Discord has rapidly grown to become one of the world‘s most popular real-time chat and VoIP platforms since its public release in 2015. With over 150 million monthly active users as of 2022, it has become the go-to gathering place for gaming communities and friend groups across the globe.
Users collectively spend over 9 billion minutes per day chatting in their Discord servers according to the platform‘s own metrics. The software is free to use, with premium "Nitro" tiers offering additional features and customization for power users.
The Explosive Growth of Discord‘s Developer Platform
Beyond chat, Discord has continuously expanded capabilities for developers to integrate deeper with the platform. Advanced developers can tap into Discord‘s API to build custom bots, tools, and experiences on top of the real-time backbone Discord provides.
Some statistics on the vibrant ecosystem that‘s risen up:
- Over 500,000 registered developers build on the Discord platform
- 200,000+ bots have been created, offering everything automated moderation to multiplayer game integrations
- Top public bots like MEE6, Dyno, Rythm, and Dank Memer each have millions of installs
Bots and tools go through Discord‘s manual approval process before being certified and surfaced in the public discovery directory. Developers also rely heavily on Discord‘s developer documentation and API reference when building.
Unlocking Advanced Options with Developer Mode
Discord‘s built-in developer mode opens up additional information and diagnostics to help build, manage, and troubleshoot issues around third-party integrations. It‘s intended specifically for technically-adept bot developers and debuggers.
Here‘s an overview of the key benefits it unlocks:
- View unique IDs for users, messages, channels, servers, etc. These IDs become indispensable when developing bots.
- Precision message timestamps help analyze issues with message latency, timeouts, etc.
- Lower-level system logs, analytics events, crash reports aid debugging.
- Ability to deeply inspect web traffic helps optimize network requests.
- Additional context menus provide quicker access to advanced options.
Of course with great power comes great responsibility. Encouraging responsible innovation while protecting user safety and privacy is a top priority. Developers agree to stringent platform policies and undergo review.
Now let‘s walk through how to get access to developer mode in both desktop and mobile apps…
Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling Developer Mode
On Desktop
Turning on developer mode only takes a few quick clicks in Discord‘s desktop app:
- Launch Discord and log into your account
- Click the gear icon in the bottom left to open User Settings
- Select "Advanced" on the left panel
- Scroll down and toggle "Developer Mode" on
And you‘ve enabled it! You‘ll notice additional data and technical tools available across Discord.
On Mobile
The process works just the same in the Discord mobile app:
- Open Discord and login to your account
- Tap your profile icon in the bottom right
- Choose "User Settings"
- Select "Advanced"
- Toggle on "Developer Mode"
You now have developer mode activated on mobile as well.
Key Opportunities Unlocked with Developer Mode
Analyzing Unique IDs
Unique identifiers are attached to just about every entity in Discord – servers, channels, members, roles, messages, attachments – you name it!
Viewing these IDs helps analyze relationships and trace activity through the complex web of conversations and interactions occurring within Discord.
As one example, you can pinpoint message senders and chronology by exporting messages with IDs for further analysis.
These IDs become essential for developing bots to respond to messages, assign roles, moderate content, and more.
Debugging Performance & Optimization Opportunities
Developer mode reveals far more timing and performance data than typically visible.
Clicking any message shows the millisecond-precision timestamp of when it was sent. Analyzing timestamps helps uncover spikes in latency or degraded performance.
Lower-level diagnotics logs also provide visibility into network requests, event workflows, potential crashes and more. These are invaluable data points for optimization.
Developers can profile CPU, memory, network usage, and event loop latency during stress tests to catch leaks or bottlenecks.
Building Your First Discord Bot
One major benefit of access to technical IDs and event data is that developers can now integrate external applications with Discord using official API libraries…
[continue section on getting started building a Discord bot]…
Responsible Innovation Reminder
I want to re-emphasize that with the access developer mode permits, you take on additional responsibility as well.
You must carefully manage data accessed through Discord per privacy best practices – ensuring adequate permission, encryption, access controls, transparency, and retention policies.
No user should be exploited or put at-risk from data collected on Discord‘s platforms. Please thoroughly review the developer policies and terms to ensure your bots and services comply fully before publishing.
Now let‘s turn our attention to exploring some incredible innovations developers have already built on top of Discord that illustrate the art of the possible…
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