Two years ago, we shined the spotlight on Stage channels: an easy way to run community events and bring them to life on Discord. Stage channels help bring the focus to a small handful of people to bring your community event to life, removing the need to mute or unmute dozens of people talking over each other in a single Voice channel.
Since then, millions of Stage channels have been created on Discord for community members to come together and hold conversations, record podcasts, host community AMAs and interviews with creators, and anything in-between in a space that’s easily manageable by your server admins.
Today, Stages are getting a huge upgrade to truly encompass the idea of having the spotlight shine on you: Stage channels are gaining video, screen sharing, and text chat support. These additions to Stage channels will finally let you show off in front of your virtual audience or screen share a visual aid when presenting, and your community will have a place to banter, comment, and flood chat with pog emojis when something exciting happens.
Any Discord server that has the “Community” feature set enabled (it’s free!) will be able to hop on video or use screen share in Stages with up to 50 audience members, and servers that have Tier 2 or Tier 3 Server Boosting can expand their capacity for using video in Stage channels to up to 150 or 300 viewers respectively.
Read on to learn how to use video and screen sharing in Stage channels. Spoiler: It’s just as easy as video chat is today.
How to Share Your Video & Screen in Stage Channels
The next time you hop on a Stage for your community, you’ll notice two new buttons you may be familiar with already: video and screen share. They function just like they do in the Voice channels and DM conversations you’re used to: use the video button to turn on your camera for your audience to see, or share your screen when it’s time for your community’s monthly joke-slideshow event.
Stages are meant to share smaller, intimate conversations with a wider audience — this means there are some limitations to how many people can turn on their cameras or share their content.
Notably, up to five members can use video while on a Stage and one screen share is supported on a Stage channel at a time. The presenter sharing their screen can be different than the five others using video, and audience members won’t have their own audio or video feeds broadcast to the community without their permission — unless they willingly take to the Stage, of course.
Text chat in Stage channels works just like it does in Voice channels as well: select “Show Chat” on the top-right of the Stage and you’ll open up the Stage’s dedicated Text channel for conversation. And similar to how chat in Voice channels work today, Stage channels now have their own “Voice Chat Channel” Permission options section to let moderators run their conversations as they see fit.
Now, let’s talk audience capacity on Stages that are using video. After all, all great concert halls only have so many seats available, and streaming video to dozens, or potentially hundreds at once, uses up a ton of robo-hamster wheel energy (sorry, Nelly).
To start, all Community servers that use video in Stage channels can hold up to 50 people, including both presenters and spectators, at once — that’s twice as much as today’s max viewer limit for using video chat in a standard Voice channel. (If you already use Voice channels to stream your favorite game to friends who aren’t currently talking over Voice, consider using a Stage next time!)
Want to use video or screen sharing in a Stage with more than 50 people? Utilize Server Boosting as a community or by yourself to increase your total capacity: Tier 2 boosted servers can host up to 150 people in a video Stage, and servers boosted all the way to Tier 3 can have up to 300 people total in a Stage that’s utilizing video! That’s a whole lotta friends watching you be the first person in the world to lick their elbow.
We don’t always know our own strength, and your community is strongest when they come together. So what happens if more than 50, 150 or 300 people try to join the same Stage when someone’s using video?
It works pretty similarly to the existing 25-person limit on video calls in your Voice channels: if the video or screen share has already started, no more members will be allowed to join after 50 total people (or either 150 or 300 people for boosted servers).
For the full scoop on how video and screen share works in Stage channels, shine your light at the Stage channels support article.
Before your community heads to the limelight, there’s one extra lil’ feature we added: while your event’s stagehands are getting things ready for the show, the audience will now be serenaded by our loveliest waiting room music before the show starts. Or, you can turn it off by pressing the new “♫” button… ya’know, if you really want to…
Your World is Watching, Literally: Video is Now in Stages
With the introduction of video, screen share and text chat support, Stage channels will help bring people together better than ever, no matter if you’re a proud performer using video on-stage or a more reserved audience member whose gained just a little extra confidence to peek out and say “hi” in text chat.
Remember: using Stage channels requires your server to be a Community Server. Don’t have “Community” enabled on your Discord server yet? It’s as simple as going into Server Settings and turning it on! Learn how to enable the “Community” feature set and gain access to Stage channels and plenty more in the "Enabling Your Community Server" support article.
Does your server have exciting plans to utilize video or screen share in your next Stage event? We’d love to see it — tag us on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram for all the shenanigans that happen in your server.
