This fall, things around the Discord desktop app are starting to feel like a fresh fall breeze! Making new emoji is getting faster to help you get straight to lovingly spamming a new emoji creation in chat, and a cornucopia of desktop improvements, including a redesigned Settings page, some big-name PC games integrating Discord into them, and Family Center updates for guardians. 

Emoji Making, Now Easy as :Pie:

If you’ve ever used Discord at any point, you know how important making your own emoji and posting them everywhere is. They’re used to add your favorite memes and inside jokes to your posts, or as a way to show off your artistic side by creating an entire set of unique emoji for your friends to use! ✨

Obtaining them is usually the easy part. Uploading them used to be the “strangely harder-than-expected” part, but that’s about to get WAY easier. The next time you’re thinking to yourself, “wait… I got a good idea for another cursed Sunfish emoji,” you’ll see an “Add Emoji” button in your emoji picker, like the one below. ⬇️

Click on that button and upload the image or GIF you wanna add as an emoji, and a brand new emoji editing tool will appear! This new modal will let you crop or rotate your emoji before uploading it, without leaving chat. 

On the right, you’ll see a preview of what your emoji will look like when it’s posted and as a reaction, plus a quick way to give the emoji a new :name: and the option to choose which server you want to upload it to. You’ll only see servers listed that you have the proper permissions to “Upload Emoji” to, so there’s little chance of accidentally adding it to a random server (unless you’re a mod for like, 100 servers, in which case, that’s on you). 

The best part? You no longer have to resize your emojis in a separate photo editing app before uploading. Gone are the days of “Uhhh… make sure the emoji is 128x128 resolution, PNG file type, file size is unde-” Stop that. You don’t have to worry about all that nonsense anymore. Just go upload it!

Visit 👉 this article 👈to learn all the details on uploading emojis. 

Set the Subject for the Group DM Before Pulling Everyone In

Group DMs are a great way to quickly bring a small group of friends together for a pick-up game or just have a simpler way to talk without having to set up a server and fiddle with Roles and Permissions. 

Now, when you start up a new Group DM, you’ll be able to give it a name and icon before fully creating it. No more having to name the GDM after you’ve already added six other people who have been spamming “WHY AM I HERE HEL- oh, it’s game night again, my bad.” 

Redesigned Settings on Desktop

Throughout the coming months, the Settings page will undergo a light spring cleaning and reorganization so it visually matches the rest of Discord and is easier to navigate. (Marketing calls it more intuitive.) It’s now in a fancy floating window, like other menus throughout Discord, and some settings have been moved to better-suited categories. 

That does mean that a few options may have scooted away from where you’re used to seeing them, but don’t fret too much: the Settings search bar is still available at the top of the Settings directory if you wanna zip straight to the option you’re looking for. It’ll even narrow down the Settings directory options on the left to show you where it’s at for next time. 

Discord, But DIRECTLY IN Your Favorite Multiplayer Games

What’s Discord without the reason why Discord exists in the first place: the games. Having the entire squad in the same voice call to give each other pointers, or just talk about something completely unrelated to the game as you spend time with your buddies, is what makes Discord special to so many out there. 

Recently, some of the most popular multiplayer games you’re likely playing with your friends have been integrating Discord, letting you link your account directly to the game! But what’s that mean, exactly? Well, depending on the game, this can give you access to some slick new Discord-powered capabilities, including:

• Seeing your Discord friends on your in-game friends list, and inviting them to your game with just a click from within the game. 
• Messaging your Discord friends using in-game chat. They can reply back in Discord, and you’ll see it as an in-game message!  
• Showing off more details about what you’re playing as your status, whether you’re pushing the objective or messing around in a casual game mode. 

‍Marvel Rivals is one of the latest games to take advantage of these slick new features! After you link your Discord account to Marvel Rivals, you’ll be able to message your Discord friends using Marvel Rivals’ in-game chat, letting you quickly chat without having to take your eyes off the fight brewing in front of you. It’s basically cross-multiverse comms.

You’ll also be able to see your Discord Friends list directly in Marvel Rivals, and invite them to your Marvel Rivals lobby with just a click! 

More and more games are adding Discord features just like these, including Battlefield 6 and SUPERVIVE. And if you’ve got questions about the finer details of how it all works, check out our Help Center!

Updated Family Center

For the cool parents and guardians reading this blog post, we’re rolling out new Family Center features over the next week to help guardians understand and play a more active role in their teens’ online experiences. 

If you have a teen using Discord that you’d like to help make safe and responsible choices online, check out our Safety Center article detailing all of our Family Center updates. 

All of these shiny new things? They’re all available to try out on the desktop app right now. Use the fancier Search powers on the top-right of the client, go upload some new emoji and see how easy it is, or invite your Discord friends to queue up and play the latest Marvel Rivals season, directly in the game. 

These aren’t the only things we’re updating… we post everything we’ve fixed lately in our monthly Patch Notes series, and bigger updates (like this one!) get shared in our in-app Changelog. 

And if there’s something you’d like to see updated or added in the future, let us know! You can always find us over on X, TikTok, and Instagram. Don’t forget our Feedback Center…