Skip to content
[/craft]

keep_inventory

booleanJava 26.2 & Bedrock 26.32

Controls whether players keep their items and XP when they die. When true, your inventory and experience are preserved on death — you respawn with everything intact.

Enable keep_inventory

Players keep their entire inventory and all XP on death. No items are dropped, no XP is lost.

Java/gamerule keep_inventory true
Bedrock/gamerule keepinventory true

Bedrock uses keepinventory (all-lowercase, no separators).

Disable keep_inventory

Players drop all items and lose all XP on death (default survival behavior).

Java/gamerule keep_inventory false
Bedrock/gamerule keepinventory false

Default: false. Restore with /gamerule keep_inventory false

What keep_inventory does

Controls whether players keep their items and XP when they die. When true, your inventory and experience are preserved on death — you respawn with everything intact.

Frequently asked questions

Does keep_inventory work on multiplayer servers?
Yes — if you have OP permissions and cheats are enabled. It applies to all players on the server when set.
Does keep_inventory work in Bedrock Edition?
Yes — Bedrock uses /gamerule keepinventory true (all lowercase, no underscore). The behavior is identical.
Will keep_inventory prevent XP loss too?
Yes — both your inventory and your experience levels are preserved on death.
What happened to keepInventory?
In snapshot 25w44a every Java gamerule was renamed to snake_case. keepInventory is now keep_inventory on Java. Bedrock still uses keepinventory (all lowercase).

Related gamerules

All Gamerule commandsJava vs Bedrock guide