How to Use the New Discord Overlay (or How to Disable It)
Discord’s overlay is one of its most useful features, and it got a huge overhaul earlier this year. Now you can respond to notifications, watch friends’ broadcasts, and video chat without leaving your game. All of the new features come with a few new twists, so let’s break it down.
If you’re unfamiliar, the Discord overlay is a part of the desktop app that can draw on top of the games you’re playing. Its most common use is to see who’s in and talking in a team chat by displaying small profile icons in the top-left corner of the screen. Due to a change in how the overlay works, you may have noticed that it’s gone or been replaced with a new request to grant overlay permissions.
How does the new Discord overlay work?
The old Discord overlay only worked with some games, and in some cases it took a little fiddling to get it to work properly. The new overlay is rebuilt to work around many of these compatibility issues by drawing the overlay on top of the game you’re playing.
We don’t need to go into detail about how this works, but it means that the new Discord overlay is like another window that sits on top of your game window, much like you would have two browser windows stacked on top of each other.
This means that it’s technically compatible with any game, but there’s just one catch: you’ll have to play in borderless windowed mode. In most cases, this won’t be a problem, but there are a few games — especially graphically intense competitive games like Marvel Rivals — where using fullscreen mode can sometimes give you better performance.
What does the new Discord overlay do?
To access the new Discord overlay, press Shift+` (the key to the left of the 1 key). Here, you’ll see a set of customizable areas with a few different features. The Voice area shows the members of the voice channel you’re in. Notifications will show you any pings you’ve received in text channels, and the Video and Streams areas will display any video calls or streams your friends are making.
You can pin any of these regions so that they are always visible on top of any game you’re playing. Most of them are unpinned by default, with the exception usually of the Voice region, and you can pin or unpin them by clicking on the overlay label and clicking on their purple pin icon.
With the full overlay open, you can drag and drop any of the regions to where you like them, which is handy since I don’t want my friends’ faces covering my killfeed. Each region also has a few settings you can tweak to get the layout you want.
Most importantly, there’s one area you can’t pin: the Discord dashboard. By default, it’s located in the top-middle of the screen. Here, you’ll find controls for muting, muting Discord, turning on your camera, streaming to a channel, and… the sound bar. Try not to abuse this privilege.
What should I do if I can’t see the new Discord overlay?
There’s a good chance you’ve disabled the overlay in the past, or haven’t enabled it at all. If you’re curious and want to give it a try, click the “User Settings” cog in the Discord client, scroll down to Game Overlay, and click Enable Overlay.
The overlay can also be turned off on a per-game basis, so if you still don’t see it, click the arrow to the right of the “Enable overlay” toggle. Below that, you’ll see a list of games you’ve played and a separate toggle next to them. This is called a “per-game override,” and turning off the toggle here will only turn off the overlay for that game, not the entire game.
The per-game override is handy if you only have one or two games you play where you can voice or video chat, but not most other games. For example, I need to talk to my teammates in Overwatch 2 , but I don’t want any distractions while playing Pathologic 3 .
What if I don’t want to see the new Discord overlay?
Not everyone is thrilled with the new Discord overlay. Some people don’t like all the new features; some think the new icons are too small (you can adjust this by clicking the settings cog in the voice area of the overlay). And some people just don’t like change because it’s an unwelcome reminder of the inevitable march of time forward. Relatable.
Despite this, disabling the new overlay is pretty simple. Click the user settings cog in the Discord client, scroll down to “Game Overlay” and toggle off the “Enable Overlay” toggle. That’s it. It should be gone for good. Or at least until another update changes things again.
What if I want to get the old Discord overlay back?
Great news, you can do it too! Well, sort of. Enabling it works the same way as before: click User Settings, scroll down to Game Overlay, and click the toggle for Enable Legacy Overlay. Technically, you can enable both, though it looks like Discord will still default to the new one if you do.
In my experience, the legacy overlay is a bit patchy. In some games, I couldn’t get it to load at all, and it didn’t seem to work very well with the new overlay in some games and the legacy overlay in others. Technically, you can choose overrides on a per-game basis, but it can be tedious to keep track of which overlay is enabled for which game.
Your mileage may vary, but I recommend using the Legacy Overlay option as a compatibility option for games that don’t work well with the new overlay, rather than as a way to hang on to the past. Even if it works well now, the old overlay will likely disappear at some point.