Players who are looking to explore the vast and dangerous biomes in Minecraft, they will want to first be familiar with the day and night cycles of the game. Since the nighttime can be incredibly dangerous, especially for new players, knowing the time and how long daylight will last is crucial to any Minecraft player.
Night and Day in Minecraft
While the game allows players to build various light sources, like torches and the upcoming addition of Minecraft glow blocks in the Java Edition, nighttime is still an incredibly dangerous time for players. Without proper beds and sleep cycles, players will have no respawn points and will be harried by dangerous flying creatures called Phantoms after about three in-game days with no rest. So knowing when night is about to creep in might be the ticket to surviving.
How Long is a Day in Minecraft
With the massive maps that Minecraft generates for every seed, players know that they can't explore everything they want to see in just one in-game day or 20 minutes of real-world time. Daytime in Minecraft lasts for 10 minutes while the night reigns for about 7 minutes. Days start at in-game 6 AM with a brief dawn that lasts about 23 seconds. After that, the sun hits its high point in the sky at five minutes. After 10 minutes and 28 seconds, players can now use a bed to sleep through the night. Midnight is 15 real-world minutes after the start of the day, and the sun will start to rise at 20 minutes, signaling the beginning of the next day.
- 0:00 Beginning of the Minecraft Day
- 0:23 Sunrise ends
- 5:00 Noon
- 9:41 Sunset
- 10:28 Players can sleep through the night in beds.
- 10:52 Sun is no longer visible
- 11:32 Night begins
- 15:00 Midnight
- 18:47 Sunrise
- 19:06 The sun is visible.
- 19:30 The moon sets.
How to Tell Time in Minecraft
Thankfully, there is a way to tell time in Minecraft, so players don't have to get creative and make their own time-telling devices like in Valheim. Players can easily make a clock with just two ingredients. A clock requires 1 Redstone Dust and 4 Gold Ingots.
A clock in Minecraft is read by watching the colors of the day sky cycle over to the night sky and back again while shifting through both Dusk and Dawn. This is incredibly helpful to those stuck underground, wondering if it's safe to come out of their mines and into the wild Overworld. Clocks don't help at all, however, in the Nether or Minecraft's The End locations; day and night don't exist there, and clocks just spin wildly, just like compasses without a lodestone.
Minecraft is available for all major platforms.
Source: Wiki, DigMinecraft