Permissions

Permissions in Discord are a way to limit and grant certain abilities to users. A set of base permissions can be configured at the guild level for different roles. When these roles are attached to users, they grant or revoke specific privileges within the guild. Along with the guild-level permissions, Discord also supports permission overwrites that can be assigned to individual guild roles or guild members on a per-channel basis.

Permissions are stored within a variable-length integer serialized into a string, and are calculated using bitwise operations. For example, the permission value 123 will be serialized as "123". For long-term stability, we recommend deserializing the permissions using your languages' Big Integer libraries. The total permissions integer can be determined by ORing together each individual value, and flags can be checked using AND operations.

In API v8, all permissions—including allow and deny fields in overwrites—are serialized as strings. There are also no longer _new permission fields; all new permissions are rolled back into the base field.

In API v6, the permissions, allow, and deny fields in roles and overwrites are still serialized as a number; however, these numbers shall not grow beyond 31 bits. During the remaining lifetime of API v6, all new permission bits will only be introduced in permissions_new, allow_new, and deny_new. These _new fields are just for response serialization; requests with these fields should continue to use the original permissions, allow, and deny fields, which accept both string or number values.

python
# Permissions value that can Send Messages (0x800) and Add Reactions (0x40):
permissions = 0x40 | 0x800 # 2112

# Checking for flags that are set:
(permissions & 0x40) == 0x40   # True
(permissions & 0x800) == 0x800 # True

# Kick Members (0x2) was not set:
(permissions & 0x2) == 0x2 # False

Additional logic is required when permission overwrites are involved; this is further explained below. For more information about bitwise operations and flags, see this page.

Below is a table of all current permissions, their integer values in hexadecimal, brief descriptions of the privileges that they grant, and the channel type they apply to, if applicable.

* These permissions require the owner account to use two-factor authentication when used on a guild that has server-wide 2FA enabled.

Note that these internal permission names may be referred to differently by the Discord client. For example, "Manage Permissions" refers to MANAGE_ROLES and "Use Voice Activity" refers to USE_VAD.

How permissions apply may at first seem intuitive, but there are some hidden restrictions that prevent bots from performing certain inappropriate actions based on a bot's highest role compared to its target's highest role. A bot's or user's highest role is its role that has the greatest position value in the guild, with the default @everyone role starting at 0. Permissions follow a hierarchy with the following rules:

• A bot can grant roles to other users that are of a lower position than its own highest role.
• A bot can edit roles of a lower position than its highest role, but it can only grant permissions it has to those roles.
• A bot can only sort roles lower than its highest role.
• A bot can only kick, ban, and edit nicknames for users whose highest role is lower than the bot's highest role.

Otherwise, permissions do not obey the role hierarchy. For example, a user has two roles: A and B. A denies the VIEW_CHANNEL permission on a #coolstuff channel. B allows the VIEW_CHANNEL permission on the same #coolstuff channel. The user would ultimately be able to view the #coolstuff channel, regardless of the role positions.

Certain permissions can be applied to roles or directly to members on a channel-level by using permission overwrites. Applicable permissions are indicated by a T for text channels, V for voice channels, or S for stage channels in the table above.

When using overwrites, there are cases where permission collisions could occur for a user; that is to say, the user may have certain overwrites with permissions that contradict each other or their guild-level role permissions. With this in mind, permissions are applied to users in the following hierarchy:

1. Base permissions given to @everyone are applied at a guild level
2. Permissions allowed to a user by their roles are applied at a guild level
3. Overwrites that deny permissions for @everyone are applied at a channel level
4. Overwrites that allow permissions for @everyone are applied at a channel level
5. Overwrites that deny permissions for specific roles are applied at a channel level
6. Overwrites that allow permissions for specific roles are applied at a channel level
7. Member-specific overwrites that deny permissions are applied at a channel level
8. Member-specific overwrites that allow permissions are applied at a channel level

The following pseudocode demonstrates this process programmatically:

python
def compute_base_permissions(member, guild):
    if guild.is_owner(member):
        return ALL

    role_everyone = guild.get_role(guild.id)  # get @everyone role
    permissions = role_everyone.permissions

    for role in member.roles:
        permissions |= role.permissions

    if permissions & ADMINISTRATOR == ADMINISTRATOR:
        return ALL

    return permissions

def compute_overwrites(base_permissions, member, channel):
    # ADMINISTRATOR overrides any potential permission overwrites, so there is nothing to do here.
    if base_permissions & ADMINISTRATOR == ADMINISTRATOR:
        return ALL

    permissions = base_permissions
    overwrite_everyone = overwrites.get(channel.guild_id)  # Find (@everyone) role overwrite and apply it.
    if overwrite_everyone:
        permissions &= ~overwrite_everyone.deny
        permissions |= overwrite_everyone.allow

    # Apply role specific overwrites.
    overwrites = channel.permission_overwrites
    allow = NONE
    deny = NONE
    for role_id in member.roles:
        overwrite_role = overwrites.get(role_id)
        if overwrite_role:
            allow |= overwrite_role.allow
            deny |= overwrite_role.deny

    permissions &= ~deny
    permissions |= allow

    # Apply member specific overwrite if it exist.
    overwrite_member = overwrites.get(member.user_id)
    if overwrite_member:
        permissions &= ~overwrite_member.deny
        permissions |= overwrite_member.allow

    return permissions

def compute_permissions(member, channel):
    base_permissions = compute_base_permissions(member, channel.guild)
    return compute_overwrites(base_permissions, member, channel)

Permissions in Discord are sometimes implicitly denied or allowed based on logical use. The two main cases are VIEW_CHANNEL and SEND_MESSAGES for text channels. Denying a user or a role VIEW_CHANNEL on a channel implicitly denies other permissions on the channel. Though permissions like SEND_MESSAGES are not explicitly denied for the user, they are ignored because the user cannot read messages in the channel.

Denying SEND_MESSAGES implicitly denies MENTION_EVERYONE, SEND_TTS_MESSAGES, ATTACH_FILES, and EMBED_LINKS. Again, they are not explicitly denied when doing permissions calculations, but they are ignored because the user cannot do the base action of sending messages.

There may be other cases in which certain permissions implicitly deny or allow other permissions. In all cases, it is based on logical conclusions about how a user with certain permissions should or should not interact with Discord.

Threads inherit permissions from the parent channel (the channel they were created in).

Users must have the VIEW_CHANNEL permission to view any threads in the channel, even if they are directly mentioned or added to the thread.

Users can create a thread if they have both the SEND_MESSAGES permission and the appropriate threads permission (USE_PUBLIC_THREADS for public threads, USE_PRIVATE_THREADS for private threads) on the parent channel.

Users can participate in a thread if they have either the SEND_MESSAGES permission or the appropriate threads permission (USE_PUBLIC_THREADS for public threads, USE_PRIVATE_THREADS for private threads) on the parent channel.

Permissions with regards to categories and channels within categories are a bit tricky. Rather than inheritance, permissions are calculated by means of what we call Permission Syncing. If a child channel has the same permissions and overwrites (or lack thereof) as its parent category, the channel is considered "synced" to the category. Any further changes to a parent category will be reflected in its synced child channels. Any further changes to a child channel will cause it to become de-synced from its parent category, and its permissions will no longer change with changes to its parent category.

Roles represent a set of permissions attached to a group of users. Roles have unique names, colors, and can be "pinned" to the side bar, causing their members to be listed separately. Roles are unique per guild, and can have separate permission profiles for the global context (guild) and channel context. The @everyone role has the same ID as the guild it belongs to.

Roles without colors (color == 0) do not count towards the final computed color in the user list.

json
{
  "id": "41771983423143936",
  "name": "WE DEM BOYZZ!!!!!!",
  "color": 3447003,
  "hoist": true,
  "position": 1,
  "permissions": "66321471",
  "managed": false,
  "mentionable": false
}