Added

• Removed length limits for scoreboard, score holder and team names!
• Added a simulation distance setting. This allows you to render more chunks, without ticking them for increased performance. Note that entities and (redstone) blocks will remain frozen if outside everyone's simulation distance.
• World generation is now from -64 to 320 (compared to 0 and 255)
• The "illageralt" font (only accessible by commands) is rune-like and similar to a font used in Minecraft Dungeons.
• New video setting “Chunk Builder”, which defines which chunk sections are updated first ("Nearby" being the original behavior).
• Minecraft can now utilize more than 7 CPU cores, which is useful for high-end computers.
• Added a setting for audio output device.
• Added fall_from_height and ride_entity_in_lava advancement triggers.
• New loot table function set_potion
• Allow Server Listings option to prevent your name from appearing in the popup that appears when you hover over the player count in the multiplayer menu.
• Servers have a new hide-online-players option to disable broadcasting player lists all together.

Changed

• Minecraft now uses Java 17. If you use the default launcher, this is installed automatically. Custom launchers must provide updated support or you might have to install Java 17 manually.
• There were some changes to block ticking. It should work as normal, but there is a chance that certain redstone creations break.
• Data pack version changed to 8.
• Resource pack format changed to 8.
• Cloud levels changed from 128 to 192.
• View distance now renders chunks in a circle instead of a square.
• Loot table functions set_contents and set_loot_table now require type field with valid block entity type
• Spawner data changes
  • Spawners now support the custom_spawn_rules NBT in the SpawnData field and the SpawnPotentials list
  • custom_spawn_rules currently may contain fields block_light_limit and sky_light_limit - both are integer ranges with fields min_inclusive and max_inclusive
    
  • To make SpawnPotentials format similar to other weighted lists, structure was changed to {weight: <int>, data: <previous contents without 'Weight', 'Entity' renamed to 'entity'>}
    
  • To accommodate that change, previous contents of SpawnData were moved to SpawnData.entity (making format of that field same as elements of SpawnPotentials.data)
• nether_travel advancement trigger changed: "entered" condition has been changed to "start_position" and "exited" has been removed (it was identical to player.location).
• light and barrier particles have been replaced by block_marker. The new particle lets you specify a block id and renders a texture specified in the "particle" field of a block model.

Removed

• Worlds created before 1.2 can no longer be converted. They must be converted using 1.16 first, before doing a secondary conversion to 1.18.

Bugfixes

• When the default output device changes, Minecraft sounds would stop working.