Overview#
Storage Drawers replaces messy chests with a clean wall of single-item drawers. Each drawer stores a huge stack of one item and displays that item's icon and live count right on its face, so you always know what is inside without opening anything. The mod scales from a single drawer in a starter shack to a full sorting wall in a megabase.
This wiki is the complete reference for the Storage Drawers 9minecraft Mod on the Fabric loader. It covers every drawer variant, capacity and conversion mechanics, the framing system that re-skins drawers to match your build, and the upgrades that turn a row of drawers into a smart storage system.
Getting Started#
- Install the mod. Drop the Fabric jar into your
modsfolder. The build needs Fabric API. - Get planks. Most drawers are crafted from planks, sticks, and a chest. Any wood type works and is preserved as the drawer's surface.
- Place a drawer. Right-click a wall block to place one. The drawer faces you.
- Store an item. Right-click the drawer face while holding an item to put it in. Right-click again to deposit your whole stack.
- Withdraw. Left-click to take one item. Use a double-tap of your use key to pull a full stack at once.
How Drawers Work#
Each drawer face is a slot bound to a single item type. The first item you put in locks the slot to that item; from that point on, only that item can be added, and the drawer will refuse anything else. The slot remembers its item even when the count drops to zero — break the drawer and pick it up, and the binding persists if you also pick it up empty.
Hovering over a drawer shows a tooltip with the item, current count, max capacity, and any active upgrades. A small fill bar fades across the face so you can see how full the drawer is at a glance.
Drawer Variants#
Drawers come in several body shapes so you can mix and match a sorting wall to fit any space.
- Full Drawer 1× — a single big slot. Best for stacking a million of one item.
- Full Drawer 2× — two slots stacked vertically in one block.
- Full Drawer 4× — four slots in a 2×2 grid. Great for compact sorting walls.
- Half Drawer 1× — a thin one-slot drawer that sits flush against a wall.
- Half Drawer 2× — two-slot half-depth variant.
- Half Drawer 4× — four-slot half-depth variant.
Half drawers hold less per slot but take half the depth, so you can place storage in front of a wall without losing a full block of space.
Compacting Drawers#
A compacting drawer automatically converts between three forms of the same material: nuggets ↔ ingots ↔ blocks (or planks ↔ logs, etc.). Place one and put any of the three forms in — the drawer recognises the recipe and rebalances the count.
For example, a compacting drawer holding iron will accept iron nuggets, iron ingots, or iron blocks, and show each at the correct ratio (9 nuggets = 1 ingot, 9 ingots = 1 block). Pulling out an ingot can decompose a block; pulling a nugget can decompose an ingot. No more "I have iron blocks but I need nuggets" hunts.
Compacting drawers work best for materials with the standard 3×3 recipe chain — most metals, gems, redstone, lapis, glowstone, and wool.
Framed Drawers#
Framed Drawers are unfinished drawers with no texture. Combine them with a Framing Table to re-skin them with the front, trim, and side surfaces of almost any solid block.
Use the framing table by placing:
- The front material in the front slot — the block whose texture will dominate the face.
- The side material in the trim slot — the edge/border colour.
- A framed drawer in the third slot.
Pull out the finished drawer and it now blends perfectly with your build. The framing is purely cosmetic and does not affect storage capacity. You can re-frame an already-framed drawer at any time.
Framed drawers also exist for the controller, trim, and slave variants, so an entire storage wall can be re-textured to match stone, brick, dark oak, quartz — whatever your build uses.
Capacity & Upgrades#
A vanilla drawer holds 32 stacks per slot (about 2,048 items for a stackable). Capacity scales up sharply with upgrades:
- Storage Upgrade I — ×2 (64 stacks)
- Storage Upgrade II — ×4
- Storage Upgrade III — ×8
- Storage Upgrade IV — ×16
- Storage Upgrade V — ×32
Upgrades stack: install five Upgrade V chips and a drawer holds millions of items in a single slot. Insert an upgrade by right-clicking the drawer with the upgrade in hand. A small chip indicator appears in the corner of the drawer face.
Other upgrades change drawer behaviour:
- Void Upgrade — overflow items are deleted instead of refusing to insert. Good for cobblestone in a quarry; bad for diamonds.
- Locking Upgrade — locks the slot binding so it cannot be cleared by emptying. Combine with the Drawer Key to toggle locks across many drawers at once.
- Fill Indicator Upgrade — shows a visible fill-level bar across the drawer face.
- Creative Upgrades —
Creative Vending(infinite source) andCreative Storage(infinite sink). Survival players ignore; map builders use heavily. - Conversion Upgrade — extend compacting behaviour to a regular drawer.
Keys & Tools#
Storage Drawers ships a small toolkit for working with a wall of drawers:
- Drawer Key — right-click a drawer to lock or unlock its slot binding. Locked drawers keep their item even when emptied.
- Quantify Key — toggles whether the drawer tooltip shows item counts.
- Concealment Key — hides the drawer face overlay (icon + count) so you can use drawers as flush storage without breaking the visual.
- Shroud Key — applies a dye colour overlay to the drawer face.
- Personal Key — claims a drawer to a specific player; useful on multiplayer servers.
- Tape Measure — measures distances when laying out a sorting wall.
Controller & Networks#
A single drawer is useful; a wall of drawers becomes a smart inventory once you add a Drawer Controller.
The controller is a special block that scans every drawer in a 12-block radius and presents them as a single shared inventory to any hopper, pipe, conduit, or pull from another mod. Right-click an item on the controller and it routes the deposit to whatever drawer is bound to that item.
Companion blocks expand the network:
- Drawer Slave — extends the controller's logical inventory to a remote spot without expanding its radius. Pipe items in/out of the slave to reach distant drawers.
- Trim — a non-functional decorative block that lets you fill gaps in a sorting wall.
For automation: feed the controller, and items sort themselves into the matching drawers. Hoppers pulling from the controller will only take what they request.
Auto-Sorting Walls#
A classic Storage Drawers build:
- Lay out a wall of Full Drawer 4× blocks in a 6-wide × 4-tall grid (96 slots).
- Place a Drawer Controller somewhere in or against the wall.
- Insert a stack of each item you want to sort into its drawer. The first stack locks the slot.
- Lock every drawer with the Drawer Key so they keep their bindings even when emptied.
- Run a hopper or other pipe into the controller — every dropped item routes to its locked drawer.
Once built, drop a stack of mixed loot onto the input chest above the hopper and watch the wall sort itself. Add more drawer columns as you collect new item types.
Integration Tips#
Storage Drawers plays well with other mods, but there are a few patterns worth knowing:
- Sided I/O — the controller, slaves, and drawers expose their inventory on every face. Pipes from any mod will work.
- Tag-based deposits — compacting drawers and the controller accept any item with the right NBT/tag. This is useful for "any iron" rules in some pipe mods.
- Server tick load — extremely large sorting walls (thousands of drawers) can lag servers. Keep controllers focused (one per region) instead of one giant network.
- Backup before big upgrades — adding Storage Drawers to an existing world is safe; removing it after building a wall will erase the contents. Make a world backup first.
Troubleshooting#
- "My drawer accepts the wrong item." The first item you insert binds the slot. Break and replace the drawer to reset, or use a Drawer Key to clear the lock.
- "Items vanish when I insert them." Check for a Void Upgrade installed. Remove it (right-click with empty hand and pick up).
- "My hopper is not feeding the drawer." Make sure the drawer is bound to the item the hopper is trying to insert, or use a Drawer Controller as the network entry point so the hopper does not need to match the right drawer.
- "Compacting drawer shows the wrong ratio." Make sure all three forms exist as a 3×3 recipe chain — some modded materials skip the nugget step and break compacting.
- "My controller does not see a drawer." Range is 12 blocks straight-line and it counts through air, but slab/half-block neighbours can break the path. Use a Drawer Slave to bridge.