I have been playing minecraft for many years and there is an enemy that haunts me every time I cross a cubic landscape. The enemy waits until I am satisfied before it attacks. I am usually most vulnerable when I stop to think about my nemesis, and then a new update falls upon me. While other players may fear the Creeper, lose sleep thinking about the Enderman, or swear revenge on the Eraser, my nemesis is buried in Minecraft's settings menu:

The dreaded auto-jump.

With Minecraft's latest snapshot 23W03A, my nemesis has finally been laid to rest. The auto-jump feature is now off by default. Buried in the minor changes, such as a fix to retain custom names when armor stands are broken and the addition of arrow key controls to menu navigation, the real star of the snapshot show is that auto-jump is no longer auto-on.

First introduced to Java from the Pocket Edition in the 1.10 update in 2016, auto-jumping essentially raises the character when it hits something jumpable. A frustration familiar to Assassin's Creed fans who find their parkour-loving characters constantly stuck to walls against the player's will, Minecraft constantly forces them to jump on, off, or into things they don't want to jump into.

While auto-jumping can save you from draining your space bar, it's also a daily occurrence that can trample crops, throw you off cliffs and scaffolding while building, and make life a living hell for those accustomed to manual jumping. Every new major update or reinstallation, or even reinstallation of Minecraft mods, reverts the automatic jump back to the default, causing all sorts of mildly annoying havoc.

Auto-jumping really became my nemesis when a playthrough of Skyblock threw me into the endless void with my entire inventory of important items. Screaming to the sky and shaking my fist, I swore I would never forgive the most obnoxious helper in Minecraft. You might say it was my fault for not keeping so many important items in my chest. But let's not concentrate on the real enemy here, the useful accessibility features.

If you need to turn auto jump back on, you can do so in fairly simple steps: