Version: 6.0.x

Unlock Actions

By default, every entry in items, tags and mods blocks all interactions with the matching content. unlock_actions narrows that down: it lists the interactions that stay available while the stage is still locked.

{
  "items": [
    "minecraft:diamond_pickaxe",
    {
      "id": "minecraft:diamond_sword",
      "unlock_actions": ["pickup", "equip"]
    }
  ],
  "tags": [
    {
      "id": "c:ingots/iron",
      "unlock_actions": ["pickup"]
    }
  ]
}

The diamond pickaxe stays fully locked. The diamond sword can be picked up and worn, but not swung, crafted with, or traded. Iron ingots from the tag can be picked up and nothing else.

The list says what stays free

unlock_actions is not a list of what is locked — it is a list of what is not locked. Every action you leave out stays blocked. A plain string entry, or an object without unlock_actions, locks everything.

In the editor

Not a tab of its own — it hangs off an entry that is already in the list. Right-click the entry and pick Lock Actions from the context menu; the popup that opens has one tick box per action, labelled as in the table below.

Entity interaction entries have their own version of the same popup under Interaction Actions, and fluid rows use the shorter fluid vocabulary.

The actions

Action	Editor label	What it covers
`use`	Use	Right-click use — food, a bow, activating a tool.
`attack`	Attack	Attacking entities with it.
`equip`	Equip	Wearing it in an armour or offhand slot.
`pickup`	Pickup	Taking it — off the ground, out of a container.
`place`	Place	Placing it as a block, or using it on a block.
`break`	Break	Breaking blocks with it.
`gui`	GUI	Opening the block's GUI.
`loot`	Loot	Appearing in container loot and mob drops.
`recipe`	Show in JEI / EMI	Its recipes in the recipe browser.
`trade`	Trade	Buying or selling it at a merchant.
`icon`	Icon	The padlock overlay drawn on the slot.

Fluids use a shorter vocabulary of their own — seven actions, including one (ingredient) that items do not have.

`place` and `use` are not the same thing

This pair catches people out. place gates putting the item down as a block. use gates right-click usage — opening a GUI, drinking a potion, activating a tool — and does not cover block placement.

Locking use alone will not stop a placeable block from being placed. If the point is that the block must not go into the world, place has to be gated.

`trade` changed the meaning of existing files

Added in 6.0, and it reaches backwards

trade gates buying or selling the item at any merchant, wherever that item turns up. Because unlock_actions stores the actions that stay free, an action nobody could have listed before counts as locked in every file written earlier: an entry someone narrowed to ["use"] gates trading as well from this version onwards.

That is the intended reading — a narrowed entry means "only this" — but it is worth knowing before a pack updates. There is deliberately no migration for it.

Two smaller consequences travel with it:

The result slot of a trade window is now judged by trade rather than by pickup. An entry that allowed pickup in order to allow trading has to say trade instead.
The extra action costs room in the stage's network payload. A stage made entirely of narrowed item entries now holds about 544 of them rather than 581. → Stage Graph and sync limits

Two surfaces deliberately ignore the list

An item whose entry narrows the lock to, say, recipe alone still shows as ??? in the inventory when the stage has hidden display on, and still carries the "requires stage X" tooltip.

Both of those describe that the item belongs to a stage, which stays true however narrow the gate is. Everything that actually refuses an action — containers, equip slots, item frames, anvils, the recipe browser — reads the list.

The legacy spelling

lock_actions, which listed the locked actions directly rather than the free ones, is still read so old files keep working. New entries are always written as unlock_actions, and a file saved through the editor is converted.

In the editor​

The actions​

place and use are not the same thing​

trade changed the meaning of existing files​

Two surfaces deliberately ignore the list​

The legacy spelling​

See also​