10 Life Hacks Every Discord User Should Know

Discord is one of those apps that helped kill the good old internet forums. If you search hard enough, you can find a Discord server for almost any niche hobby, online course, or fandom. I’d known about it for a while, but I only joined Discord after finding a server for my favorite iPhone game ( Imbroglio , by Michael Brow), which is arguably the most niche of them all. Thanks to the advice of the kind people on that server, I was able to beat this incredibly difficult roguelike with all 16 characters.

Since then, I’ve been using Discord regularly to discuss many of my hobbies and interests, including, but not limited to, motorsports, gaming, fountain pens, and learning Japanese. Along the way, I’ve discovered several tips and tricks that make using Discord more convenient, and I’ve compiled the best of them below.

Use this setting to prevent Discord from sharing your data to serve ads.

Like any free service, Discord displays ads to make money. By default, it uses your Discord activity to personalize some of these ads, and you can disable this feature to protect your privacy. Click the gear icon in the Discord app to open Settings. Go to “Data & Privacy” > “How Discord Uses Your Data” and disable “Use my Discord activity to personalize sponsored content.” This will also automatically disable the setting just below it, “Use third-party data to personalize sponsored content.” Both of these settings prevent Discord from using your data to display ads. While you’re at it, disable “Use data to improve Discord” and “Use data to personalize my Discord experience.” Both settings are on the same Settings page.

Block Discord to prevent users from recording your voice.

Discord has a “Clips” feature that allows you to record short snippets of voice messages. It’s like recording a funny moment from a group call that you can share on social media. Streamers use this to promote their channel with short clips, which is much easier to do on social media than promoting hours-long streams.

If you’re a member of a Discord voice channel, you can ask the app to mute your voice in these clips so that even if someone else records the clip, it won’t include your voice. To do this, go to Discord Settings > Data & Privacy > How Discord Uses Your Data and disable “Allow recording of my voice in clips.”

Prevent Discord from announcing profile updates.

When you make changes to your Discord profile, the app sends push notifications to your friends. This is fine if you and your friends don’t mind, but I personally don’t like receiving or sending such notifications. If you share this opinion, you can disable this feature by going to Discord Settings > Data & Privacy > Profile Privacy and disabling the “Share when profile updates” option .

Get Discord Nitro for free

Discord Nitro is a paid add-on service that adds several features to the app. Nitro Basic costs $3 per month and allows file uploads up to 50 MB. The premium version, called Nitro, costs $10 per month. For this price, you get file uploads up to 500 MB, HD video streaming, and a few other features. Most users won’t need all of these features, but if you’re an active Discord user, you’ll likely find something useful in this subscription. However, before you start paying, there are a few ways to get Discord Nitro for free, at least for a couple of months:

1. Check for promotions on Discord . Sometimes Discord offers Nitro trials for two weeks or a month. Keep an eye out for promotions in the Discord app or on social media.

2. Try taking advantage of promotions from other companies . Many companies, such as Sony, Microsoft, and the Epic Games Store, periodically offer free Discord Nitro. You can check this Discord support page to see what offers are available. You may need to make a qualifying purchase on a third-party website to get free Nitro.

3. Participate in Nitro giveaways . Some Discord servers may host Nitro giveaways, which are an easy way to get free Nitro. Even if servers don’t have giveaways, generous members often give away Nitro subscriptions on popular servers. If you’re a productive member of a suitable server, you can earn free Nitro for a short period.

Use this hidden shortcut to see all Discord keyboard shortcuts at once.

Discord’s interface is, frankly, overwhelming. It feels overly complex and difficult to use unless you’ve memorized a ton of keyboard shortcuts. You can navigate it with a mouse, but everything seems to require one more click than necessary, and useful features are hard to find quickly or buried under layers of menus.

Luckily, Discord makes it easy to find your favorite keyboard shortcuts—it has a cheat sheet. On Windows, when launching Discord, press Ctrl-/ (slash) to open the cheat sheet. On Mac, it’s Command-/ . The shortcuts are neatly grouped by type and presented in an easy-to-remember format. Give it a try, and you’ll instantly improve your Discord skills. (I often use Ctrl-Shift-M to mute or unmute my microphone, Ctrl-K to quickly switch between conversations, and Ctrl-Alt-up/down arrow to switch between servers.)

Use the keyboard shortcut to view a list of all Discord chat commands.

If you’re old enough to remember IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers, you’re probably familiar with chat commands for expressing a thought, adding a shrug, and so on. Apps like Discord have carried some of these commands into the modern era, and you can use quite a few of them within the app. Starting your Discord message with the /spoiler command marks it as a spoiler, hiding the content until someone clicks on it. This is great when you’re discussing plot points from books, movies, or games and don’t want to spoil them for others. Similarly, you can try the /shrug, /sticker, /tableflip, and other commands.

A full list of chat commands can be found by typing a forward slash (/) in the text field; Discord will also explain what these commands do. I regularly use this to search for stickers, GIFs, and add spoiler tags. You can also use Markdown keyboard shortcuts to format messages in Discord. The company has a detailed support page explaining Markdown commands and how you can use them to quickly add bulleted and numbered lists, bold, italics, headings, and code blocks to your messages.

Use bots to automate your Discord server: send reminders, organize co-op games, and much more.

Discord allows you to add bots to your server, which are great for automation. If you’re hosting a garage sale, a workshop, or a video watch party, you can set up bots to send reminders to participants. Other bots let you play music for server members to listen to together, play games on the server, and even use AI services without leaving Discord. MEE6 is a highly customizable bot that can perform several automation tasks for you, but that’s just one of many options. (More information can be found in the Discord bot list .) If you have some programming skills, you can also follow Discord’s guide to creating your own bot . While adding a few bots to your servers is great, I don’t recommend adding too many—they will create unwanted alerts and clutter your server.

Use this app to watch YouTube with your friends on Discord.

Discord has a variety of apps for watching videos, listening to music, or playing games together. I really like Watch Together , which lets you watch YouTube videos with friends. You can add it by clicking on your server name at the top and selecting “App Directory,” where you’ll find Watch Together in the list of recommended apps. Once added to your server, open any channel, select the apps button in the text field, and choose Watch Together . You’ll now see a YouTube feed, and you can use the search bar to add videos you want to watch together.

Create your own server to use your own Discord emojis for free.

Using custom emoji on Discord typically requires a paid Nitro subscription. However, you can create your own server for free and use custom emoji there without paying. The catch is that you won’t be able to import these custom emoji for use on other servers. To get started, create a server in Discord . Simply click the “+” button in the left panel of the app, select “Create Your Own,” and follow the on-screen instructions. Once your server is running, click the server name at the top of the screen, select “Server Settings” > “Emoji.” Click the “Upload Emoji” button, and you’ll be able to download transparent PNG files to get started. You can add up to 50 custom emoji and another 50 animated emoji for free.

Entertain yourself with these Discord Easter eggs.

Discord has plenty of Easter eggs worth checking out if you appreciate apps that create a sense of fun . There are quite a few gaming references, making it especially interesting for gamers. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Discord Discord Revolution : Press Ctrl-/ to view a keyboard shortcut cheat sheet. Press any arrow key, Enter/Return, or space to hear different notes. This is a reference to the game Dance Dance Revolution .

2. Street Fighter Animation: Open Discord on your computer and press Ctrl-/ to open the keyboard shortcuts cheat sheet. Now press the following key combination: H, H, right arrow, N, K. You’ll see the “Raging Demon” animation from the Street Fighter game “Akuma.”

3. Lo-fi beats featuring Wampus : Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-W to listen to lo-fi beats featuring Discord’s mascot, Wampus.

4. Discord: Tap the Discord app icon in the top left corner 16 times to hear an audio recording of the word “Discordo”.

5. Copy shortcut: Click your username in the lower left corner of the Discord app. In the pop-up window, click the “Copy” button next to your username, and the message “Copied!” will appear. Repeat this several times, and you’ll see a new message each time. The final message will be “Beyond Godlike.”

You’ll find many more Discord Easter eggs on this Fandom page .

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