ultimate discord workflow

inspired by the primeagen's philosophy of never searching with eyes. go to the most frequently visited places in one keystroke, go to less frequently visited places with fuzzy finding, avoid any mental overhead as much as possible.

very keyboard centric, fit for managing bajillion discord servers without getting lost or overwhelmed by notifications. dont miss important things, ignore unimportant things.

grey dot

at the core of my workflow, is an experimental discord feature that called "grey dot". it allows you to never miss on the important messages, and ignore the unimportant messages.

the grey dot experiment adds a new state of a channel. in total you end up with the following:

• no dot: no unread messages
• grey dot: unimportant / ignored
• white dot: unread messages

when a channel is set to use grey dot, even if there are unread messages, it technically does not count as "unread" channel.

another quality of grey dot - if a new message comes in a grey dotted channel, the server as a whole will have no dot. only when a whitedotted channel receives a message, the server icon will show the white dot indicator.

notification settings

this experiment brings renewed notification settings. now you have two options you can adjust

1. unread badges can be "mention only" or "all messages".

   • mention only: only use white dot on mentions
   • all messages: use white dot for ever single message

2. notifications can be "none", "mention only" or "all messages"

   • controls whether you actually get a notification or not. options should be self-explanatory

enable grey dot

note: you dont actually need to have vencord installed at all times, but you need to temporarily install vencord, to enable an experimental feature first. after which you can uninstall vencord.

1. install vencord on any platform
2. enable "Experiments" plugin
3. go to "Experiments" in settings and look for grey dot
4. set it to "Treatment 2: Manually open migration"
5. go to "Notifications" settings, enable "new unread settings (experimental)"

upon enabling grey dot experiment, it will prompt you with a pop up where you can mass edit notification preferences of all your servers.

use this opportunity to set "mentions only" notification preset as default for text channels

and for announcement channels set unread badges to all messages, and notifications to mentions only.

done! after this you can safely uninstall vencord.

now, by default, a text channel is going to be gray dotted, and announcement channel is going to be whitedotted upon unread messages.

configure server layout

the server layout is built with purpose.

1. first 8 servers first 8 servers should be outside of a folder, these should be 8 servers where you chat most frequently. these servers usually have some non-announcement channels whitedotted, such as #general

2. "regular" folder these are the servers that you regularly visit, but do less chatting. also have some non-announcement channels whitedotted

3. "occasional" folder you rarely visit these servers, but sometimes chat in them and want to be a part of them.

4. "events" folder you dont chat in these servers, you only keep these for announcements, important news. or in case you want to ask help for help on their forums.

5. "archive" folder i never really need/want to visit, like a dedicated server for emojis or similar purpose servers.

hotkeys

now that all of the setup is done, here comes the fun part! the hotkeys i use, to quickly navigate around, relying on all of the previously described setup.

server navigation

to start off, introducing a hotkey to instantly move to a specific server: ctrl + <number>.

ctrl+

• 1 takes you to dms
• 2 takes you to 1st server
• 3 takes you to 2nd server ...
• 9 takes you 8th server

this is why it was important for the first 8 servers to be the ones you chat most frequently in! now whenever you want to send a message to one of these you can just instantly go ctrl+N and you are where you need to be, in a single keystroke, ready to type a message.

now, as to why these should be outside of a folder, rather than inside a folder, is so that whenever there a server has a white dot, you would see it. if these 8 servers were in a folder, and you were in one of the 8 servers, you would have no idea if another one of the 8 servers has a white dot.

unread messages navigation

now, since grey dot is technically not considered "unread", but rather "ignored". and since you only get white dot on important channels, its time to abuse this.

shift + alt + up/down - navigate up and down between unread channels in an instant.

saw a white dot appear on one of the server folders or the 8 servers? shift+alt+up/down your way there! goes to exactly where you need in a single keystroke.

a similar hotkey is ctrl + shift + alt + up/down, that moves you between places where you have been mentioned.

now, sometimes you dont want to actually move somewhere in order to read it. ctrl + i is used to open "inbox" which shows unread messages from your servers in order from top to bottom. you can then use ctrl+shift+e to mark the first channel as read, without actually visiting it.

in case you actually decide to visit the channel, assuming you start from direct messages, shift + alt + down should bring you to the top messages in inbox.

quick switcher

ctrl + k opens a pop up, where you can fuzzy find your way anywhere.

you can filter search results by entering the following characters at the start of your query

• * servers
• # channels
• @ directs
• ! voice

basic navigation

this is where the basic navigation starts. the following hotkeys are necessary to know, to complete the keyboard centric workflow.

to understand the following paragraphs you need to learn a new concept, the "focus ring". the focus ring is what appears in discord when pressing tab, it will appear as a blue outline around the focused UI element. if the focus ring is focused on a clickable UI element, you can press enter or space to tap that button.

f6 moves your focus ring to the start of the next "section", and shift + f6 moves focus ring in the opposite direction.

reading messages

shift + pageup moves you to the first unread message in the current channels, so you can start reading from the very start.

pageup / pagedown let you scroll up and down by 1 screen. make sure to disable "Reduced Motion" in "Accessibility" settings for smooth scrolling.

esc / shift + pagedown marks the current channel as read.

message actions

tap tab while the input box is focused, to spawn the focus ring in the chat box. use up or down arrow keys to select the right message.

the following hotkeys act on a message that you have selected in the focus ring.

• e edit
• f forward
• r reply
• t thread
• p pin
• + react
• <bs> delete
• <c-c> copy content

fun fact: the t hotkey for creating a thread on a selected message is not documented anywhere in the discord help pages.

if you want to follow a link from that message, or see what message they replied to, you can keep tapping tab to focus different parts of the message, and then tap enter or space to "tap" on the selected part of the message.

when you jump to the message they replied to, and want to act upon a message somewhere in that area: do keep in mind that the focus ring is left back at the reply. to sort of 're-focus' on the messages you see, you can use one of the following methods.

1. type anything in the input box, erase it, and then tap tab to re-spawn the focus ring

2. first tap f6 and then shift + f6

as for sending messages, if you want to open a gif / emoji / sticker picker you can use the following hotkeys

• ctrl + g gif
• ctrl + e emoji
• ctrl + s sticker

channels and servers

• alt + up/down to move between channels

• ctrl + alt + up/down to move between servers

• alt + left/right move back and forth in visit history

• ctrl + shift + alt + v jump to the active voice call

drag mode

discord has it's own drag mode, for re-ordering channels, servers, and anything thats draggable. first, press tab to summon the focus ring, then use f6 / shift + f6 to move between main discord sections, once you've selected a draggable item like a server, press ctrl + d to enter drag mode, and discord will show tips for using the drag mode.

conclusion

this workflow allows me to stay in as many servers as i want without feeling overwhelmed, and navigate around really quickly. i can comfortably ignore the unimportant messages, and instantly keep up with the important messages

this is not a complete documentation of my workflow, but it definitely covers the most important parts of my workflow. i strongly insist on reading the entire <c-/> menu and looking through vencord plugins for a more full experience.