When you text someone on Instagram, WhatsApp, or Facebook, you’ll know when they’ve read your message because they’ll let you know. Some people have good reason to dislike this feature, but it’s very helpful when you need to find out if someone is ignoring you. What about Discord, though?
No, Discord does not show read receipts like many other popular messaging apps and social media sites. Does this mean that there is no way to know if your message has been read or not? Let’s try to find out.
It’s not clear why Discord doesn’t have read receipts when almost every other platform does. Some users think it’s a feeling to deal with social anxiety, like when you see the “read” icon next to your message but don’t get a reply. Or the feeling you get when you open a message you weren’t going to reply to by accident.
Others think that the developers of Discord just weren’t asked about it enough for them to care. After all, adding a new feature costs a lot of time and money, and if users don’t like it, it’s a waste of both. But there are a lot of threads about this issue on Discord’s community forum and on social media, which shows that a lot of users want this feature.
In February 2020, a Twitter user asked the official Discord account, “Would you like to make an icon that shows if you’ve read your message? That would be a useful thing to have.” The Twitter account for Discord replied, “Read receipts are a pretty popular idea!” Make sure to vote for this idea on our feedback page so that our development team doesn’t forget about it!” Let’s hope that the developers haven’t forgotten about this feature request and will add it soon.
Okay, but can you now see if your message on Discord has been read? Sorry, but not directly. And before you run off to look for a read receipt plugin, we have to tell you that we’ve already done that and found nothing. Some users say that adding the read receipt feature is impossible, even though Discord supports a wide range of plugins.
Value the Privacy
But on Discord, you can find out if someone is online and doing things. By default, a green dot next to the user’s avatar shows whether or not they are online. If you see a yellow moon icon with the word “Idle,” that means the user is online but busy at the moment. Lastly, the red “Do Not Disturb” icon means that a user doesn’t want to be bothered right now and won’t get message notifications. Thus, if you’ve messaged someone but their status is “Idle” or “Do Not Disturb,” they likely haven’t read your message.
A user can, however, turn off their online status. In this case, you can still see if someone is typing you a response, but only if you keep your chat window open.
Finding out that the feature you’ve been looking for does not exist can be upsetting. But the official Twitter page for Discord has confirmed that the idea is being thought about. It might only be a matter of time before it’s done. In the meantime, let’s talk about the good things about not having the read receipt feature: less worry and more privacy.
Do you know of any plugins that can turn on read receipts in Discord? Share what you’ve learned in the section below for comments.
