Minecraft: How to Make a Map | Tips and Cheats

Maps are a great way to help you navigate the world of Minecraft. In today’s guide we’ll be showing you how to get started making your own maps, improving them to show more of the land, and how to utilize them to create a massive map. Let’s get started with our Minecraft guide on how to make a map!

Map Basics

Maps are useful little items that can help you map out the lay of the land. They can be crafted using paper, which must be refined from sugar canes. You will also need a compass, depending on the version you’re playing; in Java Edition you need eight paper and one compass, while in Bedrock Edition you only need the paper – the compass is optional.

Alternatively, if you have access to a cartography table creating a map on it only costs one piece of paper. You can also trade emeralds with cartographer villagers for empty maps.

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Mapping out the World

After you craft an empty map, equip it from your hotbar and use it to turn it into a map. With the map equipped, all nearby terrain will automatically fill in on the map. You can explore an area with the map equipped to map out the terrain, but default maps only cover a small area. Your location is marked by a little dot at all times on the Java Edition. In Bedrock Edition, the player marker will only appear if you add a compass into the map on a crafting grid.

Zooming out a Map

Want your map to cover more ground? There’s a way to do that! Simply place your map on a crafting table grid and surround it with paper to zoom out the map, which essentially enables it to show more terrain. You still have to go out into the world and map it out yourself, though. You can zoom out a single map up to four times.

If you’re low on paper, you can also use the cartography table, which lets you do the same thing but only requires a single piece of paper. Since the cartography table is really easy to make, we suggest this method to keep your paper reserves up. A zoomed out map will allow you to map out a large chunk of the world, so it’s helpful if you’re trying to become a master cartographer!

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Item Codes

And of course, if you simply want the command codes for empty maps, be sure to enable cheats on your world and enter the command:

Replace the underscores with your username and you’ll give yourself paper. You can also add a number at the end to give yourself more of that item. If you want to give yourself a whole other item completely, simply replace the “minecraft:paper” with something like “minecraft:map” and so forth.

Note that this process is mainly for Java Edition. The Bedrock Edition follows the same formula somewhat, but the wording is a little different.