How to Use the Discord Soundboard & Add More Sounds

🚨BRRRRRR!!! BRRRRRR!!! LISTEN UP!!! IT’S TIME TO LEARN ABOUT SOUNDBOARD!!! 🚨

Discord’s Soundboard feature lets you react to what’s going on in the call by playing quick soundbites at a moment’s notice. Something wild happen in-game? AIRHORN. Did a busy friend finally get the chance to join in the weekly game night? Audience CHEEER. A few minutes of awkward silence? Crickets… actual crickets…

So how’s the Soundboard work? Where do you find it, how do you add more Soundboard sounds, and can you adjust the volume of the sounds? OPEN YOUR EARHOLES and let’s check things out:

How to Use the Discord Soundboard

Soundboards are quick sound clips that you can play during a call in an instant. And where do you listen to stuff the most on Discord? Where your friends cheer after hitting the round-winning 5v1 Ace or completely flubbing it instead? In voice calls, of course! 

To use the Discord Soundboard on desktop, hop into any voice channel or DM voice call. In your voice control bar on the bottom of the call screen, you’ll see a 🎉 button. Click that, and you’ll open the Soundboard!  

To use the Discord Soundboard on mobile, join a voice call and drag up the tab from below. In this menu, you’ll see a button labeled “🎉 Soundboard” that will show you all the available sounds you can play. 

You can use the Soundboard in any server where you have permission to do so, along with any DM or Group DM calls. (Read here if you’re a server mod who’d like to restrict Soundboard usage.)

How to Add and Remove New Soundboard Sounds

Everyone gets access to six built-in Soundboard sounds: Quack, Airhorn, Cricket, Golf Clap, Sad Horn, and a good ol’ Da Bum Diss for when you make a joke that didn’t quite hit. Your joke was great, they just don’t get it. 

But what if you wanna add your own? Soundboard sounds live in servers, just like emoji and stickers. If you’ve ever uploaded an emoji, you know how easy it is. 

To upload a sound to your server, head into Server Settings > Soundboard, then press “Upload Sound.” Then just pick a sound file and upload it! 

What file types does the Discord Soundboard accept, and what’s needed to add it after you find the perfect sound? Let’s lay out the requirements:

• Sound Name: Share what’s said in the sound (“LISTEN!”), or explain what the sound is (“Car Horn”). 
• File Type: .MP3
• File Size: Up to 512kb
• Sound length: Up to 5 seconds
• Related Emoji: A visual representation of the sound. It can either be a default emoji or a custom one from your community. 
• Sound Volume: Optionally, adjust the default volume a sound plays if your sound is already ear-piercingly loud. 

How to Favorite a Soundboard Sound for Quick Access

You can favorite soundboard sounds!? Holy moly. 

Favoriting sounds will pin them to the top of your Soundboard list so you can QUICKLY reach that honk, fart noise, LOUDER airhorn or whatever you’ve decided is worth playing more than the others. (I’m not allowed to say spam.) 

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Alt-text: Demonstration of favoriting a sound. 

On the desktop app, click the ⭐️ button that appears when you hover over a sound, and it’ll be added to a new Favorites category at the top of your sound list. 

On mobile, long-press on a sound and an “Add to Favorites” option will appear. Tap that to add it to your Favorites collection. 

Favorite sounds sync across platforms, so if you suddenly find a hidden treasure among all your available sounds, save it for later (responsible) use. 

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How to Make the Soundboard Quieter or Louder for You

Soundboard can REALLY kickstart a lot of rambunctious activity, but some sounds can be a bit more, let’s say… distracting than others. The fire alarm chirp. The extremely convincing door knock. Tim’s mid-game victory scream that was recorded and added to the server Soundboard (he doesn’t know yet). 

Thankfully, you can adjust the volume of *all* sounds overall, letting you hear them without overpowering the conversation by heading to User Settings > Voice & Video > Soundboard. 

In here, you’ll see an option to “control how loud sounds are for you personally,” and a slider to choose the volume you’d like! Remember, this adjusts all sounds you hear, so that reaaaallly quiet sound of Tim snoring will be extra quiet. Maybe he’ll hear it played one day… 

You can mute the Discord Soundboard entirely by setting the volume to 0%. But you won’t be left out of the fun! Even if you mute the soundboard, you’ll still see a sound’s associated emoji pop up when someone uses a sound, that way you’ll know why everyone suddenly burst into laughter.

In this menu, you may have noticed an option right below that called “Entrance Sounds.” What’s that, huh? Let’s talk about it:

How to Use Your Soundboard Sounds in Any Call with Nitro

By default, any server can use its own saved sounds. If you’re a Discord Nitro member, you have EXTRA Soundboard powers. 

Nitro members can use all the Soundboard sounds they have access to in any server or DM call. Yes, that includes your cursed collection of fart-noises-with-reverb, gaming soundbites, and quotes that you’ve been repeating. Bring ‘em everywhere. Let the world hear them. Over and over. They’ll LOVE it. 

And since Nitro members can play any sound they have access to, they also receive a small bonus perk alongside it: Nitro members can have one of their favorite sounds play *automatically* when they join a server’s voice channel. You can even pick and choose which sound plays for each server! 

QUACK in one server, hoonk hooonk in another server, AWEBO AWEBO in your personal server. Your soundboard’s gonna be put to wayyyy more use soon.

I’m a Moderator! Can I Prevent my Server Members from Using Sounds Outside of my Discord Server?

Soundboard can be incredibly fun, but for really big servers with THOUSANDS of members, it may not be the best idea to let just any of those thousands of people use any sound they want. 

You can restrict certain roles from either using sounds from outside the server or using the Soundboard altogether by heading into User Settings > Roles. 

From here, you can select one of your server’s roles and toggle on or off the “Use Soundboard” or “Use External Sounds” permission on a per-role basis. 

Outside of the Roles page, you can also adjust the permission on a per-channel basis by right-clicking on a channel, going to the Permissions tab, and clicking Advanced Settings. This’ll let you override a Role’s usual permissions JUST for that channel.

It’s useful for containing Soundboard and other features, such as Activities, in one chaotic voice channel where people can go CRAZY showing off ALLLL their sounds while keeping the rest of the server sane. Well, relatively sane. We aren’t doing boring work in these servers, ya’know? 

🦆🦆HONK HONK! HONK HONK! HONKHONKHONKHONKHONKHONK! 🦆🦆

That’s you playing the newly-added sounds that you’ve added to your Discord server. No, that wasn’t the default Honk. It’s 50 different varieties of duck sounds, and EVERYONE is going to hear them now. What else are friends for, anyways? 

If you’re still needing some guidance on how to use the Soundboard, check our Help Center article here. You can also send our support team a message, which is almost like listening to a soundboard sound. Except you have to read it, like you’re doing to this sentence. What do you think we sound like, huh? 

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