Moderate live chat

Moderating your live chat makes your community more welcoming and healthy. YouTube gives you tools to help prevent harassment and make everyone feel safe.

How to Moderate Live Chat on YouTube

Before your live chat

Get ready for your live chat session by setting up these moderation tools. Some of these tools can be used during and after your live stream too.

Subscribers-only live chat

If eligible, you can make live chat only available to your subscribers, and you can specify how long viewers need to be subscribed. This setting can be changed before and during your live stream or Premiere.

When you turn on subscribers-only chat, your audience will be notified that it’s turned on and how long they need to be subscribed to send messages.

Slow mode and subscribers-only chat can be turned on at the same time. Members-only chat and subscribers-only chat can’t be turned on at the same time.

To turn on subscribers-only chat:

1. Go to Live Control Room.
2. From your live stream, click Edit.
3. Click Live chat.
4. Under “Who can send a message,” select Subscribers.
5. Optional: Choose how long viewers need to be subscribed before they can send live chat messages.
6. Click Save.

Note: If a viewer participates in a subscriber-only live chat, other viewers will publicly see they’re subscribed to the channel.

Assign moderators

A moderator is someone you trust to help build a positive, safe channel experience for your community. A moderator helps review and manage comments people leave on a video or the messages participants send during a stream’s live chat.

Once you assign a moderator, they’ll stay a moderator until you unassign them, even if you start another live stream session.

We strongly recommend that you have at least one dedicated live chat moderator for high-traffic events. 

Everyone who participates in a live chat can report or block another person. Moderators can: 

• Delete messages. Deleting is a way for you to remove any inappropriate or potentially abusive or offensive content. When you delete a message, it’s permanently removed from the live chat and its replay.
• Put participants in time out. Time outs allow you to temporarily prevent someone from sending messages in live chat. When you put someone in time out, they won’t be able to send messages for 5 minutes.
• Hide people from the channel. Hiding is often reserved for participants who ignore guidelines and warnings, and repeatedly send inappropriate messages. When you hide someone from the channel, their chat messages and comments will no longer be visible to other viewers. YouTube doesn't notify the person that you've hidden them.

Review potentially inappropriate messages. Creators might choose to have YouTube’s system hold potentially inappropriate chat messages for review. Moderators can choose to show or hide each message.

From YouTube Studio

1. Open YouTube Studio.
2. From the left, click Settings Community.
3. From the Automated Filters tab, click in the “Moderators” box.
4. Type the name of the user you want to make a moderator.
5. Click Save.

From your live chat feed

Select menu next to the username in chat and select Add moderator.

Block messages containing certain words

To block live chat messages that contain or closely match certain words, create a list of blocked words in YouTube Studio.

1. Open YouTube Studio.
2. From the left, click Settings Community.
3. From the Automated Filters tab “Blocked words,” enter a list of blocked words. Messages containing any of these words will be blocked from your live chat.
4. Click Save.

Hold potentially inappropriate live chat messages for review

You can have YouTube hold potentially inappropriate live chat messages. If you opt in, live chat messages that our system identifies will be held for review in the chat feed. You have the final decision whether to show or hide these chat messages. No system is perfect, but this feature can make it easier for you to moderate live chat messages on your live stream.

Turn "hold for review" on or off

1. Go to YouTube Studio.
2. From the left, tap Settings Community Defaults.
3. Under “Messages in your live chat,” check or uncheck Hold potentially inappropriate chat messages for review.

Once you've turned on "hold for review," you can hide or show messages that YouTube holds.

• If you select SHOW: chat messages are displayed in the chat stream at the original time they were entered.
• If you select HIDE: chat messages remain hidden from viewers.
• If you take no action: chat messages remain hidden from viewers.

Slow mode

Slow mode allows you to limit how often each user can comment by setting a time limit between comments. The channel owner, moderators, and YouTube channel members are not limited.

Turn on in Live Control Room Streaming

1. Create a live stream.
2. Click Edit.
3. Click Customization.
4. Under "Message delay," check Slow mode. Enter how long you want participants to wait between sending messages.

Members-only live chat

You can hold live chats that are exclusively for your members. To turn on members-only live chat on your computer:

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
2. At the top right, click CREATE Go live.
3. From the left, click Stream.
4. Create a stream:
   1. To copy a previous stream: Select a previous stream and click Reuse settings.
   2. To create a new stream: Enter your stream's info and click Create stream.
5. From the top right, click Edit.
6. Under "Live chat," select Enable members-only chat.
7. Click Save.

Turn Live chat on or off

You can turn Live chat on or off at any time, even after the event has started. You can not turn off Live chat on Premieres. 

From the top right, click Edit Live Chat Enable live chat.

Live Commentary Mode

You can curate your live chat to only allow approved users as live chat participants during a live stream session. Only users you select may contribute live chat messages, other viewers may view these messages alongside your live stream or premiere.

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.

2. At the top right, click CREATE   Go live.

3. Under Customization, check the Live chat box to enable Live Chat.

4. Select ‘Live Commentary Mode’ to enable. (You will have the option to update the ‘Approved Users’ list in community settings).

5. Optional: Add channel URLs to the approved users list. Note: if no channels are in your ‘Approved Users’ list, your channel will be the only approved user to use live chat.

6. Click Next to save.

During your live chat

Moderate messages & viewers from the live chat feed

On desktop, hold down 'ALT' / 'Option' on your keyboard to pause the chat feed and point to messages. You’ll see options to:

• Delete the message.
• Place the user in time out.
• Hide the user from the chat message feed or comments section on your channel.

 Tip: Moderators can learn about a live chat participant by going directly to their channel.

• On computer: Hover over a message, click More , and then Go to channel.
• On mobile: Tap a message, and then Go to channel.

Hide or unhide a viewer from live chat

Hiding is often reserved for participants who ignore guidelines and warnings, and repeatedly send inappropriate messages. When you hide someone from the channel, their chat messages and comments will no longer be visible to other viewers. YouTube doesn't notify the person that you've hidden them.

From the live chat feed

1. From the live chat feed, find a message from the viewer that you want to hide.
2. Next to the message, click More Hide user.

From YouTube Studio

1. Open YouTube Studio.
2. From the left, click Settings Community.
3. From the Automated Filters tab “Hidden users,” type the name of the viewer you want to hide.
4. To unhide a viewer, click the X next to their name. They can now leave comments and live chat messages on your channel.
5. Click Save.

Note: This will also hide the user from the comments. Users you have hidden will be visible in Hidden Users in Community Settings.

After your live chat

Live chat replay

After a live stream has ended, Live chat replay is available on all stream archives. This replays the chat alongside the stream exactly as it appeared when the stream was live. Live chat replay is turned on by default on all of your live streams.

To disable Live chat replay

1. Go to youtube.com/my_videos.
2. Click the Live tab.
3. Select a video.
4. Click the More options tab.
5. Deselect the box next to "Allow Live chat replay."

View or delete your Live chat history

You can view Live chats you’ve participated in during YouTube live streams.

1. Go to History.
2. On the right of the page, click Live chat.
3. Scroll down and find the live chat message. To delete it, hover over it and click X.

If you have sponsored chats or Super Chats, you can see them too.

Note: Deleting a Super Chat message post-live stream will not result in a refund.

Note: Based on user reports, YouTube may disable Live chat on your video if the content of your stream or Live chat is found to be violating our Community Guidelines.

See comments after your stream has ended

Live chat isn’t available after you live stream ends, but comments will show up below the video player.