# Voice: Discord-style voice and video rooms, now bundled with Discourse 🎙
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337
**Category:** Announcements
**Tags:** voice
**Created:** [September 1, 2026, 6:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337 "2026-09-01T18:11:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 6:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/1 "2026-09-01T18:11:51Z")
Late last year we shared [Resenha](https://meta.discourse.org/t/resenha-add-discord-style-video-and-voice-rooms-to-your-community/389056), an experiment that added Discord-style voice and video rooms directly into Discourse. No external apps required, just peer-to-peer WebRTC in your sidebar.
The experiment worked. We’ve been using it for our own meetings ever since, and today it graduates: Resenha is now called **Voice** , and it ships as a core plugin bundled with every Discourse install. 🎉
## What you get
- **Sidebar-first rooms** — click to join or leave, see live participant avatars with animated speaking indicators, and keep browsing the forum while you talk. No route change, no popup window, and a compact call widget follows you around the site.
- **Video and screen sharing** — each room gets a full page with a tile grid; camera and screen share toggle instantly, and quality scales automatically with the number of watchers.
- **Background blur** — MediaPipe person segmentation running entirely in your browser, with a live preview and adjustable strength.
- **Noise suppression** — pick between three AI engines (RNNoise, DTLN, DeepFilterNet3) running as WebAssembly audio worklets, from lightweight to studio-grade.
- **Live subtitles** — opt-in, viewer-side captions powered by NVIDIA Parakeet speech recognition running locally via WebGPU. Multilingual, state of the art, local AI. You can also record a transcript of the call straight into a topic draft.
- **Direct calls** — call someone straight from their user card or profile.
- **Per-room text chat** — backed by real Discourse chat: each call gets its own thread in the room’s chat channel.
- **Room permissions and management** — public, group-restricted, and private rooms; user room creation gated by groups; mute, deafen, per-user volume, and kick.
- **Themed audio cues** — join/leave and call tones follow your [chat notification sound pack](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-chat-notification-sound-packs/410644), so Voice sounds like the rest of your site.
## How it works
By default, everything is peer-to-peer: your Discourse server only handles signaling, and media flows directly between participants with DTLS-SRTP encryption. Zero extra infrastructure, ideal for rooms of up to ~50 people on voice, or up to 10 with video.
All the audio and video processing (noise suppression, background blur, subtitles) runs locally on each participant’s device. Nothing is sent to third parties.
Need bigger calls? Point the plugin at a cloud or a self-hosted [LiveKit](https://livekit.io) server and route all rooms (or just some) through it. Each participant then publishes every track exactly once, whatever the room size. LiveKit-routed rooms can also record calls, with recording controlled right from the room UI in Discourse.
## How to enable it
:discourse: Voice is available on all our hosting plans. The LiveKit integration for larger calls is available on our **Business** and **Enterprise** plans; self-hosters :discourse-bw: can point it at their own LiveKit server.
Voice is bundled with Discourse, so there is nothing to install. Turn it on via **Admin \> Settings \> Plugins \> voice enabled**. The plugin seeds a default “Watercooler” room so there’s somewhere to hang out right away.
From there, `voice_allowed_groups` controls who can join rooms, and `voice_create_room_allowed_groups` controls who can create them (admins, moderators, and TL2 by default). Video is on by default. Direct calls are off until you pick some groups in `voice_direct_calls_allowed_groups`, and subtitles are opt-in via `voice_subtitles_enabled` (they need WebGPU, and each user downloads the ~2.5 GB model once).
If you were running the Resenha plugin from my personal repository, remove it from your `app.yml` when you have a chance, since the bundled Voice plugin replaces it.
## Status
This is still early. We’ve been dogfooding it daily for months and it works very well for small groups, but test it with your team before opening it to a whole community. There’s no call recording on the default peer-to-peer path, and moderation tools beyond user flags, kick, and “End call” are still on the roadmap.
## Feedback welcome
Try it out and let us know how it goes! Bugs, ideas, and questions are all welcome in this topic. PRs too, now easier than ever: the code lives in [core](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/tree/main/plugins/voice). 🎤
---
### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 6:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/2 "2026-09-01T18:37:21Z")
wait … wah … video _too_?
fantastic!
---
### Author:  [@Thomas\_Rother](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Thomas_Rother)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 6:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/3 "2026-09-01T18:53:07Z")
Wow, really?
Any instructions how to test this on self-hosted instances? E.g. with some separate docker container?
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 6:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/4 "2026-09-01T18:54:33Z")
> [@Thomas\_Rother](#):
>
> Any instructions how to test this on self-hosted instances? E.g. with some separate docker container?
Just update to latest with a rebuild, and enable the new plugin on the admin page. There is nothing extra necessary.
---
### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 7:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/5 "2026-09-01T19:33:28Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Discord-style voice and video rooms
I think you mean Discourse-style voice and video rooms? 😇 😁
---
### Author:  [@satonotdead](https://meta.discourse.org/u/satonotdead)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 7:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/6 "2026-09-01T19:44:56Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> There is nothing extra necessary.
So I can leave behind the pub/secret keys in Nats, the subdomains, Coturn server, and all the scripts I was trying to create, to have a secure Livekit server as a bridge?
Even if I have to continue on it, thank you for building this!
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 7:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/7 "2026-09-01T19:52:25Z")
> [@satonotdead](#):
>
> So I can leave behind the pub/secret keys in Nats, the subdomains, Coturn server, and all the scripts I was trying to create, to have a secure Livekit server as a bridge?
I mean, if you want to have a dedicated Coturn for STUN/TURN on your instance, go for it. Same for LiveKit; if you want to use it, be my guest.
It is not mandatory for doing calls out of the box, but we do offer that flexibility.
---
### Author:  [@nicolsdennis](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nicolsdennis)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 10:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/8 "2026-09-01T22:33:17Z")
This is great news! I had an inclination this would happen, thank you @Falco
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 11:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/9 "2026-09-01T23:36:39Z")
A post was split to a new topic: [Exposing LiveKit status in site settings serializer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/exposing-livekit-status-in-site-settings-serializer/411428)
---
### Author:  [@fuse](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fuse)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 11:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/10 "2026-09-01T23:31:21Z")
I missed the original announcement, and am so excited about this that I just updated discourse even though the last update was only 4 days ago.
Can’t wait to get folks using this!
Thank you!!! 🎉
Big question- can anyone create a video room or can that be restricted / permission / trust level based?
Extra edit- found the controls post enablement.
---
### Author:  [@NateDhaliwal](https://meta.discourse.org/u/NateDhaliwal)
#### Post date: [September 1, 2026, 11:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/11 "2026-09-01T23:47:07Z")
Amazing 👏 ! I think Discourse now has a pretty good feature set to even replace some Discord communities, and to truly compete with it.
---
### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2026, 2:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/12 "2026-09-02T14:30:40Z")
3 posts were split to a new topic: [Granular permissions for cameras and screen sharing](https://meta.discourse.org/t/granular-permissions-for-cameras-and-screen-sharing/411477)
---
### Author:  [@pmusaraj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pmusaraj)
#### Post date: [September 2, 2026, 2:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/13 "2026-09-02T14:43:55Z")
> [@fuse](#):
>
> can that be restricted / permission / trust level based?
It can be restricted by group.
---
### Author:  [@scavin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/scavin)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 3:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/16 "2026-09-03T03:20:35Z")
---
### Author:  [@gilles](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gilles)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 10:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/17 "2026-09-03T10:10:12Z")
It would be interesting to have a button, similar to the one for chat, that opens a window for the voice plugin. This window would display the channels and a list of users, complete with a search function. This would be especially useful for mobile use. It’s just an idea 😅
---
### Author:  [@satonotdead](https://meta.discourse.org/u/satonotdead)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 11:07am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/18 "2026-09-03T11:07:26Z")
The voice rooms can be displayed on chats, is that enough for what you are looking for?
The button is not for Voice but for all chats, users can enter or leave Voice rooms from there 👌
---
### Author:  [@gilles](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gilles)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/19 "2026-09-03T15:14:54Z")
Can you send me some screenshots of the result? I don’t quite understand this part (salon/chat) 😅
---
### Author:  [@satonotdead](https://meta.discourse.org/u/satonotdead)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 4:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/20 "2026-09-03T16:27:24Z")
Oh, you can really try it. Just check the setting `voice chat enabled` and open the maximized chat screen 🙂
---
### Author:  [@gilles](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gilles)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/21 "2026-09-03T16:49:24Z")
Voice chat is enabled, but I don’t see any change in full screen, unless I’m completely out of my depth 🤣
---
### Author:  [@gilles](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gilles)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 3:07pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337/22 "2026-09-04T15:07:52Z")
OK, I found it 😅 sorry for the inconvenience
[Next page](https://meta.discourse.org/t/voice-discord-style-voice-and-video-rooms-now-bundled-with-discourse/411337.md?page=2)