Posted: 4 January 2024

Information on the Minecraft Preview and Beta:

• These work-in-progress versions can be unstable and may not be representative of final version quality
• Minecraft Preview is available on Xbox, Windows 10/11, and iOS devices. More information can be found at aka.ms/PreviewFAQ
• The beta is available on Android (Google Play). To join or leave the beta, see aka.ms/JoinMCBeta for detailed instructions

https://twitter.com/Mega_Spud/status/1742947636364124481

Here’s a list of what’s new in the latest Minecraft Preview and Beta. As always, we love to hear your feedback, so please let us know what you think here, and report any bugs you may encounter at bugs.mojang.com.

Experimental Features

Armadillo

• Armadillo now emits vibrations when rolling up and when unrolling 
• Baby Armadillos no longer move towards their parents after rolling up 
• Armadillo’s legs no longer flicker while rolled up (MCPE-177551)
• Armadillo now correctly plays sounds when rolling up (MCPE-177562) 

Trial Spawner

• Improved Trial Spawner particles

Breeze

• Breeze can now jump when standing in water 
• The Breeze now avoids Trapdoors when pathfinding 

Wind Burst

• Removed the darkening tint in Wind Burst particle to uphold parity 

Wolf Armor

• Volume of sounds for equipping and removing Wolf Armor is now controlled by the Friendly Creatures slider 

Features and Bug Fixes

Blocks

• Pistons pushing, pulling or destroying blocks no longer risk teleporting surrounding Players towards the world’s origin (MCPE-175206) 
• Potato, Carrot, Melon, Sweet Berries, Nether Wart, Sunflower, Lilac, Rose Bush, Peony, Glowstone Dust, and Gravel no longer have increased chance of drops when mined with an Enchanted Book of Fortune
• Fixed a bug where the player would exit a vehicle at an incorrect height if the vehicle was over a fire block 

Boat

• Fixed an issue where a boat disappears if placed at the player’s feet or next to another boat (MCPE-177283)

Education Edition Only Features

• The EDU-only “hard_stained_glass” block is now split into unique instances “hard_black_stained_glass”, “hard_blue_stained_glass”, “hard_brown_stained_glass”, “hard_cyan_stained_glass”, “hard_gray_stained_glass”, “hard_green_stained_glass”, “hard_light_blue_stained_glass”, “hard_light_gray_stained_glass”, “hard_lime_stained_glass”, “hard_magenta_stained_glass”, “hard_orange_stained_glass”, “hard_pink_stained_glass”, “hard_purple_stained_glass”, “hard_red_stained_glass”, “hard_white_stained_glass”, “hard_yellow_stained_glass” 
• The EDU-only “hard_stained_glass_pane” block is now split into unique instances “hard_black_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_blue_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_brown_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_cyan_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_gray_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_green_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_light_blue_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_light_gray_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_lime_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_magenta_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_orange_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_pink_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_purple_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_red_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_white_stained_glass_pane”, “hard_yellow_stained_glass_pane”

Gameplay

• Flying players are now only slowed by touching the ground when moving down (MCPE-176365)
• If you close the game while changing dimensions, we won’t place you in an unexpected position when re-entering the world (MCPE-173386)
• Double pressing the jump button to disable flying no longer causes the player to jump slightly after flying is disabled (MCPE-176926)

Graphical

• Fix font glyph boundary artifacts (spotty pixels at the edge of each character) with italic text rendering at certain resolution

Items

• Renamed “Scute” to “Turtle Scute”

Mobs

• Villagers who were mistakenly assigned to the same bed or workstation as others will now actively seek out a new bed or workstation (MCPE-176528) 
• Pufferfish no longer inflate and deflate repeatedly when a player is at a specific distance from them 
• Animal equipment, such as Horse Armor and Wolf Armor, no longer has a chance of being duplicated when the animal carrying them is killed (MCPE-177560)
• Pillagers now spawn correctly near Pillager Outposts (MCPE-177593)
• Mobs that have partial blocks (e.g. Trapdoors, Slabs, etc.) specified as part of their list of blocks to avoid in their Navigation Component should now avoid them properly 

Realms

• Realms Tab in new Play Screen should no longer be stuck in a loading state 
• Fixed crash that could occur in the Play menu whilst looking at Realms
• Corrected translations about “posting” and “liking” on Realms Stories

Vanilla Parity

• Trail Ruins will now be placed in the same location and configuration as in Java

Villages

• Some Villagers could have their skins not match their professions. This should now be resolved (MCPE-105457)

Technical Updates

AI Goals

• “behavior.follow_parent” now interrupts navigation on stop for content using engine version 1.20.60 or higher 

Biomes

• Biome tags in JSON files are now specified under a “minecraft:tags” component, in a “tags” array, rather than as loose JSON objects, for files with a format_version of 1.20.60 or higher 

Components

• The “interact” component now supports the additional “entity_act” value for the “vibration” field

Editor

The Editor and its corresponding API are in early development, and available for keyboard/mouse on Windows PC Bedrock Preview builds. Tag us on social channels with #BedrockEditor.

Learn how to use the Editor, join the GitHub Discussion discussion forum to engage with the team, and get started building extensions via the starter kit and samples.

Updates this week:

• Removed addSeparator function from IMenu API 
• Fixed issue where resource packs were not being retained during editing and testing – now they are retained!
• Added addEntityPicker function to IPropertyPane API for selecting an entity type
• Added interface IPropertyItemOptionsDataPicker for both entity and block picker optional properties, removed IPropertyItemOptionsBlocks
• Introducing Void World generation! The Flat World toggle found on the Advanced tab of the Create New Project page has been replaced with a drop down, allowing new Editor projects to be created in a Vanilla, Flat, or Void world. The Void world project experience will be iterated on in the coming months. Upon starting a Void world project, swap Selection to Fixed Distance to place blocks to kickstart your build.
• Added toolGroupId optional property to IRegisterExtensionOptionalParameters API for organizing tools in custom groups!

Entity Event Responses

• Added the “emit_vibration” entity event response, which allows the entity to emit a vibration having the entity itself as its source
  • The “vibration” field allows to specify the vibration to be emitted
  • The allowed values are “shear”, “entity_act”, and “entity_interact”

Molang

• Added content errors that state query.remaining_durability and query.max_durability are only to be used with Item contexts.

Performance

• Feature toggle Enable New Geometry Tessellation Pipeline defaults to true

Experimental Technical Updates

Add-Ons and Script Engine

• The block component “minecraft:random_ticking” is now supported again

API

• system.runJob()
• system.clearJob()
  • Added runJob and clearJob for optimizing long running tasks using JavaScript generators. system.runJob takes a generator function and returns a jobId. See documentation for usage examples.
• @minecraft/server.BlockPermutation
  • Moved getState and withStates APIs from beta to stable

Graphical

• Fixed issue where shadows for alpha tested geometry (doors, leaves, etc.) were no longer rendering in the Deferred Technical Preview 
• Banner shields now render when equipped in both left and right hands in the Deferred Technical Preview
• Fixed an issue where light emitting items glowed in the player’s hand in dark rooms during the day in the Deferred Technical Preview
• Improved upscaling stability on Android in the Deferred Technical Preview
• On Android, pixelated artifacts are no longer visible on the right half of the screen when upscaling is turned on in the Deferred Technical Preview
• Fixed unstable and incorrect light clustering results in the Deferred Technical Preview

Scripting

• Added ScriptBiomeTypes and ScriptBiomeType to allow Scripting API to enumerate the BiomeRegistry.
• Added a findClosestBiome function to Dimension to find the closest biome of a specified type, to a given position in the world.

source: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/articles/22915685759373-Minecraft-Beta-Preview-1-20-60-24