Minecraft has finally got a spectator mode on PC! This means you can join in Minecraft servers and watch people build and survive, without getting in danger yourself!

When spectating, people in the server cannot see you, so they won’t know you’re there. Other spectators will be able to see you though. You wont be able to play the game in any way, so you can’t knock down other player’s stuff when spectating. It’s just about watching! You can look in people’s inventories though, and even walk through walls! And if you click on a player, you’ll be able to see the world through their eyes.

Spectator mode is available in snapshot 14w05b. You’ll have to set your Minecraft profile to use snapshots if you want to use spector mode right now. To get snapshots, open your launcher and press the “New Profile” button. Call it “snapshots” and check the box saying “Enable experimental development snapshots” and save. To switch to the normal version, you can select it in the dropdown at the bottom left corner of the launcher. Back up your world first or run the game on in a different folder (See the “new profile” dialog). Snapshots can corrupt your world, please backup and/or run them in a different folder from your main worlds.