[MCPE-191623] Disappearance of mobs and entities that should not despawn

Mobs and armor stands that should not despawn outside of the simulation chunk disappear.
This occurs both in worlds on the realm and in worlds created on platform storage.
It is assumed that the cause is not despawning as a game rule, but because the data of the affected mobs themselves was accidentally deleted.
(Speculated from the fact that links to leads, beds, and workstations remain for a certain amount of time, as described in MCPE-21416)

Reproduction Procedure:

Start play on the Nintendo Switch and discover the village.
After confirming that the villagers, the Iron Golem, and the animals created as decorative livestock in the village are working properly, leave the village.
After leaving the village, set up a spawn point about 1000 blocks away from the village and play Minecraft for a total of 12 hours while working.
Then visit the village again.

Expected outcome:
Since there are no players around the village, hostile mobs that would harm the villagers will not spawn around the village.
The mobs belonging to the village do not act because they are outside the simulation chunk and do not, for example, fall from high places and get hurt.
Thus, the village is in the same state as when the player left.

As a result:
The village is empty.
Or, most of the mobs have disappeared and the village is deserted.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 52

MCPE-191616 Realm, had some armorstands in a safe place and a couple days later disappeared. Resolved

MCPE-193994 Mobs with name tags will despawn Resolved

MCPE-194604 Villagers disapearing on Realms Resolved

MCPE-217174 When I entered my world as usual on version 1.21.72, I noticed that all mobs I had previously interacted with had disappeared. Resolved

MCPE-190485 Villagers randomly despawing Resolved

47 more links

relates to 2

MCPE-190646 Random loss of persistent entities Resolved

MCPE-227629 placed entities (such as paintings) are disappearing Resolved

Comments 16

json2828 2025-03-20T21:05:39Z

I exaggerated the distance and time, but this phenomenon also occurs when the distance is much closer and the elapsed time is a few tens of minutes.
(In such cases, the number of mobs that disappear is also small.)
No game crashes or network disconnections occurred during this time.

Dagraenion 2025-04-01T03:30:12Z

I have noticed this as well. Secondly, my named horses and a donkey attached with a lead also despawned out of nowhere. I can still the lead “animation”, or whatever you call it, on the fence, but when I right-click on it, the lead doesn’t pop out. Please fix your despawning issues. It is annoying and a waste of time. I had a diamond armor and a saddle on that horse, and a saddle on the donkey. Now, I have lost two saddles, which you cannot even make in-game.

Pyhriel Devilderaan 2025-04-19T21:25:11Z

I get the same issue. At least six villages in my world have completely despawned that way, In one of them there were villagers that I had secured in their houses and they still disappeared. So far it’s been an all or nothing for me, either the village is fully populated or mob disappears (villagers & golem).

I also had one named and one unnamed wolf that were sitting in a secure location that disappeared. It is a very annoying issue.

[MCQA] v-jakublu 2025-04-25T14:36:35Z

Hi and thank you for your report!

However to further investigate the bug we will need a world on which that happens.

Is this only or specifically happening to villages? Do any other mobs or structures are impacted by this? (e.g. woodland mansions or pillager outposts?)

This ticket will automatically reopen after you reply.

json2828 2025-04-25T20:23:12Z

It's not just in villages.
It can happen to everything from livestock on farms to pet animals in houses to installed armor stands.

In the case of self-made bases, it often happens that a player goes off on an adventure far away and when he returns, some of the mobs have disappeared.
In the meantime, the spawn point is not fixed, as the beds are carried, set up, retrieved, and spent the night over and over again.

I don't know about the woodland mansions, but at one pillager outposts that was put off due to lack of preparation, the allay that was supposed to be in the jail was gone when I revisited it.

My own sense is that mobs and entities far from the player character or spawn point disappear at a higher rate and on a larger scale the longer the interval between visits.

This phenomenon happens routinely when playing Minecraft on the "Switch", regardless of play style or world.

6 more comments

Pyhriel Devilderaan 2025-04-26T21:49:39Z

I second what @json2828 says.
I travel a lot to spaces that are 1000+ block distant. On my first visit everything seems fine, but when I go back a second or third time after travelling a lot, when I come back my villagers have all disappeared (even those that have been protected).
I also happened to some of my wolves (named and unnamed) when I returned back at my home base after such a trip. As mentioned in the previous, I travel with a bed that I use frequently during my travel.

it is more apparent with villagers, since all villagers in a village disappear at once, but I’m pretty sure it can happen with any mob.

I don’t think this happens for aggressive mobs that spawn in certain areas like woodland mansions and pillagers outpost, but it would be hard to tell since these structure create spawn areas, so even if the pillagers despawned, new ones would spawn back, which is not something that happens with villagers or domesticated wolves. Once they are lost, they stay lost.

I can also confirm that this isn’t something that seems related to a specific world. if you look to all the other bug report that have been closed as duplicates to this one, you can see that it just seems to be something that happens every so often when players explore far away and come back.

Pyhriel Devilderaan 2025-05-05T19:57:52Z

Just to keep this alive and provide more updates. I just have all my bees disappear after I returned from an exploration expedition.
I have a few beehives at my homebase, all had around one to three bees per beehives.
When I returned I no longer had any bees at all.

Mathieu Dobkowski 2025-05-29T13:15:53Z

When this happened to me it wasn’t just animals but all of the entities. My armor stands disappeared, (with the armor on it) along with all of my paintings, which is how I first noticed, minecarts, and an item frame. But the main reason I want it fixed is the all of the villagers and dogs.

Steve 2025-11-11T12:12:39Z

When this happened to me the armor stands slowly dropped down through solid blocks. I found them on different floors of my base, always a lower floor, and sometimes half way through the ceiling. I even found an armor stand plus a full set of armor 3 months later buried about 20 blocks under my base.

asaellam 2025-12-01T01:01:50Z

I think what I just experienced falls under this bug. I had three sheep on leads tied to a fence and two of them just disappeared along with the lead. I also had an arctic fox on a lead that disappeared at the same time. Then yesterday I brought three skeleton horses back to my base and tied them to a fence and at some point today one of them is gone.

This happened on 1.21.124

asaellam 2025-12-01T03:29:49Z

Update…the mobs disappeared after the 1.21.122 hotfix.

NpBlaster36 2025-12-21T22:02:45Z

I’ve had 2 zombie horses disappear on separate occasions after capturing one, armouring it, and naming it. It’s funny because the horse and skeleton horse in the same place are still there. v1.21.30

NpBlaster36 2025-12-21T22:04:09Z

Unsure if that’s what this report is about though.

Matcha 2025-12-22T01:51:21Z

I’ve done lots of testing regarding entities persistency and found out a behavior for mobs.

Using debug entities addons, I was able to get the data for entities’ ID and furthermore testing concluded that entities disappear one by one in order of creation from oldest to latest.

This also affects vehicle such as boats and mine carts as well. However, with more testing, I found that name tag prevents the entity from disappearing which is to be expected. However, other method such as breeding does not.

Putting entities inside of vehicle also prevents the despawn of both entities.

Lastly, projectile (mostly tridents and arrows) disappears after being use for a while. Example being thrown trident disappears completely after 2 minutes on ground. The same goes for arrows as well.

Matcha 2025-12-22T01:56:18Z

For more details of how I experimented with the bugs.

First I set some small fenced pen up for the test subject which in this case is sheep.

I name tag one of them and breed the 2.

Then, I go out and unload them. Approximately 180 blocks is the distance of my travel (tested in my survival world)

I returned and only the name tagged sheep stayed. Not even the babies.

I then experimented with vehicle and found out the same thing.

This is just the speculation for the bugs but I think it’s a problem regarding time of being unload that effect the entity as I tried testing in my testing world where I have flight speed. Unloading them for 2 minutes doesn’t do anything. However, after bumping that to 5 the entity disappear which is what I’d speculated.

[Mojang] Mega_Spud (Jay) 2026-01-06T09:17:17Z

If you have a copy of the world available, you might like to upload a copy of it for investigation.

On Windows 10 you can use the Export world feature.
On Android or iOS you need to use a file explorer to navigate to Device storage > games > com.mojang > minecraftWorlds
On Xbox or Switch the only way is to upload it to a Realm, and then download the world on Windows 10 or Android/iOS. (Please do not purchase a Realms subscription just to provide a world to us - but if you have a Realm already this may be a viable option if you wish to do so.)

If the world is larger than 10MB you can upload the world to OneDrive or a similar file sharing site, and then share the link.