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Chat & messages

There are two kinds of conversation on DFOS: chat inside a space, and direct messages between people.

Chat in a space​

Every space comes with chat, organized into rooms that admins set up. Rooms are part of the space, so who can read and speak in them follows the space's permissions — most rooms are simply open to all members.

What chat can do:

  • Threads. Any message can become a thread — reply to it and the conversation branches off without flooding the room. The thread opens in a panel beside the room, and you can drag its edge to make it wider or narrower. A thread reply can optionally be sent to the main room too.
  • Reactions and mentions. React to messages with any emoji, and @-mention people to get their attention — the people most relevant to the room are suggested first.
  • Mentioning a whole group. In a room that belongs to a group, the group's owners and admins and the space's admins can type @group to notify every member of that group at once. For anyone else, the mention shows up but notifies no one.
  • Pinning a message. Admins can pin one message per room, shown at the top.
  • Pinning a room for yourself. Pin the rooms you actually use and they sit in their own section at the top of your list, in an order you set by moving them up and down. It's private — nobody else sees your pins, and it's separate from the order admins set for everyone.
  • Back where you left off. Chat reopens on the last room you had open, on that device.
  • Editing and deleting. You can edit your own messages. Deleting a message — yours, or by an admin in space chat — removes it from the conversation for everyone, without leaving a marker.
  • Enter sends. In a chat room, Enter sends your message and Shift+Enter starts a new line. Direct messages work the other way — Cmd/Ctrl+Enter sends — unless you turn on Enter key sends message in Settings, which extends Enter-to-send to DMs as well. On phones and tablets, Return always starts a new line.
  • Paste an image to attach it. Cmd/Ctrl+V with an image on your clipboard — a screenshot, an image copied from a page — attaches it to whatever you're writing: a room, a thread, or a direct message.
  • New posts announce themselves. A topic can carry a post feed and a chat room at once. When it does, publishing a post drops a card in that room — the post's title, its upvote and comment counts, and both controls right there — so the room's timeline carries what the space is publishing alongside what people are saying. A new card doesn't mark the room unread.

Disappearing messages​

A space can turn on disappearing chat: messages older than a chosen window (from an hour up to 90 days) are permanently deleted, in every room of that space. It's a space-wide setting, admins choose it, and the deletion is real — not hidden, gone. Every member can see the current setting in the space's menu. Direct messages are never affected by a space's disappearing setting.

Direct messages​

Direct messages are between you and the people in the conversation — one-on-one, or a group of up to 25. They aren't tied to any space, and no space admin can see them — a DM is only ever readable by its participants.

How they behave:

  • Anyone can message you by default. If you'd rather not, there's a privacy setting that limits new messages to people you share a space with or people you follow. It only affects new conversations — existing ones keep working.
  • Group conversations need at least three people. Anyone in one can add more people or leave; group chats don't have custom names.
  • Cleaning up. You can archive a conversation to tuck it away — it comes back if the other person writes again. In DMs, only the author can delete a message.

All your conversations live in one inbox, across every space, with threads of their own.