How to use Arnis on your phone

The three ways, side by side

MapSmith's prices and settings are as its own page listed them on 3 November 2026; check it for today's.

Way 1: Arnis on a computer, then copy the world to your phone

This is the free route, and the only one with no size limit beyond your computer's memory. Download Arnis only from its GitHub releases page or arnismc.com: the project warns that these are its only official websites.

1. Download Arnis for Windows, macOS or Linux and start it.
2. Draw a rectangle round your place on its map, choose Bedrock as the edition, and start the generation. Arnis downloads the map data and writes a .mcworld file.
3. Move the file to your phone: save it to a cloud drive, send it to yourself, or copy it with a cable.
4. On the phone, tap the file and open it with Minecraft. On an iPhone, find it in the Files app, tap Share and pick Minecraft. The world is added to your world list.

Choose Bedrock, not Java: Minecraft on phones is the Bedrock Edition and can't open Java worlds.

Way 2: MapSmith, in your phone's browser

The author of Arnis also runs MapSmith, a website that generates Arnis worlds for you. You draw an area or pick a preset, choose Java or Bedrock and a few settings, pay for that world, and the download link arrives by email. It needs no computer, so it works from a phone's browser; on the phone you then open the Bedrock file with Minecraft as in way 1. It suits bigger areas than one square kilometre.

Way 3: the BlockMap app

BlockMap does the computer's part on our servers. You pick the place on your phone, the server builds the world with the Arnis engine, and the finished world opens straight in Minecraft on the same phone. Here is the whole thing in the app:

Times Square, built from a phone

More BlockMap users build Times Square than any other place: in the 90 days to 3 November 2026, about 800 people made a world centred on it. The search Times Square centres the world on the square itself. Its square kilometre runs from Bryant Park and the New York Public Library to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, with 45 theatres in between, most of Broadway among them. OpenStreetMap has 872 buildings in that square, 967 building parts and 1,136 streets, paths and plazas; 88% of the buildings carry a height or a number of floors, so Midtown's towers stand at their mapped heights. The tallest, the Bank of America Tower, rises 354 blocks above the street, under Minecraft's height limit.

That is longer than most worlds take. After the engine has built Midtown, our servers place the screens, which takes about 40 seconds in a city this dense.

What Arnis builds, and what we add

Arnis builds every building, street and plaza here from OpenStreetMap. The map has no billboards, so on its own the square is grey stone and glass. The screens, the red steps over the TKTS booth, One Times Square with its news ticker, and the New Year's Eve ball on its roof are a model we made for the app. Every Times Square world gets it. The pictures on the screens are our own: sunsets, words, a skyline. No brands, no real adverts.

Arnis aloneIn BlockMap

Street mapMinecraft world

The holiday version

From 1 November to 10 January, by the date in New York, the app builds Times Square in its holiday version. About half of the screens switch to snow, presents, baubles and Happy New Year. The coming year stands in lit gold numerals on the roof of One Times Square, in front of the ball. A Christmas tree 24 blocks tall stands on the plaza between 45th and 46th Streets. The two flights below are from the app's own world, built on 3 November 2026 with Time of day set to Night. From 11 January, Times Square worlds go back to the year-round screens. Because the app gives the holiday version until then, we built the year-round worlds on this page on our servers by hand, with the same engine and the same model.

Same engine, our changes

BlockMap's worlds are built by Arnis 3.3.0 (released in October 2026; Arnis 3.4.0 followed on 31 October). Buildings, roads, water, terrain and the scale of one block per metre come from it. On top of it we made changes for the places people search most, and for phones:

• Fresh map data. The map is read from our own copy of OpenStreetMap, which takes in every edit within minutes.
• No false hills under trees. Where no national laser survey exists, the ground comes from a bare-earth terrain model, so a park or a grove stays level. How worlds are made shows every data source.
• Ferris wheels as wheels. Mapped big wheels are built with a rim, spokes and cabins, from the London Eye to the rusted wheel of Pripyat.
• Straight aircraft and whole towers. Aircraft at airports keep their shape, and towers mapped in many short pieces, like the Kremlin's, stand on the ground.
• Schools that read as schools. Mapped schools get a sign with the school's name, a flag and a bike rack, and a clock over the door where the front is tall enough.
• World looks. Autumn, cherry blossom or bare trees, snow and ice, desert, a flood, rain or thunder, sunset or night, and Survival with a starter kit.
• Landmarks built by hand. For famous places we build our own models: the screens of Times Square, Big Ben, the Titanic, the pyramids of Giza and more.

Here is the same moment of the flight down Times Square in four world looks, each a separate world of the same square kilometre:

Default

Golden Hour

Night

Ice Age

What Arnis on a computer does that BlockMap doesn't: areas bigger than a square kilometre, your own scale and rectangle, Luanti worlds, the Java-only extras, and it is free without limits. If you have a computer and want a whole city, use Arnis itself.

Questions

Credits

Arnis is © its contributors, under the Apache License 2.0 (github.com/louis-e/arnis). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. The Arnis project and MapSmith do not make or endorse BlockMap.

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