Filter Chest Setup

Filter Chest Setup

A client-side Fabric mod that fills a chest into a filter layout with one click, using items from your inventory. It's for servers where a filter or sorter chest has to be stocked in a fixed pattern to hit a specific comparator signal strength.

Open a chest or barrel and two buttons show up next to the container window:

• set up as filter? arranges the chest.
• pick filter item sets which item is used as the filter.

What it does

Clicking set up as filter? lays out the open container like this:

• The last 3 slots each get 1 shears (shears don't stack, so they take a slot each).
• The slot just before them gets 5 filter items.
• Every slot before that gets 1 filter item.

On a double chest that's 3 shears and 55 filter items.

Items are moved out of your own inventory with normal container clicks, the same as if you placed them by hand, so it works on any server with no server-side mod. If you don't have enough items it tells you what's missing and does nothing.

Empty the chest first. Slots that already have something in them are left alone.

Choosing the filter item

The default filter item is a poppy renamed to Filter. To use something else:

1. Put the item on your cursor, or select it on your hotbar. Rename it in an anvil first if you want the name to be required.
2. Click pick filter item.

The item and its custom name, if it has one, get saved. With no custom name, any stack of that item counts. With a custom name, only stacks with that exact name count.

You can also edit config/filterchest.json directly:

{
  "filterItemId": "minecraft:poppy",
  "filterItemName": "Filter",
  "shearsInCorner": 3,
  "filterNextToCorner": 5
}

Leave filterItemName empty ("") to match the item no matter its name.

Signal strength

The layout is fixed on purpose. A filter chest usually needs an exact comparator signal, and that value depends on the items you use, since different items have different stack sizes and fill the container differently. The mod doesn't calculate signal strength for you, it just reproduces a layout you already know works. Swapping the filter item for one with a different stack size changes the resulting signal, so pick an item that gives the value your setup needs.

Building

Needs JDK 21 or newer (the game targets Java 25). The build uses Unimined with Mojang mappings.

./gradlew build

The jar lands in build/libs/filterchest-<version>.jar. Drop it in your mods folder.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.