According to Cloudwards, Discord has about 150 million active monthly users. Considering that it was 10 million back in 2017, the growth is quite significant.
Back in 2015, the year Discord launched, TeamSpeak and Skype were still the go-to communication software. However, these two applications could not keep up with the demands of a modern consumer, and they were overtaken by Discord, which is backed up by the platforms’ constant growth.
Discord is usually associated with gaming. It provides free voice chat for communicating, a streaming feature to showcase your gameplay to others, and other integrations primarily targeted at gamers.
However, the same publication by Cloudwards suggests that roughly 75% of Discord users are on the platform primarily for non-gaming activities.
Whether you are interested in enriching your gaming experience with Discord as a communication tool or wish to find a community that shares your interests, starting on the platform can feel a bit overwhelming at first.
This article is targeted at less experienced Discord users or first-timers who have just joined the platform. The tips and tricks mentioned below ought to come in handy.
Get the most out of Discord with these 6 tips and tricks for new users. Learn how to Select the Right Notifications, Customize Your Profile, Optimize Voice Chat and use Discord to its full potential. Stay connected and engaged with your friends, communities, and gaming groups with these useful tips.
Select the Right Notifications
If you plan to leave the Discord running in the background all the time, you need to make sure that the platform is not disturbing you too much. Joining too many servers results in a lot of notifications.
You can mute notifications on Mac or MS Windows computers in general to prevent specific applications from sending all notifications, and that includes Discord. However, if you want to keep yourself updated from specific Discord users, servers, and server channels, you will need to tinker with notification settings directly in Discord and mute specific channels/servers.
Format the Text
If you want to emphasize something or quickly change the phrasing in your message by striking through a word, Discord offers these options.
Formatting the text is relatively easy. Highlight the message with your mouse before submitting it, and you will see a pop-up with different formatting options, such as Italics, Bold, Strikethrough, and spoilers.
It is also worth noting that you can format the text manually. A single asterisk (*) before and after the message is for Italics, a double asterisk (**) is for bold, and a tilde (~) is for strikethrough. For spoiler tagging, you will need to use || between in front and after the text.
Finally, Discord lets its users modify the text even after the message has been submitted. Right-click on your message and click the Edit Message button. From here, you can format the text and save the changes after you finish.
Have Fun With Bots
Discord integrations are one of the best things about the platform. Bots add a lot of flair to a server and encourage the members to engage in various activities.
For example, IdleRPG is a bot that lets you play a text-based role-playing game without closing Discord. It can be fun to go on a campaign with fellow server members.
Hydra is a popular music bot. Gather people on voice chat and launch Hydra to play music for everyone who is on the voice channel and has not muted the bot. As far as music goes, you can set up Hydra to have it play from a playlist on Spotify or another music streaming service.
Arcane is another example of a Discord bot that helps with engagement. A server owner can utilize the bot to create an experience leveling system and turn the server into a kind of game.
Then there are bots to help manage the server. MEE6 is commonly used to create automated welcoming messages and guidance for new server members, while Xenon is a bot for backing up a Discord server.
As an inexperienced Discord user, you should not shy away from trying to engage with the bots because these bots enrich your experience. At the same time, you might start your own server, and adding relevant bots to it is part of the management process, which is why you should familiarize yourself with the available bot options early.
Optimize Voice Chat
Even if you are not going to actively participate in a voice chat by talking, there are still a few things you need to be aware of.
For one, if someone’s voice is too low or high, right-click on their name in the voice chat channel and adjust the volume. You can also mute individual users. In case you want to not hear everyone for a bit, use the deafening feature at the left-bottom corner next to your username.
As far as active communication goes, setting up a push-to-talk button is a worthwhile consideration if you don’t want to bother others with an open microphone. You should also be careful about your microphone’s volume. Test it directly on Discord to find a suitable setup.
Customize Your Profile
Profile customization makes you stand out from other users. Start with picking your display name (which is a separate thing from the username that you picked while creating the Discord account).
Click on the cog at the bottom-left to access User Settings. Go to Profiles, a second tab from the top. Here, you will see the User Profile and Server Profiles. Pick the latter option to modify your display name. You will find that the option to change the display name for individual Discord servers is also there.
In case you want to use a custom font for your display name, use a font generator. You can make your name look like 𝔇𝔦𝔰𝔠𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔢 or 𝓓𝓲𝓼𝓬𝓸𝓻𝓭 𝓷𝓪𝓶𝓮, for example.
Other than the display name, you can customize your profile by creating an About Me section. A profile banner and a profile picture are also there. The latter can be a GIF rather than a static image, though you will need to become a Nitro subscriber for that.
Try Nitro
Nitro is Discord’s way to make money while offering users certain perks. Right now, there are two Nitro plans available. One is for 3 dollars a month, and one is for 10 dollars a month.
The basic model increases your file upload limit by 50MB and enables custom emojis anywhere on Discord. The premium plan increases the upload limit by 500MB and includes HD streaming as well as 2 server boosts in addition to the basic plan perks.
For the most part, Nitro users subscribe to the feature because they want to use custom emojis anywhere rather than just the server where the emojis are available. HD streaming and other perks come in useful as well, but they are usually not a priority.
If you have the money to spare and want to support the platform, Nitro is a nice way to do that since you are also getting valuable perks in return.
