Everything about YappyChat

Set it up, learn your way around, and get the most out of it. The guide follows the order you will meet things: set up, chat, moderate, stream, make it yours, then lock it down. Every picture is a real screenshot of the app, with sample chat.

1. Getting started

Three steps, about a minute in all. Once your first chat is open, YappyChat offers a one-minute tour of the main parts of the window. Replay it any time from Settings > About or the command palette.

1. Install YappyChat. Download it from the download page and run the installer. If Windows says "Windows protected your PC", click More info then Run anyway: that warning appears for new apps that aren't yet widely downloaded. It updates itself in the background after that.
2. Press Log in with Twitch. Sign in on Twitch's page and press Authorize. You only do this once, and it also signs in the stream player (see Logging in).
3. Type a channel name and press Enter. Its chat opens, with the stream beside it if Watch the stream too is ticked. Channels you follow that are live right now are listed underneath: click one to open it.

Logging in and permissions

Press Log in with Twitch. Twitch's own page opens in a small window: sign in, then press Authorize. That one sign-in covers chat, every permission and the stream player, so channels you subscribe to play without ads and nothing asks again.

You can also press Use my browser instead, which opens the same page in your normal browser. That signs in chat only; to skip ads on your subscriptions, sign the stream player in later (YappyChat offers it the first time you open a channel you subscribe to, or use Settings > Account > Stream player sign-in). If the browser does not open, Twitch is asking for a code? shows a code you can enter at twitch.tv/activate.

• Everyday permissions are asked for at login: read and send chat, moderate, AutoMod, announcements, followers, your emotes and whispers. YappyChat can not run without them.
• Optional permissions only exist so one tool can work: the user list, banned and moderator lists, AutoMod settings, shoutouts, clips, polls and predictions. YappyChat asks for each one the first time you open that tool, explains why, and nothing happens until you say yes.

The full list, with a plain reason for each and whether it is granted, is in Settings > About.

Your login token is stored encrypted on your computer using Windows' own protection, and is removed (and, by default, revoked with Twitch) when you log out. See Security.

Adding and arranging channels

Press + next to the tabs. Type a name, paste a Twitch link, or add several at once separated by commas, like pixelpete, nova_live, juno. You can have up to 50 channels open.

• If there are more tabs than fit, arrows appear at the ends of the tab bar to scroll them, and the down arrow lists every channel that is out of view so you can jump straight to one. Ctrl+K opens a quick switcher, and YappyChat reopens on the chat you were last in.
• The two-arrow button beside the tabs switches between the order you added channels in and live channels first.
• Right-click a tab and turn on Keep at the front to make it a favourite: it gets a star and stays first, whichever way the tabs are sorted. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 jump to the tabs in the order you see them.
• Each tab has a short line along its top showing the service. Twitch is purple. Kick (green) and YouTube (red) will get their own colours when they arrive; both are coming soon.
• A small red dot beside a channel name means they are live.
• When something happens in a channel you are not looking at (a mention, an AutoMod hold, a first-time chatter), its tab flashes until you open it.
• Right-click a tab to pick its colour and sound (see below).

Moving tabs around

Drag a tab to reorder it. While you drag, a bright separator line shows exactly where the tab will land, between two tabs, so it is clear you are moving it between things and not onto one.

Tab colours and sounds

Right-click a channel tab to give it a colour and its own notification sound. The colour is used for the channel's name in its tab, in the channel bar and in split-view headers, for the ring around the streamer's picture, and for the border on mentions in that chat. It is saved on your computer only.

Split view

The grid button shows up to six panes at once. Chats and streams share those six: five chats when one stream is snapped beside them (a floating stream does not count), or fewer chats if you add more streams (see Stream window). One to three sit in a row, four make a 2×2, and five or six use three columns, with an odd one out stretching across the row. Drag a pane's header to reorder it and its edge to resize.

Any layout you like. The grid button in a chat's header lists the layouts for the number of chats you have open: Automatic grid, Side by side, Stacked, and One big on the left, right, top or bottom, so five chats can be one big and four small. Drag a chat by its grip (⋮⋮) onto another to swap or place it, or choose Make [channel] the big one from that menu. If you want a message box in every chat instead of one shared bar, turn on Settings > Chat > Message box in every chat; the main bar, where Yappy lives, stays.

The channel bar

Under the tabs, the bar shows who you are watching and how the stream is doing.

• LIVE is a badge on its own, next to the name, so you can see at a glance whether the stream is on. (The little dot on the tab is the same signal from a distance.)
• Viewers and Time live come first on the second row.
• Session Information shows bans, timeouts, deletes, chatters and chats since YappyChat opened. Press the arrow beside it to hide or show the counters. You can choose what it counts in Settings > Session.
• The pencil edits the title and game (see Editing the title and game).
• The book opens the channel's notes and rules, and Shield opens the chat modes menu.

Streaming together and shared chat

Twitch starts a shared chat session when streamers use Stream Together, and everyone's messages appear in all of those chats. YappyChat shows this the way Twitch does:

• The channel bar reads "Streamer, streaming together with Kito and Mira". Click a name to add that channel or switch to it.
• Each message from another channel has that streamer's picture beside it. Turn this off in Settings > Chat > Shared chat pictures.
• Messages from other channels have no moderation buttons, because you are not moderating there. First-message labels only show for people in your own channel.

2. Sending messages

Type in the box at the bottom and press Enter. The box understands a few shortcuts:

• ↑ and ↓ bring back what you sent before. It remembers your last 10 messages, only for this session. They are never saved to disk.
• Tab completes emotes and @names. Type ; and the start of a macro's name, then Tab, to fill in a macro.
• Replying shows a small bar just above the message box. It floats over the chat instead of pushing it up, so nothing jumps while you type.

Your own messages get the same hover buttons as everyone else's, so you can reply to, pin or copy them. (Messages starting with /me go a different way and can't be pinned.)

When a message isn't sent

If a chat only allows some messages, the message box says so before you type, for example Send message in juno (Twitch emotes only). Point at the chat's mode labels in the channel bar to see what each one means.

If Twitch turns a message down, it stays in chat crossed out and marked Not sent, a notice above the message box says why in plain words (slow mode, emote-only, followers-only, a timeout and so on), and what you typed goes back in the box so you can change it and send again. A message AutoMod is holding is marked Waiting for the mods instead.

YappyChat also keeps you inside Twitch's sending limits: 20 messages in 30 seconds (100 where you're the streamer, a moderator or a VIP), one message a second in chats where you're none of those, and not the same message twice within 30 seconds. Going over can make Twitch ignore your messages for up to an hour, so YappyChat tells you how long to wait instead.

Commands

The message box takes Twitch's own commands, and suggests them as soon as you type /. Type /help to see the ones you can use in the chat you are in. Moderator commands only appear where you moderate, and owner commands (like /raid) only in your own channel.

The Users panel

The Users tab in the activity panel searches everyone in the chat you are on. Pick a name to see their details; type a Twitch name that is not in chat to look them up. Switching to another chat takes you back to the search.

Two more commands are YappyChat's own.

/search

Searches the messages YappyChat has seen in the chat you are in, and opens the results in a small window. Click a result to jump to it in the chat.

To search every open chat at once, press Ctrl+Shift+F. Ctrl+F searches the chat you are in.

/alert

For moderators: /alert chat wants you to check the game audio sends a message to the streamer that takes over their screen. See Alerts from your mods.

Emotes

YappyChat loads Twitch, 7TV, BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ emotes for each open channel. When a streamer adds, removes or renames a 7TV or BetterTTV emote, YappyChat hears about it straight away: the new emote works in the next message and a short line in chat says what changed (switch the line off in Settings > Emotes > Say when channel emotes change). FrankerFaceZ has no live feed, so its emotes are re-checked every 10 minutes and when you switch to a chat. In the picker, My emotes is grouped by channel like Twitch's own picker, and emotes you cannot use in that channel are dimmed. Twitch emotes that anyone uses in chat always appear. If emotes look wrong, Settings > Emotes shows what loaded and lets you reload and test them.

Macros

The bolt button next to the message box lists your saved messages. Pick one to fill the box, or send it straight away if you ticked Send. {channel} and {me} are filled in.

• Save a message as a macro: point at any message in chat. The toolbar that appears has reply, pin, a bolt, and copy. The bolt (between pin and copy) saves that message's text as a macro after you name it.
• You can also make and edit macros in Settings > Macros.

Recent messages

When you open a chat, YappyChat fills it with the latest messages (50 to 500, your choice) so it is never blank, even when the stream is offline. They appear slightly faded above a divider; live chat continues below it. They do not trigger sounds or mentions.

Whispers

Whispers sent to you appear in the Whispers tab of the activity rail, and Yappy tells you when one arrives. Reply right there.

3. Message buttons

You must be a moderator (or the broadcaster) in a channel for these to work there. If you are not a moderator anywhere, I don't need mod tools hides all of this.

User cards

Click a name to see account age, follow date (when Twitch lets you see it), recent messages, private notes and a watch-list button. Under the notes is a timeline of their messages this session plus every moderation event for them across all your channels: bans, timeouts, deletes, warnings, AutoMod holds and unban requests. Ban everywhere bans them in all your channels where you moderate. Notes and the watch list are stored only on your computer.

Conversations

When two people reply to each other, the reply line shows "3 messages between them" (the count grows as they carry on). Click it to open the whole back-and-forth in one window, both sides' messages in order, so you can see who started it and who is escalating before you decide anything.

It follows replies and @mentions of each other while YappyChat has been open, and it only appears once two people have actually answered each other.

The activity rail

Open the activity panel with the bell. Its tabs sit in a slim icon rail on the right edge; the section you chose fills the space beside it, with its name at the top. Click the open icon again to fold the panel away, so only the rail shows, and click any icon to bring it back.

• The T button at the bottom of the rail shows or hides the names beside the icons. When names are shown, the rail grows to the left and the list narrows a little; the panel itself does not change size.
• Drag the panel's left edge to resize it (double-click to reset). Drag the icons to put them in your order.
• Each tab keeps its own count until you open it.
• Click Yappy in the bottom corner to jump straight to his tab.

Mod actions and undo

The Mod actions tab lists what happened in the chat you are looking at, straight from Twitch's moderation feed. Switch chat and the list switches with it (the weekly totals are kept per channel too). Each card shows the kind of action, the channel, the time and who did it. Columns and counts line up, in the feed and in the weekly table.

The download button at the top of Mod activity saves a report of the whole session as a spreadsheet file: every action with the time, channel, moderator, person and message, then a count for each moderator. Pick This chat first for one channel only. Handy for sharing with your mod team after a stream.

• Undo lifts a ban or a timeout (it is the same as /unban). It appears on bans and timeouts only, and only where you are a moderator.
• Weekly totals shows bans, timeouts, deletes and warnings per moderator for each week (Monday to Sunday), as icons (hover one to see what it is), and copies as a report. It counts what YappyChat saw while it was open.

Firsts and greetings

The hand button on a first-time chatter sends them a greeting as a reply to their message. Click it and pick one of your saved greetings, or Surprise me for a random one. Once greeted, the hand stays lit so the next moderator knows.

Write your greetings, one per line, in Settings > Saved messages > Greetings. {user} becomes their name and {channel} the channel.

AutoMod

The AutoMod tab shows the messages held in the chat you are in, so a busy second channel never mixes into the first. Switch chat to review the other one.

If you moderate a channel, messages held by AutoMod appear in the chat with Allow and Deny and the flagged words marked, like Twitch's own mod view. If another moderator deals with it first, the line updates. In Settings > Moderation you can keep AutoMod, baseline or blocked-term holds out of the chat so they only show in the AutoMod tab. The AutoMod levels themselves can be changed from the more tools menu.

Polls, predictions, Community and more

Next to the search button in each chat's header are small tool icons. Each opens its own little window beside the chat, so you can keep chatting while it is open, and you can have several open at once.

Polls

Predictions

Community (who is in chat)

It lists everyone connected to chat, including people who have not said anything, so you can find someone to moderate who has been quiet. It refreshes by itself about every 15 seconds. Twitch only hands the complete list to the streamer and moderators (and needs one extra permission, which YappyChat asks for the first time you open it). If you are not one of them, the window shows everyone YappyChat's chat connection has been told about plus everyone who has spoken, and says plainly that it can miss people in a very large chat. A very large channel shows the first few thousand names.

The Community button splits the chat you are in instead of floating over it: the list takes half of the pane, beside the chat when the pane is wide and above it (pushing the chat down) when it is tall, so chat stays in view. Press the button again to close it. The small arrow in its title bar moves the list above or below the chat, or to the left or right when the layout is horizontal.

More tools

• Banned and timed-out users: search the list and unban from it.
• Moderators and VIPs: see who has the roles.
• Shout out a streamer and Make a clip. In your own channel the menu also has Start a raid, Run an ad and Add a stream marker.
• Chat filters: AutoMod levels and the channel's blocked terms in one window.
• Open Twitch Mod View and Open the Creator Dashboard: shortcuts to Twitch's own pages.

Snap tools where you want them. Each tool window has a pin button. Press it, or drag the window over the right-hand column, and it snaps above the activity panel. YappyChat remembers which tools you snapped. Press the pin again to pop it out. Choosing the tool again, or its X, closes it. Tools that only the streamer can use (polls, predictions, raids, ads, markers, the title pencil and the streamer dashboard) are hidden from moderators.

The first time you use a tool that needs a permission you have not given, YappyChat explains what it is for and asks. You can say no and nothing changes.

Editing the title and game

In your own channel, a small pencil sits next to the stream title and game in the channel bar. Click it to change either one. Moderators do not see it, because Twitch lets only the streamer (and editors) do this through apps.

Twitch decides who may change these per channel. If your account is not allowed, you get a clear message saying so and a link to Twitch Mod View, instead of nothing happening.

Channel notes and rules

• Rules: one per line. Click a rule in the popover to put it straight into your message box, so repeating "No spoilers" takes one click.
• Notes: anything you want to remember about that channel.

Tip: save your mod guide link here. Most channels have a guide for their moderators (a Google doc, a Notion page, a Discord post). Paste the link into the notes for that channel and it is one click away whenever you are unsure. Do the same for the timeout lengths your team agreed on.

Highlights and blocklists

Highlights match the exact word, ignoring case. Mod highlights "mod" but not "mode". Add * as a wildcard: Mod* matches "mode", "moderator" and "mods". Tick regex on a row to use a regular expression instead. Each highlight has its own colour and sound.

Filters (Settings > Filters) hold two lists, next to the AutoMod display options and a button for the channel's Chat filters window. The blacklist is words or names you would rather not see: they are covered with a box and revealed when you hover. The shared ban list is people you want banned wherever you moderate: if someone on it speaks in a channel you moderate, Yappy offers to ban them (or YappyChat does it automatically if you switch that on). Add people from their user card. Both lists are blurred while streamer mode is on, stay on your computer, and use the same matching: exact, case-insensitive, * as a wildcard and /pattern/ for a regular expression.

Raids, Shield Mode and announcements

• Shield menu. The Shield button in the channel bar controls chat modes and Shield Mode.
• Raid banner. When a raid arrives, a banner appears over that chat with one-click Shield Mode, Followers-only 10m and Emote-only. Yappy also tells you. If you turn Shield Mode on, you are reminded 15 minutes later to turn it off.
• Scheduled announcements. Settings > Announcements posts Twitch announcements on a timer, only while YappyChat is open, the channel's tab is open and you moderate there. You can limit them to while the stream is live and to after a number of chat messages.
• Command palette. Ctrl+Shift+P and type: switch channel, run a macro, Shield Mode, chat modes, open a setting.

4. The streamer dashboard

If you stream, the pulse button next to your name and picture opens a dashboard of how your stream is going. It fills in while you are live and keeps the last session so you can look back after.

Not live yet? The empty dashboard has a Preview with sample numbers button that fills it with made-up figures, marked SAMPLE, so you can see what everything looks like before your first stream.

• Tiles: viewers now, peak and average, chats this session (and per minute), different chatters and first-timers, new followers, mod actions and time live.
• Live viewers over time, sampled once a minute while you are live.
• Chat activity per five minutes, so you can see where chat took off.
• Mod actions with a count of each kind (bans, timeouts, deleted messages, warnings, unbans) and who did them.
• Top chatters and alerts from your mods from this session.
• Copy recap puts a plain-text summary on your clipboard for your notes or Discord. Reset session starts fresh.

Alerts from your mods

A moderator types /alert Your game audio is peaking, turn it down! in your chat window. On your screen YappyChat flashes in the taskbar, Yappy buzzes, and a large message appears, so you see it even mid-game. Got it dismisses it and Whisper back opens a reply.

• Only your moderators can trigger it. YappyChat checks the sender really is a moderator of your channel before showing anything; from anyone else it is just an ordinary whisper.
• How it travels: as a Twitch whisper. So Twitch's whisper rules apply: the moderator's account needs a verified phone number, and you must be able to receive whispers. Both of you need YappyChat; if the moderator does not use it, the alert arrives as a normal whisper.
• Turn it off in Settings > Security > Accept /alert messages from my moderators. Alerts are also listed in your dashboard.

Streamer mode

Ctrl+Shift+S toggles streamer mode: the activity panel and chatter details are blurred, sounds are muted and Yappy's notices and desktop notifications are hidden. For screen sharing, also see Hide YappyChat from screen sharing.

5. Themes

Everything here is in Settings > Appearance.

The Themes menu in Settings > Appearance holds every look in one list (light or dark is the separate Colour mode setting). It offers:

• Automatic (by date): the default. Holidays switch on by themselves around the day and otherwise you get the Default look.
• Default: the original look all year.
• Autumn (Fall), Winter, Summer and Spring: each recolours the app and dresses Yappy for the season, with its own touches. They are yours to pick any time of year.
• Ocean blue, Cotton candy and Millennial (olive and forest green): colour themes for any time of year, in dark, light and Soft.
• High contrast: pure black and white with stronger outlines and bolder names, for anyone who finds the other themes hard to read.
• Holiday themes (Christmas, Valentine's Day and the rest) appear in the list around their dates.
• Minimal (flat and fast): removes most of the flair for lower-spec computers. Square corners, no shadows, glows or background effects, no animations, no outfits on Yappy. Everything works exactly the same, it just does less drawing.

Light or dark still applies on top of any theme, and the title bar at the top of the window follows your theme and mode.

Holiday themes

Halloween, Christmas, New Year and Valentine's Day switch on by themselves around the day (6 to 15 February for Valentine's), or you can pick one any time in the Themes menu. Valentine's gives the app pink colours and floating hearts, and Yappy gets heart eyes and a little heart headband.

Saving power

Settings > Appearance > Save power in the background pauses animations when the window is hidden or unfocused. It never pauses the stream.

Colour-vision modes

Choose Protanopia (red-weak), Deuteranopia (green-weak) or Tritanopia (blue-weak) under Colour vision. The app's status colours (the accent, warnings, bans and so on) change to a palette that stays easy to tell apart for that kind of colour vision. Two more switches go with it:

• Make chat name colours easier to tell apart shifts viewers' name colours away from the ones your vision merges together. It only changes how names look to you.
• Add symbols to status colours adds a small symbol to first-message, timed-out and banned labels, and underlines links, so nothing depends on colour alone.

I don't need mod tools

Not everyone who uses YappyChat moderates. Turn on I don't need mod tools when you log in, or later in Settings > Appearance, and everything that is only for moderating disappears, leaving a clean chat client:

• message buttons (delete, timeout, ban, warn), pinning and the tool icons in the chat header
• the AutoMod, Unbans, Firsts, Links and Mod actions tabs
• notes and rules, Session Information and the Shield menu
• the matching sections in Settings

Chat, replying, emotes, whispers, mentions, the stream window and your themes all stay. You can switch it off again at any time and nothing is lost.

Yappy

Yappy is the mascot in the corner. He suggests actions when he notices patterns: repeated deletions of the same word, a spam wave, a possible raid. He also tells you about whispers and, when you log in, how many of your channels are live.

• Click him to open his tab in the activity panel, with everything he has said.
• He buzzes when a notification arrives (a highlight, a first-timer, AutoMod, an alert): he shakes and goes cross-eyed so you notice even if you are not looking.
• He sits beside the Chat button, as tall as the button. Drag him anywhere you like and the message bar takes the full width; Reset position in Settings > Yappy puts him back. His speech bubbles always appear at the bottom middle of the window.

In Settings > Yappy: Show Yappy shows or hides the mascot; Which notices to show switches off individual kinds (going live, whispers, raids, ban-list matches, spam, Shield tips, word suggestions, tip reminders); Yappy notices keeps notices as small pop-ups when Yappy is hidden, or turns all of them off; Suggestions turns pattern suggestions off entirely.

How busy your chats are (Settings > Yappy > Spam) sets how big things have to get before Yappy speaks up. Automatic adjusts to each chat on its own: in a busy chat a copy-paste wave also has to be a fifth of what's being said, so a 1,000-person chat isn't told about every meme. Or pick Small, Medium, Large or Very large, or type your own numbers into the boxes (how many copies in how many seconds, how many first-timers, how many of your own actions, and how long he waits before suggesting the same thing again).

Sounds

The speaker button next to Settings changes the volume of all YappyChat sounds at once. In Settings > Sounds pick a tone for each event (highlight, watch-list chatter, someone going live, AutoMod, Yappy, first-timer, whisper, alert) or choose your own file: an mp3, wav or ogg up to 500 KB and 5 seconds.

Stream window

The stream button opens Twitch's own player, unmodified and following Twitch's embed rules: it is always at least 400x300 and nothing is drawn over it. It uses the same Twitch login as chat, so your subscriptions and Turbo apply.

• Nothing pauses it by accident. Opening settings, a dialog or another window does not pause the stream. Only Twitch's own pause button (or its keyboard shortcut) does. Dialogs open in the middle of the window; if one would land on the stream, the stream window slides out of the way while it is open instead of being covered or paused, and returns when you close it.
• Drag its header to a screen edge to snap it beside, above or below your chat, or drag it away to float it.
• The stream follows the active tab. The Follow active tab drop-down fixes it to one stream. Stream settings are in Settings > General.
• Use the volume control on the stream itself; the speaker button sets the volume of YappyChat's own sounds.

Snapping. Drag the stream window (or a chat) towards the edge of the chat area and a highlight shows where it will dock. This works with a single chat too, so you can put your chat above, below, left or right of the stream. GIFs sent in chat, pinned messages and drops show in the line and in a strip above it, each with an X to dismiss; Settings > Chat has a switch for each.

Several streams

Press + Add Stream next to the channel menu to add another stream, up to four. From two streams on, the streams sit along the top of the chat area and your chats below, and streams plus chats never go over six panes: 4 streams and 2 chats, 3 streams and 3 chats, 2 streams and 4 chats. Your saved split view is kept, so closing a stream gives the chats their room back. Each stream has its own channel menu and a × to close it; closing the first one makes the next one the main stream.

• Twitch's rules are kept for every stream. Each one is Twitch's own player, unmodified, with its video at least 400x300 and nothing of ours drawn over it. If your window is too small to give every stream that much room, YappyChat hides the streams and tells you instead of shrinking them; make the window bigger (or close a stream) and they come back by themselves. As a guide, four streams need roughly a full-HD window.
• New streams start muted, so several do not all play sound at once. Use each stream's own volume control.
• If a dialog would land on a stream, that stream is hidden for as long as it is open and comes back when you close it; the other streams stay visible and undimmed.
• Streams cannot be dragged around or snapped while there are several; they live in the grid. Back at one stream, it returns to its own floating or snapped window.

6. Security

YappyChat keeps your Twitch login encrypted by Windows for your user account only, never sends your chat anywhere, and asks Twitch for as little as it can. Settings > Security adds more:

The list of everything YappyChat can do on your Twitch account (Granted or Not granted, with a plain reason for each, plus a button to review the apps connected to your Twitch account) is in Settings > About, along with Reset window layout.

Behind the scenes, YappyChat also limits its own web requests to the handful of addresses it needs and denies browser permissions such as camera and microphone. See the privacy page.

Startup, tray and updates

In Settings > General:

• Start with Windows opens YappyChat when you sign in to your computer. Add Start minimised to the tray and it waits quietly in the tray instead of opening the window.
• When I close the window can be set to Minimise to the tray. YappyChat then keeps running; click the tray icon to bring it back or right-click it to quit.
• YappyChat checks for updates every few hours and offers a restart when one is ready.

7. Supporter perks

YappyChat is free. Perks are optional extras that everyone using the app can see: name effects, name plates, titles, message backgrounds, entrances, Yappy skins and sound packs, plus a Yappy-shaped supporter badge (white, bronze, silver or gold by the total you have spent). Each is bought once and follows your Twitch account.

Buying

Press the heart in the top bar. It opens yappy.chat/support in your browser, no code needed. Every card shows the perk the way it looks in the app, so you know what you are getting. Add what you like, sign in with Twitch, and pay on Stripe's or PayPal's own page. Your perks switch on within seconds.

Gifts and the supporter wall

Type a Twitch name in Gift this to to buy perks for someone else. Tick Keep me off the supporter wall if you would rather not be listed; you can change this later from the same page.

Seasonal packs

Halloween, Christmas and the other holiday packs go on sale a month before the holiday and stay for two weeks after. Each has a matching name effect, plate, title, entrance and Yappy skin.

Wearing your perks

Open Settings > Your Perks (press Check for new perks if something is missing) and choose what to wear. The preview at the top updates as you pick.

Message backgrounds

A message background is a soft tint behind everything someone says. Some drift gently. If you find them distracting, open Settings > Chat > Message backgrounds and choose Still (no movement) or Off.

Hovering

Hover a name, badge or title in chat to see its name. Click one to open the Perks page.

Helper, Tester and Contributor

These titles can't be bought. They are given to people who send good suggestions (Helper), help test the app (Tester) or help build it (Contributor). See how to get involved.

Yappy's tips

Click Yappy, the mascot beside the Chat button, and he shares a tip about a feature you may have missed. Right-click him instead and he squishes and squeaks like a stress ball, for when chat gets a bit much. Squeeze as often as you need. Press Show me to jump to it or Another tip for the next one. The tip bulb in the top bar and the Activity panel are still there too.

Partner streamers

Some streamers have collections made with them: a Yappy skin, a colour theme, a badge and a title, plus a bundle. They live on the Partners tab of the shop, each with the streamer's name and a link to add their channel. Partner badges and titles show to everyone, with a tooltip naming the streamer. Streamers who want a collection can find out more on the Get involved page.

Troubleshooting

"Session expired" or I keep being asked to log in

Log in again from the login screen. If it happens every time, update to the latest version.

A tool says it needs one more permission

That is expected the first time. Press Grant permission; you sign in to Twitch once and the tool opens. Settings > Security shows what is granted.

I cannot see the poll and prediction buttons

Twitch only lets the channel owner run these through apps, so the buttons (and raids, ads, markers and the title editor) only appear in your own channel. In someone else's channel, use Twitch's Mod View.

Mod actions or AutoMod are empty

You must be a moderator in the channel, and you need the latest permissions: log out and log in again.

Whispers or /alert do not arrive or cannot be sent

Log in again for the whisper permissions. To send, your Twitch account needs a verified phone number. For /alert the streamer must be using YappyChat and must not have turned alerts off.

A window is hidden, off the edge or in a strange place

Open Settings > About > Window layout > Reset. It closes and re-centres the stream window, turns split view off and puts the panels back to their default sizes. (This also happens by itself the first time YappyChat runs, so the welcome guide is never hidden behind a stream window.)

I do not see the mod buttons, tabs or tool icons

Check I don't need mod tools when you log in, or later in Settings > Appearance, is off, and that you actually moderate that channel.

YappyChat feels slow on my computer

Choose the Minimal theme, turn on Save power in the background, and shorten Keep Firsts and Joins for in Settings > Chat.

Emotes show as grey text

Open Settings > Emotes, press Reload emotes and Test emote images, and check your internet connection.

Recent messages are empty

The channel may be brand new to the recent-messages service, or you may have it switched off in Settings > Chat.

I forgot my passcode

On the lock screen choose Forgot it? Log out. That removes the lock and logs you out of Twitch; log in again to continue.

Where are my logs?

Chat logs are saved per channel per day in %APPDATA%\YappyChat\logs. Use the file button in the top bar to open the folder. Settings > Chat > Keep chat logs for shows how much room they take and can delete days older than 30 days, 90 days or a year; it waits a minute first, so you can undo.

Shortcuts

FAQ

Is YappyChat official?

No. It is an independent app that uses Twitch's public APIs. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Twitch.

Is it safe?

Your Twitch token stays on your computer, encrypted, and you can add a passcode lock. The only server YappyChat talks to besides Twitch, the emote services and the recent-messages service is the YappyChat supporter server, which receives your token only to confirm who you are when you change your perks (it does not keep it). See Security and the privacy page.

Why can I not start a poll or prediction as a moderator?

Twitch's own rules: only the channel owner can start them through an app, so YappyChat shows those buttons only in your own channel. See Polls, predictions, user list and more.

Does it work with Kick or YouTube?

Not yet. Both are coming soon. Tabs already have a coloured line to show which service a channel is on, ready for them.

Does it work on Mac or Linux?

Currently Windows only.

I have a suggestion, or something is broken

Use the lightbulb button in the app's top bar, or write to us on the contact page.