Welcome to the dawn of a new era for the Discord overlay. We can call this the Awesomozoic Era. No dinosaurs here. Instead, we have some awesome updates for the overlay released a couple days ago as well as a preview of some more updates to come.
We’ve got pictures for all these things, so please leave if you hate pictures.
What’s Already Available?
Overlay Performance Boost
We know how unreliable the Discord overlay has historically been. We understand how annoying that can be (we use it too!), so we’ve invested heavily in improving overlay performance. We’ve managed to get our overlay success rate up a lot. So basically, it should work most of the time instead of not working.
Furthermore, we’ve squashed some bugs like your mouse sticking on screen, pink screen of death, and render failures after alt-tabbing.
A Hot New Look
We’ve finessed our overlay to look more like the app. This redesign also gives us more room to expand and flex the overlay into the future.
Anyway, now you’ll see mute and deafen icons next to the voice indicators on the overlay. You can also move the voice indicators anywhere on your game screen now. The rectangle is freeeeee!!!
What’s Coming Later
Our longterm vision for the overlay is to make using Discord in game as convenient as possible. We’re aiming for a 647% increase in convenience. You should basically never have to alt-tab if you don’t want to.
The overlay should always be there for you and always listen to you when you’re sad and lonely at night. The overlay should be your best friend and sing you lullabies when you can’t fall asleep.
As we said earlier, the redesign is a major first step in letting us expand the functionality of the overlay over time. You’ll soon see some sick new features like…
- Support for more notification types
- Customizable notifications (what kind and where on screen)
- Adjustable audio settings
- Full support for calls
- Text Chat
- TEXT CHAAAAAAT
- T.E.X.T C.H.A.T.
- TEE EE EX TEE CEE AECH AY TEE
Plot twist — you’ll even be able to pin text chat over the game so you can keep track of any Discord chatter while you’re running in circles around Dalaran or jumping out of the battle bus. The chat can be cozy or compact style.
Lastly, below you can see a shot of the home bar we’re cookin’ up. The home bar is sort of the master control panel to access all the future goodness that the overlay has to offer… like the Rich Presence game invite feature you also see below! Games with Rich Presence integration will allow you to invite and start parties directly through the Discord overlay.
That’s all the pictures the design team let me have. Next time, I’ll bribe them with some salmon jerky to get more.
The designs and features here are subject to change because you’re not my boss and we can do what we want, but also because we like to treat projects like this as living and breathing so we can nurture them to the best of what they can be. As always, hit us up with your feedback through Twitter or drop some ideas on our feedback site.
Anyway, if you hit any speed bumps or just aren’t sure how to set up the overlay, check out our help article here.
Cheers to convenience!
