Like the old IRC chat, Discord has a set of slash commands that you can use to express yourself or do useful things, such as GIF search or reading aloud. What’s more, you can add bots to your Discord server to get even more functions from the server. Here are the most useful chat commands and bots for Discord.
As with IRC or Slack, Discords servers use slash commands to run tasks or interact with bots. To use the slash command, start by typing / then type the command and press enter. Some commands may take additional arguments, such as search terms, to do cool things. Out of the box, here are some useful commands that Discord can already use:
- / giphy [search password]: Use this command to find animated GIF files. The first few results will appear just above your chat. Click the image you want and press Enter to send it to the chat room. If you don’t find the right GIF, you can use / tenor to search another service and may get a different set of results.
- / nick [new nickname]: This command changes the display name when it appears on the server. Enter the nickname you want to replace the old one and press Enter.
- / tts [message]: Discord is designed to allow users to switch to voice calls whenever they want, but not everyone has a microphone. This command allows users to send messages that will be read aloud to all users on a channel using text-to-speech. And yes, it has huge potential for abuse, so server administrators can disable it.
- / tableflip, / unflip and / shrug: Some default Discord commands are not as practical as they are fun. The / tableflip command will paste the file emoji in the channel The / unflip command will share, and the shrug will be put in the channel.
These are some basic helpful commands, but if you run your own server or want to have more fun, you can add bots to your server. Bots can join your channel and sit on the user list until you call them using slash commands. To show you how to use bots, we’ll look at a really powerful bot called Dyno. Dyno was designed to help moderate servers, classifieds, reminders, and can even perform Google searches or find music on YouTube.
First, invite the Dyno bot to your server. To do this, go to this link and click Invite Dyno in the upper left corner of the screen.
You must log in if you are not already logged in to your browser.
Then you will see a screen similar to the one below. First select the server to which you want to invite your bot. Then you can approve or reject the permissions you want to give the bot on this server. You can forbid bots later if they break or discover that they are malicious, but it’s also a good idea to give valid bots permission that you trust first. When done, scroll down and click Authorize.
Eventually Discord will ask you to confirm that you are not alone. Because bots using bots would be quite rough.
Shortly after you invite the bot, you’ll receive a message similar to the one telling you how to use it. Does it use Dyno by default? to run commands instead of / (probably to avoid conflicts with other bots or commands), but you can change the settings by going to Dyno, clicking your server in the drop-down menu in the upper right corner and changing the “Command prefix“.
Now that your Dyno bot is set up, here are some useful commands to use with it:
- ? ban [user] [limit] [reason]: This command allows moderators to block users from the server. Optionally, you can set a ban on blanking after a specific time. They will receive a message with what you put in the final argument.
- ? softban [user] [reason]: This command will block and immediately unblock the user. This results in the deletion of all messages from the server, as well as a quick kick in the pants if needed. However, if you do not want to get rid of every message they have ever sent, you should consider putting in a regular ban or kick instead.
- ? kick [user] [reason]: This causes the user to be deleted from the server. Unlike bans, the user can immediately return to the channel if they receive another invitation.
- ? mute [user] [minutes] [reason]: This will mute the user so that they cannot speak. Add time limit to mute has expired. Can you also unmute using the command? Unmute.
- ? addrole [name] [hexadecimal color] [hoist]: Discord uses a function called roles to distinguish user groups from each other. Some roles may be moderators or have special permissions, while other roles are simply used to distinguish between two groups of regular users (such as Overwatch vs. Paladins or Caught Up vs. Catching Up players on the Game of Thrones discussion server). This command allows you to create new roles on the server.
- ? delrole [role name]: This command allows you to remove a role from the server and takes this role to everyone who had it.
- ? role [user] [role name]: This allows you to assign a role to a specific user.
- ? play [url]: This command allows you to add songs to the playlist you hear in the voice channel. Each new play command will add this song to the playlist. You can add direct links to videos on YouTube or search for a password, and Dyno will automatically select the song to add to the queue.
- ? queue list: This will tell you which songs are currently in the music queue.
- ? google [search string]: Enter this command along with the search string and Dyno will share the link to the first result on Google. I hope you’re lucky.
These are just a few of the most useful commands, but you can check out the other Dyno commands here. There are many really powerful server management or fun tools, even if you are a regular user.
You can add as many bots to your server as you want to continue adding new commands. To find new bots, you can visit sites such as DiscordBots.org or Carbonitex.net. Both sites have catalogs of tons of specialized bots. For example, there is a bot to manage Trello cards, access Overwatch statistics, or search songs on Spotify. Some of the bots may be junk or joke bots, but there are many useful ones. If you can’t find the tools you need between Discord’s built-in commands and general purpose bots such as Dyno, look for more bots added to the server to do what you need.
