Anonymous visitors can now browse public chat channels on new sites by default

[rishabh]

On new Discourse sites, chat channels are now visible to everyone by default, including anonymous visitors in a read-only view.

This means visitors can discover your community’s chat activity without needing to create an account first. They can browse public channels, follow the conversation, get a feel for the community, and sign up when they’re ready

What about existing sites? Nothing changes. A migration preserves your current chat allowed groups setting, so existing sites will keep whatever configuration they already have.

Admin control: You can manage anonymous access (and access for other trust levels) via Settings → Chat → chat allowed groups in the admin dashboard. To disable anonymous chat viewing, remove the anonymous group from that list.

[David_Ghost]

Hello, nice thing. But is there a reason to not show it in the header too?

[Andrew_Rowe]

Existing Discourse - self hosted - just so i’m sure because I don’t want to expose private channels - in Chat > Settings > Chat allowed groups

it says:

Users in these groups can chat, except anonymous users who can only view chat when added to this setting

so adding group anonymous_users is always going to only be read only chat access correct?

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@Andrew_Rowe

so adding group anonymous_users is always going to only be read only chat access correct?

yep, that’s correct.