Everyone understands the importance of friendship. Hanging out and having fun is one of the most important parts of building relationships and bonding! That’s why we’re always trying to make Discord the best place to spend time with friends. More than 150 million people around the world chill on Discord every month — studying, enjoying clubs, learning languages, building software, talking about your daily lives, and, of course, playing games.
Today we’re announcing new and upcoming features that make Discord even more fun and easier to use. We’re delivering a new and improved mobile experience, making apps even better, adding more value to Nitro, building opportunities for our incredible external developers, and continuing to deliver on our promise to keep you safe.
Expanding Customization with the Shop
We keep hearing that users love perks that enable them to customize how they show up on Discord. That’s why last month we launched a brand new in-app Shop, giving Nitro members the opportunity to purchase profile accessories, starting with cool new avatar decorations and now profile effects: animations that appear on your profile whenever you or another Discord user previews it.
Nitro members have early access to the Shop and can purchase new, collectible avatar decorations and profile effects. Previously avatar decorations were only available seasonally, but now you can keep them and use them season after season. Soon, the Shop will open up to all users, allowing everyone to browse and deck out their own profiles with decorations and effects. Nitro members will get a sweet discount.
Delivering for Developers on Discord
Supporting our developer community is a huge part of making Discord the best place to have fun with friends. We’ve been committed to being an open platform for developers to build on since the beginning. Today, Discord is home to a vibrant ecosystem of over 750k third-party apps globally — a real testament to the amazing developers building on our platform.
A few weeks ago, we introduced Premium App Subscriptions for developers in the US. We’re excited to announce that this week, we’re extending access to Premium App Subscriptions to eligible developers in the UK and Europe. We plan to continue to expand availability to help developers generate revenue directly on Discord.
For developers, Premium App Subscriptions enables effortless setup, end-to-end transactions, smart SKU management, multiple payment options, and a frictionless user experience.
We're really proud of everything our developer community has built over the years, and we're looking forward to seeing them earn money for delivering an even more customizable experience to their fans.
Apps in More Places for More People
Around 45 million people worldwide are using third party experiences every month to customize having more fun and hanging out together right on Discord. Some of the most popular apps are shared experiences for playing games, watching videos, listening to music, learning new skills, doing trivia, scheduling study sessions, and tons more.
With that popularity in mind, we have been hard at work combining the best parts of bots and Activities to reimagine new ways to make apps even easier to navigate.
In the coming months we’ll be making apps usable in more places. You’ll be able to start, join, and share experiences together anywhere you’re chatting, making it even easier to play with friends on Discord.
Here are a few ways you could see this come to life soon:
New Ways to Launch Apps: We’re exploring ways to let you launch and interact with apps in a simpler, more intuitive manner.
Bringing Activities outside of voice channels: You’ll be able to join, start, and see what Activities are happening directly in your group chat, without needing to hop into voice.
Removing barriers to adding and using bots: Today, apps can only be used in servers after being added by an admin. We’re exploring ways for you to add your apps wherever you’re hanging out on Discord.
While we’re working hard on this, you can find your next favorite app by visiting the App Directory. You can also try out Activities by hopping into a Voice Channel and hitting the rocket ship icon. For developers, we’ll share more details on when some of these new features will be available for early access.
A Safer Experience
As great as all of these amazing updates to Discord are, none of this matters if you don’t feel safe on Discord. Safety continues to be a top commitment for us and we're excited to share more about upcoming features that further protect our users.
Teen Safety Assist
As part of this commitment we are launching Teen Safety Assist, a new initiative to protect teens through a series of proactive filters and alerts, which will be default enabled for teens.
In the coming weeks, we’re excited to begin rolling out the first two features of the initiative around the world:
Safety alerts on senders: When a teen receives a DM from a user for the first time, Discord will detect if a safety alert should be sent to the teen. The safety alert will encourage the recipient to double check if they want to reply, and will provide links to block the user or view more safety tips to safeguard themselves if needed.
Sensitive content filters: For teens, Discord will automatically blur media that may be sensitive in direct messages and group direct messages with friends, as well as in servers. The blur creates an extra step to encourage teens to use caution when viewing the media. This feature will also be available for anyone to opt in.
Stay tuned for many more features from this initiative as we look ahead to the next year!
Warning System
We’ve found that if someone knows exactly how they broke the rules, it gives them a chance to reflect and change their behavior, helping keep Discord safer.
For those who break our platform’s rules, we’reintroducing our new Warning System, which includes multiple touchpoints for users to clearly understand rule violations and the consequences of their actions. These touchpoints provide more transparency into Discord interventions, letting users know how their violation may impact their overall account standing and gives information for them to learn from to be better digital citizens in the future.
It starts with a DM - Users who break the rules will receive an in-app message directly from Discord letting them know they received either a warning or a violation, based on the severity of what happened and whether or not Discord has taken action.
Details are one click away - From that message, users will be guided to a detailed modal that will give details of the post that broke our rules, outline actions taken and/or account restrictions, and more information regarding the specific Discord policy or Community Guideline that was violated.
All info is streamlined in your account standing - In settings, all information about past violations can be seen in the new “Account Standing” tab.
However, some violations are more serious than others, and we’ll take appropriate action depending on the severity of the violation. For example, we have and will continue to have a zero-tolerance policy towards violent extremism and content that sexualizes children.
The new user experience will start to roll out globally next week. Stay tuned on our Safety News Hub for more details.
New & Improved Mobile Experience
We have spent the past year making significant improvements to our mobile experience thanks to your feedback.
Faster Launch Time & Improved Stability
We’ve reduced the time it takes to open our app by 55% on Android and 43% on iOS. The app also downloads less data when launching, syncs new messages in the background and stores more recent messages so you can start chatting faster. We've also reduced the crash rate on Android from 0.49% to 0.26% this year.
Voice Messages
Sending a Voice Message is as easy as pressing a button. When you’re in a Direct Message, Group DM, or server with Voice Messages enabled, you’ll see a microphone icon next to your emoji button. Hold it down, and you’ll instantly start recording your message.
Better Media Uploads
It’s now easier to select multiple pictures and videos to share at once, even high quality ones (up to 25mb for all users). They appear in a nicely-organized grid so users can swipe between uploads while seeing the context of the accompanying message.
We’re continuing to iterate and Discord users will soon see even more improvements to the mobile experience.
New Visual Elements
Updated Themes: We’re releasing a new dark theme called Midnight. It’s pure black and saves battery while going easy on your eyes.
Voice & Video UI: We’re updating UI and interactions for voice and video calls to make the space more cozy for you and your friends.
Icons: We’re giving our in-app icons a refresh, designed to complement the look and feel of our desktop and mobile platforms.
Search & Notifications Functionalities
Rebuilt Search Experience: Want to find that restaurant recommendation or giraffe pic from a few months ago? Soon you can. We’re adding tappable search filters for people, media, links and messages so you can find what you need faster.
Improved Notifications Tab: We’re making notifications actionable and they’ll auto-clear as you read them.
Search Your Settings: Soon, you don't have to waste time scrolling through every single setting to find what you're looking for. Simply type in the search bar and watch the magic happen.
Remix
Speaking of great features coming to our mobile app, an exciting feature we’re debuting this week is Remix! The Remix feature allows users on mobile to remix, create, meme and share with friends. Nitro members are already out there creating memes with this thanks to their early access. We’ve watched you meme all summer and Remix is finally launching to everyone on mobile this week.
Nitro Gets Even Better
We continue to make Nitro better and more fun than ever, adding new perks to help members express themselves and customize their presence on Discord.
This year we’ve shipped more Nitro benefits than ever before — we’re sure you’ve seen at least one in the past month (right? right!). For those who maybe aren’t in the Nitro know, let’s do a quick recap of a couple of the newer additions:
Custom App Icons
Nitro members can now customize their mobile and desktop apps with a Discord icon to match their vibe. They can choose from 19 fresh new styles, including tactical, pastel, prismatic waves and galactic chrome.
Soundboard Entrance Sounds
Are you finding yourself using a specific sound in Soundboard anytime you join a specific voice channel? Nitro members can set a specific sound from any of their servers to automatically play from the Soundboard upon joining the voice call.
And now, Nitro includes early access to some of our most anticipated features.
Early Access
As mentioned above, we began experimenting with early access for Nitro members this summer with Remix. Next up was Nitro early access to the Shop in late September and Clips last week. Clips allows users to capture and share the most exciting gaming and voice channel moments with their friends or community, all without leaving the app.
Eagle-eyed users may have noticed us use the phrase “early access for Nitro” to explain these releases, and now we’re making it official!
Aaaand we’ve made it to the end. Thanks for sticking with us! As we recap some of the awesome new features and updates we’re rolling out to users, it gives us time to reflect on what Discord really is and why we’re doing all of this.
In the simplest form, people come to Discord looking for a fun, low-key, chill experience. That’s why we’re building Discord to be the best place to have fun with friends. We hope you’ll join us and make Discord the best it can possibly be.
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