Which files make up a world save
A Minecraft Bedrock world is essentially a folder, and its world file structure usually looks like this:
level.dat— the world’s metadata: name, game mode, seed, spawn point, game rules, and so on. See What is level.dat for details.db/— a LevelDB database that stores the real world data such as chunks, blocks, and entities; it’s often the largest part.levelname.txt— the plain-text world name, plus accompanying files like the world cover image.
When this folder is packaged into a ZIP and given the .mcworld extension, it becomes a world file you can import into Bedrock with a single tap.
Where the save lives on different platforms
The physical location of a save varies by platform: Windows, Android, and consoles each have their own directories. On iOS (iPhone / iPad), the save is stored inside the Minecraft app’s private sandbox, which the system Files app generally can’t browse directly.
So on a phone, the right way to retrieve it isn’t to dig through folders — it’s to export or share the world as a .mcworld from inside the game, then save it to the Files app or a cloud drive. This step is also a great moment to make a local backup of your world.
Open and inspect a save with mcworld.app
Once you have a .mcworld (or a Java Edition world ZIP), you can run a free on-device diagnosis with mcworld.app: it identifies the type and version, produces a health report, and can check whether structures like level.dat and db/ are intact.
If level.dat isn’t in the root directory, or there’s an extra wrapping folder around it, it can perform a simple structure repair and output a new file that imports correctly. Throughout the process it never overwrites your original save — it generates a new version every time, preserving the original file and its hash for traceability, and paid tasks that fail are automatically refunded.