Minecraft 26.4 Snapshot 4: Brittle Ice, Jukebox Playlists

Ice that breaks under your feet. 26.4 Snapshot 4, released on October 13, 2026, adds Brittle Ice to the new ice caves and finally gives jukeboxes playlists. I loaded the snapshot, put zombies, a Frostbite and a jukebox to the test and recorded everything.

Brittle Ice

Brittle Ice is a new block in the Ice Caves. As soon as a player or a mob steps on it, it starts to crack, and eventually it breaks. The block has four stages, from clear ice to heavily cracked. In my tests each step added one stage, at most about once a second per block, and the next step after the last stage broke it. A zombie that just stood on it went through all stages in a few seconds and then dropped into the water below. When a block breaks, the Brittle Ice next to it cracks a bit too, so a zombie walking onto already cracked ice breaks a small hole at once.

Only the Frostbite can walk over it without breaking it, even when the ice is already full of cracks.

Ice crevasses

Brittle Ice only generates in Ice Caves, as part of the new crevasse feature: long cracks in the cave floor, covered with Brittle Ice and filled with water at the bottom. Watch your step in ice caves.

Getting Brittle Ice

You can mine Brittle Ice with Silk Touch. You can also make it: water that flows onto Blue Ice, or any water block that touches a Blue Ice block from the side, turns into Brittle Ice.

Jukebox playlists

Put a single chest, trapped chest or any copper chest directly on top of a jukebox, and its music discs become a playlist:

• The discs play in slot order. Empty slots and items that aren’t music discs are skipped, and at the end the list loops back to the start.
• When a disc finishes, the jukebox swaps it with the next disc in the chest.
• If the chest has no music discs, the disc in the jukebox plays again.
• Ejecting the current disc skips to the next available disc.

Smaller changes

• Zombies, Drowned and Husks are now immune to freezing and don’t take damage from the Freezing effect.
• Drowned in powder snow now turn into a zombie before they become a Frostbite.
• Ice, Packed Ice, Blue Ice and Frosted Ice have their own sounds now.
• Ice, Frosted Ice and Brittle Ice no longer show their inside faces when placed next to each other.
• Frosted Ice now emits a vibration when it changes state.
• Data pack version 124.0, resource pack version 100.1.

How to play the snapshot

Open the Minecraft Launcher, go to the Installations tab and turn on snapshots, then pick 26.4 Snapshot 4. Snapshots can corrupt worlds, so back up your worlds first or play in a separate folder.