Piston Scanner
Piston Scanner is a Fabric utility that finds pistons in loaded chunks, sorts them by type and state, and highlights them in the world.
What it does
A single key press scans every piston in the loaded chunks. Results are grouped into four types: normal and sticky pistons, each marked active or inactive, with live counts for each group. Searching works with Chinese characters, full pinyin and pinyin initials, as well as English registry names, so no input method switch is needed. Clicking a result highlights that piston with a gold wireframe that shows through walls, along with its on-screen coordinates.
Area selection lets a player mark a cubic region with two presses of the Z key. Later scans then search only inside that region, and a green wireframe shows its bounds. The interface is bilingual in Chinese and English, and the mod is built for redstone engineers who need to audit large piston setups. Because the scan runs on the client, it works on a server without any server-side install.
Fabric Loader 0.14.21 or newer and Fabric API are required. The mod is published for Fabric only, across 13 release versions 1.19.1 – 26.2, and the files are released under All rights reserved, so the code is not open source.
Key features
One-key scan
A key press scans pistons in all loaded chunks, with an optimized pass that keeps the scan quick.
Grouped results
Pistons are sorted into four groups by type and state, and each group can be expanded or collapsed.
Pinyin search
Chinese characters, full pinyin, pinyin initials and English registry names all match the same search box.
Click to locate
Selecting a result outlines the piston in gold through walls and shows its coordinates on screen.
Area selection
Two presses of the Z key mark a cubic region, and later scans are limited to it, drawn as a green wireframe.
Automatic highlight clearing
The highlight clears when the player comes within 3 blocks of the piston, or when the piston is destroyed or its chunk unloads.
Gallery
Compatibility
Latest build for each game version and loader.
26.x4 of 4 versions with builds
1.21.x5 of 5 versions with builds
1.19.x4 of 4 versions with builds
Only full game releases are shown. This mod publishes no snapshot builds.
How it compares
Inventory Search is a Fabric client-side mod for 1.21.3 – 26.3, released under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only, so it is open source. Name Scanner is a Fabric client-side mod for 1.21.11 under the MIT License, and it is not open source. AntiScan is a Fabric server-side mod for 1.20 – 26.2 under the MIT License and is open source, so it runs on servers rather than the client.
| Mod | Loaders | Game versions | Environment | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piston Scanner | Fabric | 1.19.1 – 26.2 | Client and server | 2026-08-12 |
| Inventory Search | Fabric | 1.21.3 – 26.3 | Client-side only | 2026-09-16 |
| Name Scanner | Fabric | 1.21.11 | Client-side only | 2026-07-20 |
| AntiScan | Fabric | 1.20 – 26.2 | Server-side only | 2026-07-05 |
Questions
Does Piston Scanner need Fabric API?
Does a server need Piston Scanner installed?
Which versions does Piston Scanner support?
In the catalog
Piston Scanner is one of 8,016 Management mods on ModsFinder, and one of 5,930 Management mods for Fabric. 13,894 mods support Minecraft 26.2.
Similar mods
What the author says
A lightweight client-side mod for redstone engineers. Press a key to instantly scan all pistons in loaded chunks, browse them by type, search with pinyin support, and click to highlight any piston through walls. One-Key Scan / 一键扫描 Instantly scans all pistons (normal & sticky) in loaded chunks with optimized…
Official listing
- Modrinth page
- modrinth.com/mod/piston-scanner
- Owner
- DestinyChanged
- Published
- 2026-07-17
- Updated on Modrinth
- 2026-08-12
- Facts verified
- 2026-10-15