• Limitless Piles: Stacks beyond vanilla's 64-item limit — up to your configured maxStackSize, with per-item overrides.
• Visual Feedback: Colorful stack count label displayed above items (configurable thresholds).
• Despawn Timer: Optional countdown on the label with urgency-based color coding (supports infinite items with ∞).
• Adaptive Scanning: Idle piles progressively back off from scanning (up to maxScanInterval), so a world full of settled items costs almost nothing. Safe because new drops push into piles on spawn rather than waiting to be polled.
• Item Rules: Blacklist, whitelist, and per-item stack-size overrides — all accepting item tags (#minecraft:logs) as well as exact ids.
• Runtime Control: /dropstacker reloads config, reports stats, and tunes settings without a restart.
• Respects Named Items: An item entity with its own custom name is never relabelled or silently absorbed into another pile.
• Vanilla Parity: Merging honours vanilla's infinite-lifetime, near-despawn, and infinite-pickup-delay guards, and keeps the longest pickup delay so merging can't shorten it.
• Server-Side Only: All logic runs on the server. Vanilla clients see counts and timers with no mod installed.

Requirements

• Minecraft 26.2
• Fabric Loader 0.19.3+
• Fabric API
• Fabric Language Kotlin
• Java 25+

Commands

/dropstacker requires permission level 2 (gamemasters).

Command	Description
/dropstacker reload	Reload the config file from disk
/dropstacker stats	Merge passes, entities collapsed, and current settings
/dropstacker resetstats	Reset the counters
/dropstacker toggle	Enable/disable stacking at runtime
/dropstacker set maxStackSize <n>	Change the stack cap
/dropstacker set scanInterval <n>	Change the scan interval
/dropstacker set radius <n>	Change the horizontal scan radius
/dropstacker set verticalRadius <n>	Change the vertical scan radius

Configuration

The config file is created automatically at .minecraft/config/drop-stacker.json (or config/drop-stacker.json on a server). Fields update automatically on restart if you upgrade the mod.

{
  "enabled": true,
  "mergeOnSpawn": true,
  "maxStackSize": 1000,
  "radius": 5.0,
  "verticalRadius": 2.0,
  "scanInterval": 5,
  "maxScanInterval": 100,
  "maxMergePerPass": 64,
  "ageInheritance": "YOUNGEST",
  "labelMode": "ALWAYS",
  "showDespawnTimer": true,
  "countLowThreshold": 64,
  "countHighThreshold": 500,
  "hideSingleItemLabel": false,
  "despawnTicks": 6000,
  "blacklist": [],
  "whitelist": [],
  "overrides": {}
}

Field	Description	Default
enabled	Master switch for all stacking	true
mergeOnSpawn	Merge new drops instantly as they spawn	true
maxStackSize	Maximum items per stacked entity	1000
radius	Horizontal scan radius (blocks)	5.0
verticalRadius	Vertical scan radius (blocks)	2.0
scanInterval	Ticks between merge scans for an active pile	5
maxScanInterval	Slowest scan rate an idle pile backs off to	100
maxMergePerPass	Max neighbours absorbed in one pass	64
ageInheritance	Despawn timer on merge: YOUNGEST, KEEP_RECEIVER, or OLDEST	YOUNGEST
labelMode	When to show the label: ALWAYS, STACKED_ONLY, or NEVER	ALWAYS
showDespawnTimer	Show despawn countdown on the label	true
countLowThreshold	Count at which the label turns Yellow	64
countHighThreshold	Count at which the label turns Red	500
hideSingleItemLabel	Hide the label if the stack only has 1 item	false
despawnTicks	World despawn rate (matches timer to server settings)	6000
blacklist	Items that are never stacked	[]
whitelist	If non-empty, only these items are stacked	[]
overrides	Per-item stack caps	{}

Item rules

blacklist, whitelist, and overrides all accept exact item ids and item tags (prefixed with #):

{
  "blacklist": ["minecraft:elytra", "#minecraft:shulker_boxes"],
  "overrides": {
    "minecraft:cobblestone": 5000,
    "#minecraft:logs": 512
  }
}

A note on ageInheritance

The default YOUNGEST means a pile inherits the longest remaining lifetime when it absorbs a drop — so a pile next to a farm keeps resetting its despawn timer and effectively never despawns. That is convenient, but on a busy server it lets item piles accumulate indefinitely. Set KEEP_RECEIVER for vanilla despawn behaviour.

Building

./gradlew build

Output JAR is in build/libs/. Gradle provisions the required Java 25 toolchain automatically.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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[!CAUTION] I am not great at Kotlin and this project was built with AI assistance. There may be bad code, wrong patterns, or things that could be done much better. If you spot anything — please open an issue or a pull request. I genuinely appreciate it and will learn from it. Thank you.