In-experience text chat is any message created within your experience that originated from one user and is delivered to one or more other users, including:
- Chat bubbles over an avatar's head
- Direct messages between users
- Chat window communication between users
- Team-specific messages
For sending and delivery, these types of communications must each go through a TextChannel instance. This ensures messages respect privacy settings, are visible to moderators, and are properly text filtered.
Certain text is not considered chat:
Text on menus created by developers (for example, "Press any button to continue.")
Status updates from the experience (for example, "Two minutes remaining!")
Announcements from admin commands
A user renaming their pet dog
A user writing on a sign
Moderation audit logs or messages
Comments on posts in an experience
If the comments support a reply feature, these replies would be considered a conversation and thus subject to this policy.
Writing a post on a bulletin board
Any user-generated text unrelated to a conversation
For communication shared by users that can be seen by other users, even if it doesn't need to go through TextChatService, you must ensure it goes through a text filter.
Requirements
- All experiences that offer in-experience text chat for users must integrate TextChatService, per the Misusing Roblox Systems Community Standard.
- Between 30 December 2024 and 30 April 2025, creators that use a custom chat solution not powered by TextChatService or a modified or forked Legacy Chat can continue to use their existing feature, but must also deploy the CanUserChatAsync() and CanUserDirectChatAsync() methods in their experiences.
- After 30 April 2025, all creators must use the TextChatService API.
- For more information on migrating, see the Roblox developer forums.
- All incoming text that originates from another user must first use Text Filtering before your experience displays it.
- Communication between users must respect user privacy settings.
- TextChannel:SendAsync() handles basic privacy and parental settings automatically.
- TextChannel:SetDirectChatRequester() must be used to mark TextChannels created for direct chat.
- In-experience communication should be reportable for abuse. TextChannels handle this automatically.