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Summary | Discourse Chat adds chat functionality to your Discourse instance. |
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Install Guide | This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. |
Features
As mentioned in our initial announcement and most recent update and threading announcement , this plugin adds chat functionality to your Discourse so it can natively support both, long-form and short-form communication needs of your online community.
Configuration
Initial setup
Chat is enabled by default for all our hosted sites, but if it is not yet enabled, you can go to /admin/plugins and toggle the plugin on:
By default, Chat will be available to the staff group only, but you can add more groups by adding them to the chat allowed groups setting.
Channel retention
By default, channels are configured to retain messages for 90 days and direct and group messages are configured to retain messages forever, but these are configurable site settings:
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chat channel retention days(default 90 days)
Choose how long to retain Chat messages for channels -
chat dm retention days(default forever)
Choose how long to retain your Chat messages for direct message and group message channels
Other site settings
Additional site settings allow you to configure a set of default emoji reactions and a range of safety features (such as maximum chat messages per second, minimum message length, silence duration, and whether to allow uploads).
Accessing channels and creating new channels
After the plugin is enabled, a speech bubble will appear in the header next to the Search icon, and clicking on that will open your Full Screen Chat window, where you can access default channels as well as start new personal chats. To navigate back to your Full Screen Chat window from inside each channel, use the < icon in the top left corner.
Using the
button on any Chat window, you can toggle between Full Screen mode and Drawer mode.
Create a channel
To create a new channel (staff only), go to /chat/browse/open by clicking select the 
icon in the channel sidebar:
Then, select New channel from the top-right of the page. Choose a category to associate it with, give it a name, an emoji, and add an optional description to display on the Browse Channels page.
A Category can have multiple channels associated to it, and more can be added anytime. As a channel is always linked to a category, you can rely on existing category permissions to automatically limit who has access to that particular conversation.
Want a channel just for your TL3+ users? Then creating a new channel for your lounge category will do just that.
Threading
Channels can have threading enabled on creation, or later on in the channel settings page:
When a member replies to a chat message when the channel has threading enabled, a thread sidebar will open, and an excerpt of the latest message in the thread will show beneath the original message in the main channel stream:
Threads have similar tracking levels to topics, which can be changed via the 
icon at the top right corner of the thread:
The creator of the thread can change the thread title. On Discourse hosted sites, AI thread title generation is enabled by default 
Members can see all the threads they are participating in via the “My Threads” link at the top of the chat sidebar:
Joining a channel
You can preview and join channels from the ‘Browse channels’ page. From this page, you can view all the channels that are visible to you and eligible to join.
Inviting users to channels with @mentions
@mentioning individual users or groups will give the option to invite them to the channel if they aren’t participants already. To invite groups in this way, the ‘Who can @mention this group?’ on the group’s /manage/interaction page must be set to something other than ‘Nobody’.
Starting a direct message or group chat
To start a direct message, use the 
icon on your Full Screen Chat window in the DMs section and start adding usernames to the recipients list. To leave a direct message or group chat click the X icon next to the channel name (only on desktop).
If you accidentally leave a direct message, starting a new chat with the same person/people will link you back to the messages sent previously.
Chat message options
Like topics, chat messages support:
- Edits
- Replies
- Quoting
- Oneboxing
- Reactions
- Bookmarks
- Deletion
In the composer, you can insert dates, upload files, and GIFs! Chat channels support channel-wide @here and @all mentions with per channel while presence features like a green halo for online users & username is typing… indicator are also present.
You can also select one or more chat messages and ‘Quote to topic’ to take a quick conversation and make it into a Discourse topic for in-depth discussion, or press ‘Copy’ to get the messages onto your clipboard to post into an existing topic or different chat channel:
Admins and moderators also have the ability to select chat messages and move them to a different channel.
Automatically add users to a channel
While creating a new channel, admins will now see a preference to add all new and existing users to it. Using this, admins can configure “default channels” for groups of users to be included in automatically:
For an existing channel, admins can toggle this behaviour in Channel Settings. In all cases, a confirmation dialog will appear to indicate the number of users being added.
Search
Members can search either individual channel messages with the search icon at the top right of each channel:
Or search all channels via the “Search” link at the top of the chat sidebar:
Chat information panel
Clicking a channel title will now take users to a useful info panel with two tabs:
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The Settings tab will display title, description and linked category, so users have the context they need for each channel.
It will let also you set notification preferences (mute, desktop / mobile push notifications). For admins, this tab also includes the auto-join mode toggle, close channel, and archive channel buttons.
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The Members tab lets users see who else is in the room with them (member list and total count). It includes a filter so they can use search.
Chat preferences
When Chat is enabled, users see a new /preferences/chat page in their preferences. On this page, they can opt-out of Chat, opt-out of the @here and @all notifications, manage their Chat email notifications or choose a desktop sound.
The existing settings on /preferences/users page also apply to chat direct messages, so users can also turn off direct messages or mute or ignore other individual users.
Closing, deleting, and archiving channels
Admins and moderators can close or delete channels from the channel’s settings page, which can by accessed by clicking the channel name in the channel’s header. A closed channel can be reopened any time, but deleting a channel is not reversible, so there is an additional confirmation check in place.
To archive a channel, the chat allow archiving channels setting must be enabled, and the channel must be closed. You can then choose “Archive channel” from channel settings, and you will be presented with a modal that asks if you want to create a new topic or use an existing topic for the archive process:
Archiving will copy the chat messages into a chat transcript then post them in the selected topic, and they appear like this:
Integrations
Discourse Chat supports Incoming webhooks but has no support for interactive bots or slash commands yet.
Sending Chat messages using Incoming webhooks [Slack-compatible]
The UI for creating webhooks can be found at Admin > Plugins > Chat > New incoming webhook. You can configure a name, description, username (that posts messages), destination channel and emoji for each webhook.
Last edited by @martin 2026-06-16T03:42:05Z
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