Importing & exporting

Getting worlds and other assets in and out of Quarry.

Worlds

• Import a .mcworld file or a world folder; Import image to build a PNG/JPG as pixel art or a heightmap; or Import 3D model to voxelize a glTF/OBJ/FBX/STL file into blocks.
• Export downloads an updated .mcworld. Exports are non-destructive — only the parts you edited are rewritten; everything else is preserved exactly.

Very large worlds

Worlds over roughly 200 MB open in a streaming mode: Quarry keeps the world on disk and loads the area around you, bringing more in as you move. Everything works the same — building, undo, the world map, mobs — and export is still non-destructive. A world folder streams the same way a .mcworld does.

A few differences worth knowing:

• The first open spends a short while preparing the world — under a minute for a 400 MB map, longer for bigger ones and on a busy machine. Quarry keeps the prepared copy, so opening the same world again takes seconds. Editing it elsewhere and re-importing prepares it afresh.
• The world map takes a minute or two to build the first time you open it on a world this big, and is kept afterwards. It builds in the background — the navigator shows how far along it is — and closing the world part-way through is fine, since it resumes from there next time.
• Exporting takes a few minutes and writes the file out piece by piece. If your device is low on disk space, the export stops with a clear message instead of producing a broken file. Compact on export isn't available for these worlds yet.
• Your edits are saved into that prepared copy as you work, so closing the tab doesn't lose them. The rolling autosave is off — it would have to write the whole world every few minutes — so use Project checkpoints (below) for points you can go back to, and Export for a file you can play or share.
• Terrain fills in as you fly. Quarry spreads the work of loading new areas across frames rather than doing it all at once, so moving stays smooth. On a densely-built world at speed you may briefly outrun it and see terrain arrive a moment after you do; a lower view distance (View ▸ Rendering) gives it less to do and it keeps up more easily.

Streaming needs a particular kind of disk access that Chrome, Edge and Safari all provide, but that some browsers withhold — in a private window, for instance. Where it isn't available Quarry falls back to loading the world whole, and a world this large may then be too big to open at all.

Compact on export

A world that has been played for a long time carries a lot of data Minecraft no longer uses — mobs and items it has forgotten about, leftovers from old terrain upgrades, checksums it recalculates anyway. Quarry keeps all of it by default, because keeping your world exactly as you gave it to us is the safer promise.

If you would rather have a smaller file, open World info and tick the options under Compact on export. Press Analyze to count what each option would drop from your world before you commit to it. Your world plays exactly the same afterwards — nothing you built, and nothing you can see in game, is touched.

Forgotten mobs and items is the one that really shrinks the file; on a long-played world it is often the great majority of the saving. The others tidy up large numbers of small records that the file's compression had already squashed, so they remove a lot of entries but little actual size.

Compacting only affects the file you download. Autosaves and saved versions always keep everything, so restoring a session never loses anything.

Import a 3D model

☰ → Import 3D model… (or drop the file into the window) voxelizes a standard 3D model — glTF/GLB, OBJ, FBX, or STL — into blocks. The model appears as a wireframe in the viewport: click a spot to position it (drag the 3-axis handles to fine-tune), set its size (blocks along the longest side), rotation, and up axis (many OBJ/FBX exports are Z-up), and choose whether to fill the interior or keep a hollow shell.

Then pick a palette — All blocks, Wool, Concrete, Terracotta, or Natural — and the model is rebuilt as real blocks, color-matched from the model's textures and materials. Switch palettes freely to compare; the block preview is live and movable like a Library placement. Apply commits it as one undoable edit (Esc discards). Textured models work best with self-contained .glb files: everything is read from the file you pick and nothing is fetched over the network. A model whose geometry lives in a separate .bin is refused with a message asking for an embedded .glb; one whose textures sit outside the file still loads, but the import panel warns how many were skipped and those surfaces fall back to their material color rather than being matched from the texture.

Autosave

Quarry autosaves your world locally in the browser as you edit, so a reload or crash won't lose work. The status bar shows when it last saved, and the welcome screen can restore your most recent session. Autosave is local only — use Export to get a file you can play. Very large worlds (see above) are not autosaved.