How to clear chunks in Minecraft using commands

Clearing land can be one of the most laborious tasks in Minecraft, but there are certain ways to ease the struggle if players don't mind using the command console.

Players who may not want to install additional Minecraft mods such as MCedit can use commands to clear large swaths of land from an area, even entire chunks, if they'd like.

With the fill command, in particular, Minecraft players can replace whole segments of blocks with air, effectively removing as much of an area as they'd like of blocks and freeing up space for more building.

This command can clear player-defined regions such as entire chunks or merely a few blocks' worth of space, if desired.

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Minecraft: Using the fill command to clear chunks

Chunks run quite deep into the underground, but the fill command can still clear them out (Image via Mojang)

Clearing out chunks with the fill command requires different syntaxes depending on the version of Minecraft played, but once players get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to implement. The coordinates for the desired area to be cleared will need to be obtained.

To do this, players can either use the F3 key on Minecraft: Java Edition or the "show coordinates" option in Bedrock Edition to note the start and end points of where they want the fill command to clear.

The syntaxes for the fill command based on Minecraft edition are:

Minecraft: Java Edition

• /fill <from> <to> <block>

Minecraft: Bedrock Edition

• /fill <from> <to> <tilename>

In these syntaxes, <from> and <to> are the x/y/z coordinates of the starting point (from) to the ending point (to). <block> and <tilename> serve the same purpose to decide which block type will fill the designated area.

Minecraft: Java Edition players that want to work with chunks specifically can also use the combination of the F3 and G keys to make chunk borders visible, which will provide players with a better idea of the coordinates. Since chunks are 16x16, players can also use math to deduce their starting and end points.

Players in Minecraft: Bedrock Edition can also toggle their fancy graphic renderings to get a quick look at where they are in a specific chunk as they re-load.

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Y-coordinate MineHack

That leaves one question: how deep is a chunk? What is the Y-coordinate for the fill command? Fortunately, players who want to remove an entire chunk can set their Y coordinate to either 0 or 1, which should fill the depth of the chunk either to the bedrock layer or right above it.

Examples of a working fill command to clear out an area can be found below:

Minecraft: Java Edition & Bedrock Edition

• /fill ~-8 ~0 ~-5 ~8 ~0 ~-5 minecraft:air

Using a command like this with the coordinates of a chunk, players can completely clear a chunk and fill it with air blocks, allowing them to see deeply into their world's underground and provide a massive hole for building.