Discord is a popular application among online gamers which allows them to communicate over voice, video, and text. However, it is also useful for you if you’re a part of a college group, a worldwide art community, etc.

Discord is a free cross-platform app used to create and join servers, channels, or chatrooms to interact with groups. Many in the gaming community are replacing Skype and Facebook Messenger with the Discord app.

In Discord, there are 13 server-level permissions, 9 text permissions, and 8 voice permissions. These permissions come with binary options through which you can generate 536,870,912 combinations of permissions.

For instance, server-level permissions give you the ability to provide administrator-level privileges. With the text permissions, you can allow the user to send or manage messages. Lastly, the voice permissions give you the ability to allow the user as a priority speaker.

Assigning specific permission to an individual person can be a tedious task. But, it’s impossible to assign permission to each individual when there are thousands of users on a server.

In this article, we will discuss how to add, manage, and delete roles in Discord.

Discord Roles

In Discord, a role is defined as a set of permissions given to the user with a name. In the beginning, “@everyone” role is given to the user by default, which enables users with basic permissions such as read and sends messages.

A server administrator can assign the role of “Moderator” to the user that would add the ability to mute or ban other users. You can create and modify as many roles as you want on the server.

Before we move forward to adding or modifying the roles, first, you have to understand each permission.

Discord Permissions

You can skip this section if you already know about the permissions. But, if you’re new to Discord, then you need to know about each permission so that you can assign roles to each user correctly.

Discord has a total of 30 permissions that are briefly divided into General, Text, and Voice permissions. Now, we will look at all the permissions one-by-one.

General Permissions

Administrator – Users with administrator permission have every permission on the server and can bypass channel specific permissions also. This is the most dangerous permission to grant as users can even delete the server.

View Audit Log – Users can view the server’s audit logs with this permission. Audit log shows all server activities such as what admin or moderator doing, i.e, banning users, changing permissions, etc. Users with the audit log permission will also be able to see if other users have updated their names.

Manage Server – A server-level permission that allows the user to change the server’s name or move the server to a different region.

Manage Roles – Allowing this permission enables users to create new roles and edit or delete roles that don’t have this permission.

Manage Channels – Allowing this permission enables users to create new channels and edit or delete the existing ones.

Kick Members – A Moderator has the ability to kick off users from the server. Although, a kicked off user can join the server again with a new invite.

Ban Members – This permission also comes under the Moderator role. Unlike ‘Kick Members’ permission, a user cannot join the server again once getting banned.

Create Invite – If the server is public, then you can give this permission to every role so that they can invite other users to the server.

Change Nicknames – A basic permission with which users can change their own nickname.

Manage Nickname – A permission with which users can change the nickname of another user.

Manage Emojis – Users can add or remove emojis from the server.

Manage Webhooks – With this permission, users can create, edit, and delete webhooks. To create webhooks, go to Channel Settings > Webhooks > Create Webhook.

Read Text Channels & See Voice Channels – This permission allows users to read messages and see all voice channels.

Text Permissions

Send Messages – This permission allows every role to send messages on the text chat. If you disable this permission, then the users will not be able to send messages.

Send TTS Messages – TTS stands for text-to-speech messages. Users can send text-to-speech messages by starting a message with /tts. The message can be heard by everyone focused on the channel.

Manage Messages – Allowing this permission will help users to delete or pin messages sent by others.

Embed Links – Users will be able to embed links in a chat. By default, users cannot send any links over a chat, so this permission needs to be enabled.

Attach Files – Users will be able to send files in a chat. Generally, this permission is enabled for Admin and Moderator only.

Read Message History – A basic permission with which users can check and read previous messages.

Mention @everyone, @here, and All Roles – With this permission, users can ping all other users in the channel.

Use External Emojis – Users can use emojis from other servers as well.

Add Reactions – Users will be able to add new reactions to a message. However, users can still react using reactions that are already added to the messages without this permission.

Voice Reactions

Connect – Users can connect to the voice channel.

Speak – Without this permission, users will be unable to speak over voice channels.

Mute Members – A Moderator role permissions through which users can turn off other users’ ability to speak on the voice channel.

Deafen Members – A Moderator role permissions through which users can turn off other users’ ability to hear.

Move Members – This permission allows users to drag other users from one channel to another. The movement will only take place between the users if they have access to other channels.

 Use Voice Activity – The permission grants access to the users to speak without using Push-to-talk.

Priority Speaker – Users with this permission can be heard more easily while talking as the other users’ volume gets lowered automatically.

Go Live – Users can live stream into the server.

How to Add Roles in Discord

Before inviting users to your server, it’s better to first set up Discord Roles which will help you to manage users on Discord Server. As we have discussed all the permissions in the above section, it would be easy for you to assign a role according to the type of user.

To add a role in your Discord Server, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Open Discord app on your desktop or browser and log in to access your server.

Step 2: Click on the small drop-down arrow on the right side of your server’s name. Then, select the “Server Settings” from the menu.

Step 3: From the left-side menu, click on “Roles” and you’ll see a single role “@everyone” already created.

Step 4: Now, to add a new roll, click on the small ‘+’ icon to the right of “ROLES”.

Step 5: Enter a name to the new role and assign a specific color (colors play an important part as they used to define users about the roles of other users).

Step 6: Lastly, review all the permissions from General, Text, and Voice permissions. Enable the permissions that you want to associate with that role.

Click on “Save Changes”.

Repeat the above steps for each new role. Assign different permission levels to different roles to manage your server like a pro.

After creating all the roles, it’s time to assign those roles to the user. And, you can assign a role to a user as follows.

Step 1: Go to the server, and select the user you want to assign a role from the right-hand panel.

Step 2: After selecting the user, click on the small ‘+’ icon under “No Roles” and assign a role from the list.

Repeat the above steps for assigning roles to each user.

To quickly assign a role to the user, right-click on the user from the right-side panel. Click on “Roles” and select the appropriate role for that particular user.

How to Manage Roles in Discord

Now, you have successfully created a role and assigned it to the user. But, managing those roles is a bit different from creating them. You can add a number of roles and with time you may have to modify the permissions within each.

Managing Roles in Discord is crucial to keep your server organized, especially when the number of users increases. You don’t have to do much work when the server is limited to you and your friends, but if there are hundreds or thousands of users, then you have to manage the server to avoid collapse.

Discord allows you to create 250 different roles for a single server, so create roles according to the needs, instead of trying every possible combination of permissions.

In the beginning, you can start with only two roles that are Admin and @everyone. As the number of users increases in your server, you can further add new roles with different permissions. This is because the role has to be assigned individually to each user.

Therefore, you can enable basic permissions in @everyone role so that you don’t have to think much before assigning a role to the user.

You can notice that the left column on the “Roles” section displays the names of all the roles that you have created. Here, users will easily come to know about the admins, moderators, etc. on the server.

You can also provide a feedback form to the users of your server for the better communication process. If any of the users want some additional permissions, then you or your moderator can review it and assign them with the needed permissions.

You have to understand that the administrator will be responsible to run your server in your absence. So, you will have to give all the admin-level permissions to run the server smoothly. You have to also maintain the balance of responsibility among administrators and the moderators.

Depending on the daily activity, you will understand what permissions are required for each role. In order to enable or disable any permission, you can easily modify it from the “Roles” menu.

How to Delete Roles in Discord

It might be possible that you have to delete some of the roles from your server. And, to delete a role, you can follow the below steps.

Step 1: Click on the small drop-down arrow on the right side of your server’s name. Then, select the “Server Settings” from the menu.

Step 2: From the left-side menu, click on “Roles” and select the role that you want to delete.

Step 3: After selecting the role, scroll down and click on “Delete [role name]”. You will also see an option of “Clear Role Permissions” which will disable all the permissions for that role.

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Discord app works with desktop as well as mobile platforms. If you’re a gamer and want to communicate with your friends efficiently, then Discord is definitely a good platform for you.

If you’re a streamer, then you can sync Discord to your YouTube or Twitch channel and set up subscribers-only channels giving some special permissions on the server.

If you’re still facing problems in adding, managing, and deleting roles in Discord, please feel free to comment.