Discord Roles – 7 Easy Steps and 29 Best Permissions

Discord was originally designed for gamers, but now it became so popular that tens of millions of people from various communities use it.

Discord Roles

After explaining what Discord is, it is now only logical to explain what are Discord roles-the main topic of this text.

Well, a role on Discord is a set of permissions.

Namely, each role has its name and contains certain permissions.

Therefore, you name a certain role and then add permissions to it.

Basically, we could say that roles are some kind of rank in the Discord community.

Roles and permissions can be created and assigned on the server and channel level.

So, without further ado, let’s answer the crucial question in this text: how to create roles in Discord?

How to Make Roles in Discord?

First of all, be aware that, as the creator of your Discord server you don’t need to have any roles or permissions and, thus, you don’t have to assign them to yourself.

You’ll, as the server owner, have access to everything.

Now, I shall explain to you how to make a role in Discord step by step.

Step 1

Firstly, find the “Server Settings” menu and then the Roles tab in that menu.

Step 2

Click on the arrow next to your server name.

Step 3

After you’ve completed the second step a drop-down menu will appear.

Click the “Server Settings” button.

Step 4

After clicking on the “Server Settings” button another menu will open.

There you should choose the “Roles” option.

Step 5

Now the “role creating” screen will appear.

Keep in mind that there is one role that is automatically created without your impact and that is the “@everyone” role.

This role will automatically be assigned to any member of your server who doesn’t have any other specific roles.

So, within this @everyone role, you’ll be able to define some general permissions for, let’s say, ordinary members of your server.

For creating a new role just click the “+” icon.

Step 6

Now you’ll be able to pick the role name, add color to it and choose permissions that role will contain.

Step 7

Finally, don’t forget to click the “Save Changes” button so that all your previous work wouldn’t be lost.

How to Assign Roles in Discord?

After creating roles, you will probably wonder how to add roles in Discord to your online members.

To do that, again, open the “Server Settings” menu.

Choose the “Members” tab.

Then just choose the member you want to assign the role to and click the “+” icon next to their name.

The drop-down menu will appear and then you can choose the role you want to assign to that member.

After you’ve assigned a certain role to a certain member, that member will have all the permissions that you added to the role you assigned to him.

Related: How to Make Discord Emotes

Discord Permissions

Before creating a role and adding permissions to that role, you need to know which permissions are available on Discord.

That’s why I will mention all the permissions that can be assigned to some role and, most importantly, define each of them, so that you would be aware of what certain permission means and what will some of your members be allowed to do after you assign a certain role to them.

Now, there are 29 permissions and they are categorized into 3 groups: voice, text, and general permissions.

Furthermore, there are 7 voice, 9 text, and 13 general permissions.

I’ll start with the smallest group.

Voice Permissions

1. Speak

As you can probably conclude, this permission allows users to speak on your channel.

2. Connect

On the contrary, this one’s function probably cannot be concluded from its name and that function is to allow users to hear stuff on your channel.

3. Use Voice Activity

With this permission, users will be able to speak without having to use Push-to-Talk.

4. Deafen Members

This permission allows users to turn off some other user’s ability to hear.

5. Mute Members

Similar to the previous one, this permission lets users to turn off some other user’s ability to speak.

6. Priority Speaker

With this permission, some user is allowed to reduce the volume of some other users so that that user’s voice would sound louder.

7. Move Members

One more time the name basically reveals everything.

This permission allows users to move other users from one channel to another.

Text Permissions

1. Read Message History

The first of the text permissions that I would mention allows users to have access to the messages that have been previously sent.

2. Embed Links

This one permits users to insert hyperlinks in the chat.

3. Send Messages

Even though you would probably think that this permission should be one of the general ones that should be applied to everyone, there is a special permission that allows you to send messages in the chat and that’s this one.

4. Mention Everyone

With this permission, users will be able to trigger push notifications in the chat.

5. Attach Files

This one’s function is very difficult to figure out.

Jokes aside, this one, logically, allows users to attach files in the chat.

6. Add Reactions

Similar to the previous one, the name speaks for itself.

With this permission, users will be allowed to add new reactions in the chat.

7. Send TTS Messages

For those of you who don’t know it, TTS stands for “text-to-speech”.

So, this permission allows users to send TTS messages in the chat.

8. Use External Emojis

In case you want to use emojis from some other Discord server or some other external emojis such as Twitch global emojis, you won’t be able to do that unless you have this particular permission.

9. Manage Messages

This permission lets users organize other users’ messages, for example, pin them or delete them.

General Permissions

1. Manage Roles

This permission allows users to create new roles for Discord or edit existing roles.

However, only the roles without “Manage Roles” permission are allowed to be edited.

2. Administrator

Perhaps the permission that gives users the greatest power.

Namely, the user that has this permission will have every server permission there is.

Therefore, for this user, there will be no boundaries and everything will be allowed to him.

3. Kick Members

If the previous permission gave users the biggest power, this one will just make them feel very powerful and important because this permission will allow users to kick other users from the server.

4. Change Nickname

I suppose you thought that this permission allowed you to change other user’s nickname which, I admit, would cause a lot of jokes and would be very funny.

Nevertheless, I have to disappoint you.

This permission allows you to change your nickname only.

5. Manage Server

This permission allows users to move servers to different regions or to change servers’ names.

6. Manage Channels

With this permission, users can delete, create and edit channels on the server.

7. Create Instant Invite

If you have this permission you’ll be able to invite other users to join your server.

8. View Audit Log

As you can probably guess, this permission allows users to read audit logs of the server.

9. Ban Members

Similar to number 3, this permission allows users to ban other users from the server.

10. Manage Nicknames

Now one happy piece of information for people who found number 4 disappointing.

This permission allows users to change other users’ nicknames.

11. Manage Webhooks

With this permission, users are allowed to edit, delete and create webhooks.

12. Manage Emojis

With this permission, users are allowed to manage and organize emojis on the server.

13. Read Text Channels & See Voice Channels

The last permission on the list allows users to read the message channels.

Normally, users who don’t have access to your channel would see the name of the channel and that the channel is locked.

However, if you apply this permission to your channel, users who don’t have access to that channel won’t even be able to see that it exists.

How to Set Up Permissions?

If you are setting up permissions for a channel, just choose the channel you want to set up permissions on and click the cog icon next to the channel’s name.

Then the “Channel Settings Menu” will open and then click the “Permissions” tab.

There you’ll see the box with roles or members to whom those permissions will be applied and the list of permissions on the right side of the screen.

Afterward, the process is very simple.

You’ll see the green “check” button which enables permissions and the red “X” button which denies permissions.

Finally, after you’ve added permissions and created roles you can assign them to users.

Category permissions

A channel can be either “synced” or “non-synced”.

If a channel is synced its permissions will completely match with the permissions of a category.

You can change category permissions if you right-click the category and then choose the “Edit Category” option from the drop-down menu.

However, if you move channels between categories and yet don’t sync the permissions then the notification which says that your channel isn’t synced with the category will show up on your screen.

Therefore, when you make changes to the category permissions your channel won’t update automatically.

But this problem is easy to solve.

Under the notification that the channel and the category are not synced, you will see a big “Sync Now” button.

Just click it and your channel permissions will automatically match with the category permissions.

Finally, keep in mind that all your channels can be “non-synced” and you can organize them individually and remember that if you change category permissions, those changes will apply only to “synced” channels.

Adding Roles via Discord Mobile App

Now, I will answer another common question and that is: how to add roles on Discord Mobile?

If you want to assign roles on Discord on your phone, you will, logically, need to have the Discord app.

If you have it, open it, then open the “Settings” menu and choose the “Members” option.

Then click on the nickname of the member to whom you want to assign roles.

The drop-down menu with different roles will appear and you just need to click on the checkbox next to the role you want to assign.

You can also edit roles on your mobile phone.

The editing option can also be found in the “Settings” menu, under the “Roles” option.

Role Management & Deleting Roles

Although you channel can function with only “admin” and “@everyone” role, as your community grows you’ll probably want to create some more roles and assign them to your members.

Another good thing about roles is that users’ usernames will display the color of the highest role that has been assigned to them.

You can also enable the “Display role members separately from online members” setting.

This option will help you make a distinction between, let’s say, ordinary and non-ordinary members, and manage the hierarchy on your channel.

This way, users will easily recognize moderators and admins on the server.

When it comes to deleting roles, you basically don’t even need to delete them, you can simply not assign them.

However, if you still want to delete roles just open “Server Settings”, chose the “Roles” option, pick the role you want to delete, click the “Delete” button on the bottom of your screen and confirm that action by clicking “Okay”.

Related: Best Discord Bots – Top 9 Bots for Discord

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

We hope that you found this text useful and helpful no matter whether you are an experienced user of Discord or a rookie and hopefully we answered the most important questions: how to make roles on Discord and how to add roles on Discord.

And if you are still thinking about starting to use Discord, I’m sure we opened its door to you.

The world of Discord is extremely interesting and if you managed to realize that after reading this text then our goal is fulfilled.