I have a skin in MCPE, but I want to get the head in minecraft PC.

/give @p skull 1 3 {SkullOwner:MCPENAME} doesn't work, it gives the non-existant Minecraft PC character, not the MCPE one. How do I /give myself the MCPE skull?


The are a few reasons why this is impossible:

  • MCPE and PC edition are completely and utterly separate games. They have no connectivity at all (without extensive modding).
  • In MCPE, your username is easily changed in-game, and multiple players can have the same name. Your username is not tied to any accounts (e.g. your Game Center or Google Play ID). Skins are similar; they are stored locally on the device of the player rather than on any online databases.
  • In PC edition, your in-game username is tied to your Minecraft.net account, and usernames cannot be shared by multiple accounts. The only way to change your username is to change your Minecraft.net account name, where it gets updated in a database. Skins are also similar; they are stored in a database rather than on a machine, and they only way to change them is to do so via your Minecraft.net profile settings.
  • On PC edition, every player account is assigned a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) which can be used to identify them, even when their username changes. This was introduced in v1.7.6. Your skin is also attached to this UUID. The importance of this system is that it allows your user to be identified even when your name changes, which means that bans, skins, inventories etc will carry over on servers when you change your name. MCPE has no such system and as such usernames are not considered 'permanent', which means you cannot be identified reliably.

Why does this matter (TL;DR)?

  • The two games are separate; they are not connectable. Even if they were compatiable we couldn't use cross-platform player heads.
  • UUIDs are reliable, usernames are not. Using a username to identify a player may result in unexpected behavior e.g. you could target the wrong player or multiple players may be targeted. As such usernames shouldn't be used.