Discord is a social platform that has taken the world by storm. It was previously thought up as just a simple tool for communicating with in-game party members; However, the social platform has exploded into the mainstream market and has drawn all sorts of users to it due to its ease of use and rich feature set. Content creators, especially, have found the platform to be an excellent venue for hosting communities, sharing content, and so much more. It combines the best features of old-school forums and other platforms like Skype and TeamSpeak with the features like the ability to share gameplay, has many different audio/video chats, and different boards for a wide variety of topics.
It’s a free tool that makes organizing different chats that can range from professional to simply groups of friends a breeze. Keeping that information is a must, and doing so has not always been an easy task. Streamers and chatters never want to leak their private messages, links, or files. Discord launched their Streamer Mode to protect their users, which hides private information and mutes notifications while streaming or recording software such as OBS (Open Broadcast Studio) is running. This guide will go over what the tool is, how to use it, and what sort of software it will work seamlessly with.
What Is Discord’s Streamer Mode and What Does it Do?
Discord’s Streamer Mode does more than something as simple as, say, blacking out the app and making it invisible. The purpose of Streamer Mode is to still be able to safely use and interact with the app while broadcasting or recording video on your computer. Discord’s Streamer Mode hides or censors certain bits of information that could be deemed personal or private for you as well as anyone on the server.
The first thing that this mode does is silence all notifications or popups from the app. You won’t see member messages pop up or get any sort of live notifications for individuals joining a server you are in. This is key because we have all seen streamers get targeted by users trying to get them banned or in some sort of trouble. Not seeing messages or getting pop-up notifications means that any NSFW content or names won’t be shown. Since notifications are off, streamers won’t have to worry about dings or sounds breaking up the flow of their content.
Those who do use Discord while streaming will be able to rest assured that their sensitive information will be hidden while in the application. Email addresses and any sort of linked accounts will not populate while in Streamer Mode. It also anonymizes all users in servers you show by getting rid of the tag that follows their username.
How to Enable Discord’s Streamer Mode
Most users and streamers will not have to do anything complex or special to enable Streamer Mode. The most common and widely-used recording/broadcasting software OBS will automatically ask to connect to your Discord application after it has been downloaded. Allowing this will enable Streamer Mode automatically every time that a user opens OBS while Discord is active. The same is true for XSplit, which will also seamlessly integrate with Discord.
For other applications and software, the process is still simple:
1 – Go into your Discord and navigate to the server you’d like to integrate with your streaming software of choice. Hit the drop-down menu in the upper left and click on the gear icon to get taken to the server settings page.
2 – Go to the tab that is labeled “integration” and click on it.
3 – The software that’s running will populate here. Click on the platform that you want to sync with discord and check the “Sync” box next to it.
Users looking to manually control exactly when Streamer Mode enables or those who wish to fine-tune what it hides and shows can find it under “User Settings.” To get there, simply click on the gear icon in the bottom-left next to your icon and scroll down to the bottom of “App Settings” until you see the tab for Streamer Moder. From there, users can choose to turn Streamer Mode on as well as change some aspects of the mode like if notifications are muted or played. Users can toggle the auto-enable/disable button if they don’t want to worry about turning this mode on manually every time.
Conclusion
Discord’s Streaming Mode is a simple yet robust tool that anyone streaming or recording while using Discord should consider using. Having it active means that you will no longer have to worry about leaking sensitive information or details through the application. That peace of mind makes this feature a must-use for streamers and content creators.