How to control a horse in Minecraft 1.18 update

Horses made a huge difference to the world of Minecraft when Mojang added them with update 1.6.1 way back in 2013. While elytra is now a major game-changer, allowing players to access the world at new speeds, the horse comfortably filled that role for many years.

The inner mechanics of how horses work and their statistics are more in-depth than would probably be expected, and even their controls can be more extensive than normal controls.

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Handling horses in Minecraft 1.18

Taming a horse

The first thing a player has to do before controlling a horse is tame the horse in question. They typically spawn in the plains biomes. Once they are found, the player must simply interact with them repeatedly until the horse stops bucking them off and has hearts appearing.

This can be sped up by feeding the horse things like wheat, apples, bread, golden apples, carrots, and golden carrots, all of Minecraft's typical horse foods.

Once it has been tamed, the player will need to put a saddle on the horse to make it controllable while riding it. Otherwise, they can sit atop the back of the horse but will have no way to control it.

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Riding a horse

A player riding a tamed horse (Image via Minecraft)

Riding a horse is very similar to player movement. Players can use their main movement controls to control the direction the horse is moving, and their main method for controlling the camera to change the direction they and the horse are facing.

The horse can also sprint using the same button the player would use to sprint, moving considerably faster than the player normally can.

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Jumping a horse

One of the most vital aspects of a Minecraft horse’s movement, as well as the most confusing, is how a horse jumps. There is a range of values that each horse can have assigned to its jump strength attribute. The range is from 0.4 to 1.0 jump strength. Due to this range, the average jump strength among horses is 0.7.

The 0.5 jump strength is enough to clear one and 9/16ths of a block, whereas a full 1.0 jump strength is enough jump strength to clear five and a quarter blocks. A player can jump 1.25 blocks, which equates to a jump strength of 0.432.

This means that a horse with a minimum jump height jumps at a maximum height less than the player. On average, with a jump strength of 0.7, horses can jump around three blocks.

Jumping a horse is not as easy as simply pressing the jump button. Well, it can be, but that will result in a minimum jump height for the horse. Where the horse can jump better is when the jump is charged.

Holding the jump button will cause the jump meter to fill up quickly. If the player manages to release the jump button while the bar is in the golden section, they will do a perfect jump and get maximum height. If a player misses this window, the bar will move back down slightly before stopping while charged, resulting in a mostly full height jump.