Slack made recently a few changes to its free plan, limiting the storage of messages for the last 90 days instead of the previous limit of 10,000 messages. There are ways to work around this limitation, but I suspect that more than a few communities will move to Discord instead.
If you were part of that migration, you might find Discord looks and feels a little… weird compared to what you’re used to. Here’s how to make it a little more comfortable.
Switch to Light Mode
Let’s start with the most obvious difference: Discord is dark by default, even if your computer or phone isn’t set to dark.
That might look familiar if you’ve used Slack in dark mode, but for those in light mode, this looks strange. You can change Discord to work in light mode by clicking the gear next to your name in the bottom left corner, which opens User settings. Towards Appearance and you will find the option to enable Light topic. Also, if you are someone who often switches between dark and light mode, you can use Synchronize with PC option to keep Discord in line with everything else.
Discord via Justin Pot
Add a little contrast
Discord’s light mode turns everything bright, including the left sidebar. This, for Slack users, makes it easy for users to get lost – there’s no difference between the channel list and the rest of the UI. That’s why I also recommend you to check Dark sidebar. Turn it on and the left panel will go dark in light mode, which means it stands out visually. This goes a long way.
Discord via Justin Pot
Change Font and Color (Slightly)
A little below the Theme options is Font Scaling. The closest you can get to Slack’s default font is to change it Chat font scaling grant to 16px and Spacing between groups of messages arrive 4pxor just tweak things until they work for you.
Finally, if you’re not a fan of how some people’s usernames come in different colors, go to the section Accessibility section. Usernames in the Discord server are colored according to their role (usually given by admins to sort people into groups based on interests, moderator or admin roles, or special statuses) other) in the server. If you want every username to look the same, check Do not display the color of the role—Because everyone will have the same color, just like in Slack. (Also, if you don’t want to lose this context, you can choose Show role color next to name and a colored circle will show up next to their name.)
Finally, you can reduce the color in general by adjusting Saturation. This will mute the various blues in the UI, as well as the role colors.
Add the custom emoji you’ve come to love so much to Slack
Each Slack ends up picking a seemingly limitless number of custom emojis, so if you’ve recently migrated to Discord, you might miss them. The good news is that you can take some of them with you; The bad news is, not all of them. Each server can provide up to 50 emojis. Each server can also offer up to 50 animated emojis, though only paid Discord Nitro customers can use them.
Having said that, find and add your favorite emoji. Odds are they can be found at Slackmojis and its closely related sister site Discordmojis, so search there and download the ones you want. Now, in Discord, click on the name of the current server in the top left corner and click Server settings. Towards Emoticon and you can upload up to 50 custom emojis. If the Emoji option isn’t there, it’s because you don’t have permission to upload emojis to the server, you can ask the admin to give it to you. Everyone on your server can use the emoji you add.
Discord is not like Slack, and it never will be. That’s not to say you can’t make it a little more familiar. These tweaks will get you closer.
