Friends? Friends are great. Communities too. Things can get a little sticky when you get big bunches of friends and bigger communities, and some less-than-savory types join the fray. Luckily, we've been ramping up Discord's privacy settings to give you some control and up your hater-blocking game.
What this article covers:
- Blocking Direct Messages
- Blocking Users - Desktop Instructions
- On Friend Requests
- Allowed Friend Requests
Blocking Direct Messages
The first part of privacy settings is the Privacy & Safety Settings menu. Select the gear icon [] near your profile to find the tab within your settings.
Here you have various settings for sensitive media, DM spam filtering, server privacy default settings and more.
In the server privacy default section:
- You might only want certain people to contact you. By default, whenever you’re in a server with someone else, they can send you a direct message (DM).
- You can toggle off the Allow direct messages from server members setting to block DMs from users in your servers who aren’t on your friends list. When you toggle this setting off, you will be prompted to choose if you would like to apply this change to all of your existing servers. If you select "No" you’ll need to adjust your DM settings individually for each server that you have joined prior to toggling this setting off.
Blocking Users - Desktop Instructions
In the case that you generally like everyone in a server (except for a few individuals), the DM list has a quick-access menu to a user's profile!
In your DM chat, selecting the @Username will bring up the user's profile! You can press the three dots in the top right to pull up a menu that will let you block the user.
On Friend Requests
Last stop on the damage control tour of Discord's settings is adjusting friend request privileges. To find this menu, open up your User Settings and select the Friend Requests tab.
Allowed Friend Requests
Here you can set who's allowed to send you a friend request
Everyone: Selecting Everyone means that anyone who knows your Discord username or is in a mutual server with you can send you a request. Having this selected will automatically include both Friends of Friends and Server Members options.
Friends of Friends: Selecting this means that for anyone to add you, they must have at least one mutual friend with you. You can view this in their user profile by pressing the Mutual Friends tab next to the Mutual Servers tab:
Server Members: Selecting server members means users who share a server with you can send you a friend request. Deselecting this means that you can only be added by someone with mutual friends as you.