Live started life as Resenha, so it felt right that this round of updates is all about Re: it’s been renamed, redesigned, re-rendered, and it now has reactions and recording. It’s been a few weeks since we bundled Live with Discourse, so here’s a quick tour.
- Renamed Voice to Live
- Reactions available on calls and included in the transcriptions
- Recording a meeting locally on your device is now available
- Redesign of room and chat integration
- Rendering improvements for multiple video tiles
Voice is now Live
The plugin is now called Discourse Live, or just Live. Settings moved from voice_* to live_*, and existing rooms and settings carry over on their own, so there’s nothing to do on your side.
Special thanks to @angus, the first to suggest this new name 
.
Reactions
React without unmuting: pick an emoji from the call controls and it floats, animated, over everyone’s call. The set follows your site’s post reactions, including any emoji when your site allows it. Reactions are also captured in recorded transcripts.
Record to your device
Anyone in a group listed in live_local_recording_allowed_groups can now pick Record to this device from the room menu (disabled by default). The recording happens entirely in the browser and downloads when you stop, so it works on peer-to-peer rooms without any recording server. Everyone in the call sees the recording indicator.
Redesigned rooms and chat
Room pages now look and feel like chat channels: the same header (click the room name for room info), and the room chat opens as a side panel, just like a chat thread. The floating call widget is now a proper picture-in-picture.
Before
After
Better video layout
Video tiles now fill the stage as a uniform grid instead of leaving empty bands around them. In one-to-one calls, the other person takes the full stage and your own camera floats in a corner. Screen shares and portrait feeds are never cropped.
As always, feedback is welcome here or, preferably, in a new topic. 