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.

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.

Assign moderators

You can assign moderators for all live chat sessions. 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. Moderators can interact with the audience and remove comments when appropriate. They can also flag, hide or put users in time out.
From YouTube Studio
  1. Open YouTube Studio.
  2. On the left-hand side, click Settings  and then Community.
  3. From the Automated Filters tab, click in the 'Moderators' box.
  4. Type the name of the user that 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 certain words, create a list of blocked words in YouTube Studio.
  1. Open YouTube Studio.
  2. On the right-hand side, click Settings  and then Community.
  3. From the Automated Filters tab and then '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

YouTube can 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 on 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. On the left-hand side, tap Settings  and then Community and then Defaults.
  3. Under 'Messages in your live chat', tick or untick 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 that 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 and then Streaming
  1. Create a live stream. After entering  title and description, click Create stream.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Click Live chat.
  4. Toggle on Slow mode.
Turn on in Stream now
  1. Go to your live dashboard
  2. In the chat module, click Settings .
  3. Select Enable slow mode and enter how many seconds each user must wait between posts. The minimum is 1 second, the maximum is 300 seconds

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. In the top right-hand corner, click CREATE  and then Go live .
  3. From the left-hand menu, 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-hand menu, click Settings .
  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.

Live Control Room

  • Stream: From the top right-hand menu, click Settings and then Live chat and then Enable live chat.
  • Webcam: More options and then Advanced settings and then Allow chat. 

Stream now

Select Settings  and tick or untick the Enable live chat box.

Events

Go to Edit and then Basic Info and then Advanced Settings. Under 'Chat', untick the Enable live chat box.

During your live chat

Moderate messages and 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.

Hide or unhide a viewer from live chat

You can hide a viewer from live chat. A hidden viewer's live chat messages won't be seen in the live chat feed. 
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  and then Hide user.
From YouTube Studio
  1. Open YouTube Studio.
  2. On the right-hand side, click Settings  and then Community.
  3. From the Automated Filters tab and then 'Hidden users', type the name of the viewer that 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 that 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 that you've participated in during YouTube live streams.
  1. Go to History.
  2. On the right-hand side 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 violate our Community Guidelines.

See comments after your stream has ended

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

Other live chat options 

Embed live chat

During a live stream, you can embed live chat on your own site by using an iframe.

Note: Embedding live chat isn't available on mobile web.
  1. Get the video ID for the live stream. You can get the video ID from the watch page URL (youtube.com/watch?v=12345). In this case, the video ID is '12345'.
    • If you chose 'Stream now', right-click on the player and select Copy video URL to get the video URL.
  2. Get the domain URL for the site that you want to embed chat on. If you're embedding chat on www.example.com/youtube_chat, your embedding domain is 'www.example.com'.
  3. Combine the embedded URL in the following way: https://www.youtube.com/live_chat?v=12345&embed_domain=www.example.com.
    • This is the URL for your iframe. Note the embed_domain must match the URL of the page that you're embedding the chat on. If they are different, the embedded chat will not load.
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