How to make and use spyglasses in Minecraft 1.19

Even with maximum render distance, Minecraft players sometimes need to see well off into the horizon for various reasons. To gain a magnified scope of vision, you can create a spyglass item, which was introduced in the Caves & Cliffs update.

Spyglasses can be tricky to craft early on in Minecraft, but once you know how to make one, using them is very straightforward. The difficult part is collecting the necessary materials to create a spyglass, as the resources required aren't always immediately available. Fortunately, once one is crafted, it won't lose durability with use, allowing you to utilize one for as long as you need to.

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Crafting and using a Minecraft spyglass

Spyglasses offer zoomed-in vision but obscure the periphery (Image via Mojang)

To create a spyglass in Minecraft, you will need two copper ingots and an amethyst shard. The ingots are obtained either by smelting raw copper or killing and looting Drowned Zombies. Meanwhile, amethyst shards are mined from amethyst clusters within geodes or looted from chests hidden within ancient cities.

Crafting and using your spyglass:

1. Open the crafting table UI. You can search for the spyglass recipe within this interface or place the materials to create the spyglass manually. To do so manually, place a copper ingot in the crafting table's center slot, a second ingot below it, and an amethyst shard in the top-center slot.
2. Remove the spyglass from the output slot of the crafting table and place it into your hotbar, then select it to place it in your hands.
3. Lastly, all that's required is to right-click on PC or press the Use/Place Item button on your console controller. Doing so will allow you to zoom in via the spyglass.

Although a spyglass can allow you to view distant terrain in Minecraft, there are a few things to keep in mind. The first is that the spyglass obscures your peripheral vision, meaning hostile mobs or other entities and hazards cannot be seen and may surprise you if you aren't careful. Additionally, depending on your Render and Simulation Distance settings, you may not see mobs spawning or behaving as they ordinarily do.

It's also important to note that the spyglass' vision is influenced by a player's FOV settings. Specifically, whatever a Minecraft gamer sets their FOV to in their settings, the spyglass will be locked to 10% of the FOV a player normally has. Since the player's FOV can be set anywhere from 30% to 110%, the spyglass can achieve a field-of-view range of 3-11°.

As Minecraft users look through the spyglass, their movement will be slowed down. The pixellated vignette will remain around the player's vision until they stop peering through the spyglass. However, Java Edition players can press the F1 key to remove the vignette, giving them full sight without loss of their peripheral vision.

If a status effect is currently active on you and has any visible particles, these particles will persist while the spyglass is used. Keep this in mind, as it can obscure your vision even while zoomed in.