This mod adjusts water physics when digging sand near water in an attempt to prevent ugly appearances of flowing water. This means you can go dig up that sand you really needed without having to worry about ruining the environment.
Pretty Beaches works automatically. There are no tools, commands, or keybinds required.
By default, the mod only affects sand. Modpacks can add more blocks through the prettybeaches:preserve_pretty block tag, or can enable the affectAllBlocks config option for broader behavior.
Note that this mod will create water for free, so it's not really suited for cases where water is meant to be limited. This also applies to the optional infinite bucket water feature.
Forge
Fabric