UPDATE: The beta is now live! Click here to sign up to the beta.

Who’s excited about 0.15, then? Judging by Shoghi’s inundated Twitter feed, quite a lot of you. We aren’t quite ready to tell you when it’ll launch, but we can tell you a few of the things you might find in it. We’ll be releasing an Android beta soon, so you’ll be able to explore some of the new features for yourselves.

Here’s some - but definitely not all - of what you’ll find in 0.15, aka The Friendly Update.

New Features

Mysterious, as-yet-unspecified friendliness

Pistons and sticky pistons!

Observer blocks: new blocks that can detect changes in neighboring blocks

Xbox Live Achievements on iOS and Android

Online multiplayer with Xbox Live friends!

Leads, horses and dyeable horse armor!

Fire charges

Pig riding!

A whole new UI for the main menu, shared with the Windows 10 Edition

You can now tip arrows using a cauldron and potions!

Husk zombies in the desert

Stray skeletons in tundras

Different villages in taigas and savannahs

Skeleton horse traps!

Tweaks

Online play uses less bandwidth now

Note blocks are a lot louder now

Walking far from spawn generates a lot less jittering now

Added more mob eggs to the creative menu

Bug fixes

Fixed a lot of crashes!

Fixed a couple of bugs causing data to be lost or world corruption

A whole bunch of redstone fixes from the community feedback

Lots of multiplayer desynchronization fixes

Nether wart looks different when planted

Less flickering of the block selection highlight!

Glass doesn’t become green anymore

Fixed chests generation in dungeons and desert temples

What other mysteries await to be uncovered in the beta? What’s so friendly about The Friendly Update anyway? When will it launch?

All these questions and more to be answered soon!

Right, I’m off to dig Shoghi out from a massive pile of Twitter mentions.

Cheerio!

Marsh - @marshdavies