Minecraft 26.4 Snapshot 6: Snow Bricks and Cold Sulfur Cube

Mojang released Minecraft: Java Edition 26.4 Snapshot 6 on October 27, 2026. It adds Snow Bricks and a new Cold Sulfur Cube archetype to the Fourth Drop of 2026. Both build on the frozen content that started with Ice Caves.

The official Snapshot 6 patch notes also list automatic Java memory allocation, several ice tweaks and 41 bug fixes. They bump the Data Pack version to 125.1 and the Resource Pack version to 101.0. The snapshot is Java-only, and you enable it from the Installations tab in the Minecraft Launcher.

Snow Bricks need a shovel and skip the Stonecutter

You craft Snow Bricks from a 2×2 grid of Snow Blocks. They come in Slab, Stair and Wall variants.

Unlike the Packed Ice Bricks from Snapshot 5, Snow Bricks don’t work in a Stonecutter. You have to craft every slab, stair and wall on a crafting table.

That matters for stairs. If Snow Brick Stairs use the standard stair recipe, 6 bricks make 4 stairs, while a Stonecutter would have given 1 stair per brick.

Snow Bricks also drop only when you mine them with a Shovel. Packed Ice Brick variants now drop only with a Pickaxe, so a mixed snow-and-ice build means switching tools.

If a sulfur cube absorbs a Snow Brick, it takes on the Fast Sliding archetype, the same low-friction physics as Packed Ice.

Cold Sulfur Cube turns water into Frosted Ice

The Cold Sulfur Cube is a new archetype in the special category. A sulfur cube becomes one when it absorbs a Blue Ice block.

It behaves like a Fast Sliding cube, but it floats. As it moves, it turns the water below into a disk of Frosted Ice, much like the Frost Walker enchantment.

The freezing only works under two conditions:

• There must be air above the water block.
• The cube must start moving while it is on the ground.

In practice, you knock the cube from the shoreline toward the water. It then lays a short-lived ice path behind it, but a cube already floating mid-lake won’t freeze anything.

In earlier versions, Blue Ice fell under Fast Sliding. A new #sulfur_cube_archetype/cold item tag now gives it its own behavior.

Java Edition now sets its own memory limit

The game now picks its Java heap size automatically from your system RAM. It uses up to 25% of your RAM, capped at 4 GB.

The change only affects default JVM options, so memory arguments you set yourself in the launcher should still apply. Heavily modded setups on 32 GB machines will likely still need a manual setting above 4 GB.

Ice, mob and sound tweaks

• Brittle Ice no longer cracks when a Stray stands on it. Strays spawn in Ice Caves, so crevasses should now survive mob traffic.
• Mobs that fall through lava may take slightly less fall damage in some cases.
• Ice Crystals can play an ambient sound when a block of Packed Ice sits below them.

Bug fixes and technical changes

Several of the 41 fixes deal with the drop’s new content:

• Split Small Sulfur Cubes from bucketed cubes no longer despawn.
• Zombie villagers no longer spawn with the wrong variant in Ice Caves.
• Freezing no longer spams sounds.

Mojang also fixed crashes that happened when you:

• opened the inventory while spectating a mob
• paused while a music track failed to play

For data pack creators, Data Pack 125.1 brings these changes:

• a new domain_warp density function, which Mojang warns can hurt performance if overused
• an optional location_based_effects field for sulfur cube archetypes
• a corner_constraint field for structure pool elements
• new #swimming and #flying entity type tags

Signing Off

The Fourth Drop of 2026 is still in snapshot testing, with a release expected in Q4 2026. Mojang hasn’t announced a date. Recipes and archetypes can still change, so back up your worlds before testing. In the meantime, ice-themed additions like the Potion of Freezing show where the drop is heading.

Will you use Snow Bricks in your next winter build? Let us know in the comments below.