What this article covers:
What are Apps?
Discord Apps add functionality, entertainment, and productivity tools to your servers, direct messages (DMs), and group chats. These apps can range from bots that automate tasks, to commands that give you quick access to useful and fun actions, to Activities that allow you to play games, collaborate on projects, or share experiences with others directly within Discord.
You can find more information on how to use apps on Discord here.
How do apps become available in my server?
Apps in Your Server
The Manage Server permission allows members to add apps to the server, making them available for everyone to use. Apps can be discovered in a number of places, including our App Directory.
You can find more information about adding and using apps here.
You can see a list of apps that have been added to your server by going to Server Settings > Integrations. You can also use the Integrations page to remove an app from your server.
When added to your server, apps are able to access certain data without specific permissions. You can see what data they have access to by navigating to their profile and going to Data Access. You can read more about data access in our article Visibility of Bot Data Access.
External Apps
Some apps are also available to users everywhere on Discord. By adding an app to your account, you can use it in all your servers, DMs, and group chats. These apps can be used in your server, but will not show up in Server Settings > Integrations, as they have not been added to your server.
Because these apps are not installed directly to your server, they don’t have permissions to do anything other than send messages, including attachments and embeds.
How do I moderate apps?
If you’re a server owner or moderator, you may want to moderate how your members use apps in your server. You have several controls at your disposal to set up your server in a way that works best for you and your community:
-
“Use External Apps” permission: control whether your server members can use their own apps.
Note: The “Use External Apps” permission will be rolling out on June 18th, 2024.
- “Use Application Commands” permission: control who can use commands from apps.
- “Use Activities” permission: control who can use Activities.
- Command Permissions: control access to specific app commands from server-installed apps.
- Bot Permissions: control server permissions for apps with bot users.
- AutoMod: block keywords within messages sent by external apps.
To better understand how these permissions interact with each other, we’ve included a helpful chart located near the end of this article.
Use External Apps
Some apps are available to users everywhere on Discord. By adding an app to your account, you can use it in all your servers, DMs, and group chats. You can think of these apps as “external” to your server, compared to ones that have been added by you or your server moderators.
If you do not want members of your server to be able to use external apps, you can manage permissions by updating the “Use External Apps” permission. This permission can be changed for the whole server, specific channels, individual roles, and members.
Disabling the “Use External Apps” permission will prevent external apps from posting publicly on your server. However, these apps can still be used; they will reply privately to the individual through an ephemeral message. This allows other Discord users to keep access to non-intrusive functionality that apps may offer, such as message translations, without being visible to other users.
Navigate to your Server Settings > Roles > Apps Permissions to locate the Use External Apps permission.
Use Application Commands
Commands are quick actions used to interact with apps, and can be accessed in a few ways:
- Launching apps with the Shapes button
- Typing / to see a list of slash commands
- Right-clicking on users and messages
You can use the “Use Application Commands” permission to deny or grant members of your server the ability to use any commands from apps, whether they’re external or added to your server. This permission is available under Server Settings > Roles > Apps Permissions.
Disabling this permission will make commands from server apps completely inaccessible to your server members.
Server members can still use commands from external apps, but these messages will only reply privately to the individual through an ephemeral message.
Use Activities
Activities allow you to enjoy shared experiences, such as games and media, with friends directly on Discord.
Activities can be played inside both voice and text channels by selecting the Activities [] icon or the Apps [
] button.
You can revoke the ability to use activities by disabling the “Use Activities” permission. Disabling this permission restricts activities from being used. Navigate to your Server Settings > Roles > Apps Permissions to locate the “Use Activities” permission.
Learn more information regarding Activities in our Activities on Discord Help Center article.
Command Permissions
Permissions can be controlled for individual commands to give you granular control over apps added to your server. By default, commands from apps in your server are available to every member, in every channel. You may want to limit specific functionality to your members, disallow other commands, or restrict them to members with specific roles.
1. To locate the Command Permissions, head over to your Server Settings > Integrations.
2. While there, select an app that’s been added to your server.
3. Once selected, you can control:
- Which roles and members can use the app
- The channels in which the app can be used
- Individual overrides for each command — where it can be used, and who can use it
Head over to our Command Permissions Help Center article for additional information and examples.
Bot Permissions
Certain apps, when added to your server, may request user permissions to perform specific actions such as:
- Creating and editing channels
- Sending messages, without command inputs
- Connecting to voice channels
- Viewing the Audit Log
When authorizing an app, you will be able to view the permissions needed..
If you ever want to change which permissions an app has within your server, you can go to Server Settings > Roles and search for the name of the app. You will see a role that you can then edit.
AutoMod
Discord’s AutoMod feature allows you to automatically scan, detect, and block unwanted and risky content before it’s ever posted. AutoMod will not scan or flag messages from apps that are installed to your server. It will only flag messages from external apps.
Any actions taken by AutoMod will happen on the user who installed the application and first used it in a server. This means if an application creates a message with buttons, additional messages created from interacting with those buttons will also action against the user who first used the command.
Learn more about AutoMod in our AutoMod FAQ.
Permissions Chart
As a server moderator, you have numerous controls available for moderating apps, securing your server’s safety, and customizing it to your liking. To simplify which permissions you can modify to achieve your desired setup, we’ve included this chart:
| I want members of my server to | Use External Apps | Use Application Commands | Use Activities |
| Use all apps, their commands, and their Activities | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Use commands from external apps and apps in my server, but not their Activities | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Use commands and Activities from apps installed to the server, but not from external apps | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Use commands from server apps, but not external apps, and not use Activities | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Use Activities from server apps, but not external apps, and not use commands from any apps | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Not use apps | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Not use apps (by blocking commands and Activities) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |