The End of An Era: Message Content is now a Privileged Intent

It’s official, as of 31 August 2022, Discord’s message content is now a privileged intent. In this post we’re going to take a look at what this means, the implications it has, and some of the new features it enables for users and developers. Discord has always been about giving users the ability to do more than just chat with each other. They’ve built features like rich media (GIFs, images, videos, etc.), server and user voice chat, and even steroids(Discord Nitro) for your emoji arsenal. These features have been made possible by the hard work of our developers who have spent countless hours making Discord the best it can be.

What is happening? As of 1st September 2022, all message content in Discord will be privileged intent. This means that message content will only be accessible to bots that have explicit user permission to request it.

What are Privileged Intents?

Privileged intents are a new class of intents that give bots explicit permission to request sensitive information from users. The decision to make message content a privileged intent was made to protect our users' privacy and to ensure that only bots that need access to this information are able to request it.

How does this new intent affect me?

If you are not a developer, this change should not have any impact on you. If you currently use a verified app in your server(s), and they have not incorporated application commands, they may not work properly and some apps may not be able to be added to new servers. This should only affect you if you utilize verified apps. While unverified apps have a simple bot badge next to their name, a verified app will have a checkmark bot badge that looks like this one:

What will unverified bot lose access to?

If your bot or app is not approved for message content, the following fields of the message object in Gateway and API payloads will be empty—either an empty string or empty array, depending on the data type—when you receive a message:

• content
• embeds
• attachments
• components

A bot can still send these fields. A bot will also always be able to get this information from:

• Messages the bot sends
• Messages the bot receives in DMs
• Messages in which the bot is mentioned

You will still receive the events and can call the same APIs, and you'll get other data about a message like author and timestamp.

Ways to use Application Commands

1. Command Picker

Switching to application commands from prefix commands simplifies your Discord experience. Rather than typing! or some other prefix, now when you type / every command for all of the apps in the server should appear in an organized list.

2.  Message Context Menu

This is a lesser-known but super convenient method of accessing an app command quickly in a way that feels native to Discord - but it’s customized just for you. Here’s a little breakdown of what this feature is:

Right-clicking on things like channels, categories, and users will bring up what we call a context menu:

Hovering over “Apps” will display any commands. You’ll see the app icon next to them, to help you know which app is doing this task for you and help you make sure you’re using the right one !

TLDR:

• For verified apps (bots that have a checkmark displayed), Slash Commands are the new standard for interacting with them. Huzzah!
• For unverified apps (bots that don't have a checkmark), you may still be using text commands when you interact with them, depending on what the developer prefers.

September 1, 2022 is the final switchover date. This means that, if the developer of one of the apps you’re using has not made the switch yet, parts of the app might not work after that time.

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To know more about this about check the Developer Portal is where you can read the API documentation and create your next app.

That's all for today, hope you enjoyed today's article. Make sure to join our official Discord server to discuss further on this topic or suggest new articles!