ds-chat/USER_GUIDE.md

DS Chat — User Guide

A quick reference for everyday use: sending messages, organizing rooms, attachments, notifications, and personalizing your account.

Contents

• Getting started
• Rooms
• Direct messages
• Sending messages
• Formatting
• Mentions and room links
• Attachments
• Reactions and custom emoji
• Editing and deleting a message
• Presence and notifications
• Your profile
• Room details
• Active sessions
• Staying up to date

Getting started

DS Chat is invite-only — there's no public sign-up page. You'll either be given an account directly, or you'll receive an email invite with a link. Opening that link lets you pick a username and password; once you submit it, you're signed in automatically.

If you forget your password, use Forgot password? on the login screen. You'll get an email with a reset link that's valid for 15 minutes.

Rooms

Rooms are where conversations happen — similar to channels in other chat apps. The sidebar on the left lists every room you belong to, with a search box at the top to filter by name.

• Create a room: click the + button above the room list. Give it a name and, optionally, a description. You become that room's owner.
• Browse rooms: click Browse rooms to see every open room on the site and join any of them directly.
• Private rooms: a room marked private (shown with a lock icon) isn't listed in Browse rooms — you can only get in by being added by an owner or admin of that room.
• Unread indicators: a room with new activity shows a dot next to its name — a plain dot for unread messages, a highlighted dot if you were specifically @mentioned.
• Collapsible sections: the Direct Messages and Rooms headers in the sidebar can be collapsed to hide their contents — click the header to toggle. Your choice is remembered.

Direct messages

Click People to see everyone on the site and start a 1:1 conversation with someone — it opens (or reopens, if you've messaged them before) under Direct Messages in the sidebar. There's only ever one conversation per pair of people, however many times you start it.

You can hide a conversation you're done with (its own menu, or from its Room details panel) without deleting anything — it drops out of your sidebar but reappears automatically the moment the other person sends a new message, or if you message them again yourself.

Sending messages

Type in the message box at the bottom of a room and press Enter to send. Use Shift+Enter to add a line break without sending.

Formatting

Messages support Markdown:

• **bold**, *italic*, ~~strikethrough~~
• `inline code` and fenced code blocks (three backticks)
• > blockquotes
• - or 1. for bulleted/numbered lists
• [link text](https://example.com) — or just paste a bare URL and it becomes clickable automatically
• #, ##, ### for headings — add {#custom-id} at the end of a heading line to control its link anchor instead of the auto-generated one
• ~sub~ and ^sup^ for subscript and superscript

Pasting a link on its own often also generates a preview card underneath your message, pulled from that page's title/description/image, when the page provides one.

Emoji: click the 🙂 button in the composer to open the emoji picker, or type a shortcode like :tada: and it's converted automatically once you send. The picker remembers your recently-used emoji and has a search box — see Reactions and custom emoji for uploading your own.

Mentions and room links

Type @ followed by a few letters of someone's username to open an autocomplete of that room's members — pick one (or press Enter/Tab) to insert a mention. Mentioning someone highlights the message for them and marks the room specially in their sidebar, even if they're not currently looking at it.

Type # followed by a few letters of a room name to do the same for rooms you belong to — it inserts a clickable link that takes anyone who can see the message (and is a member of that room) straight to it.

Attachments

Click the paperclip icon to attach a file, or just drag a file onto the message box and drop it. Images show as an inline thumbnail — click one to view it full-size. Common video formats (MP4, WebM, Ogg) play inline too, with a button to expand to a larger view; other files show as a small card with the filename and size — .txt, .md, and .pdf files open in a preview without leaving the room, everything else downloads when clicked.

There's a server-configured maximum file size — if a file is too large, you'll see an error before it uploads.

Reactions and custom emoji

Hover over a message and click the 🙂 icon in its action row to react with an emoji. Reactions from everyone appear as small pills under the message with a count; click an existing pill to add or remove your own reaction to it. Hovering a pill shows who reacted.

Anyone can add a custom emoji: open the emoji picker (the 🙂 button, either in the composer or on a message) and click + Add in the Custom section. Give it a short name and an image — it's then usable by everyone, both as a reaction and inline in message text via :your-name:, right alongside the built-in picker. You can remove a custom emoji you uploaded (or any of them, if you're a site admin) from the same picker.

Editing and deleting a message

You can edit any message you sent: hover it and click Edit, make your changes, then press Enter to save or Escape to cancel. Clicking away also saves. Edited messages are marked (edited).

To delete a message you sent, hover it and click Delete. It's replaced with a "message deleted" placeholder rather than disappearing outright, so the conversation doesn't visibly shift for anyone else reading it.

Presence and notifications

Everyone's avatar shows a small status dot — green for online, grey for offline — based on whether they currently have the app open. If you'd rather not broadcast that you're active, open your account menu (click your avatar, top right) and choose Appear offline.

The same menu has a notifications toggle:

• In a regular browser, turning it on asks your browser for permission and subscribes you to push notifications for messages in rooms you're not actively looking at.
• In DS Chat Desktop, the same toggle controls native desktop notifications instead — no browser permission prompt needed. You'll get a notification whenever the app is minimized or simply not the focused window, even if it's still open somewhere on screen.

You'll also get an email if someone messages you in a direct conversation while you're genuinely offline — no setup needed. For regular rooms, email is opt-in per room: open a room's Room details panel and turn on Email notifications to get emailed on that room's first unread message and on every @mention, while you're offline.

Your profile

Open your account menu and choose Profile settings to:

• Upload or remove a profile photo
• Set a display name (shown instead of your username throughout the app)
• Pick a theme — Dark, Light, Midnight, Sunset, or build your own custom color scheme (create one, then customize each color; changes preview live)
• Change your password

Active sessions

Profile settings also lists Active sessions — every device/browser currently logged into your account, with its approximate location (IP address) and when it was last active. If you see one you don't recognize, click Revoke to sign it out immediately. Revoking your own current device signs you out too.

Room details

Click the info icon in a room's header to open its details panel, where you can:

• See who else is in the room and their role (member/admin/owner)
• Turn on Email notifications for that room (see Presence and notifications)
• Browse and re-download every file and image ever shared in the room, without scrolling back through history
• Leave the room — unless you're the owner, in which case ownership has to be transferred to someone else first

Room admins and owners see additional management options here that aren't covered in this guide.

Staying up to date

If your connection drops, a banner lets you know you're offline and working from cached data — sending is disabled until you're back online.

When a new version of DS Chat has been deployed, a banner offers a Reload button to pick it up immediately, instead of waiting for your next natural page refresh.