Temporary Voice Channels on Discord: Setting Up Join to Create Properly

Almost every server starts with fixed voice channels: "Talk 1" to "Talk 5", plus a few for games. Half a year later there are fifteen, two of them are busy in the evening, and whoever wants a quiet round with three people still ends up with strangers. Or there are too few, and one conversation pushes the next one out.

Join to create turns this around. There is only one channel to join, the creator channel. Whoever joins it gets a voice channel of their own right away and is moved into it. Once the channel is empty again, the bot deletes it. The channel list then shows exactly the conversations that are going on.

Four decisions before the setup

The bot is set up in five minutes. Whether people actually use the system depends on four things you settle first.

1. Where the channels appear

New channels land in a category. If you leave the field empty, the bot uses the creator channel's category. That is usually right: the creator channel on top, the running conversations below it. A category of their own pays off when you want to treat them separately, for example for other permissions or as an exclusion for the AFK Room and Voice Roles, more on that below.

2. What they are called

The name pattern sets the name of every new channel. Two placeholders are available: {user} for the owner's name and {count} for a running number. The default is 🔊 {user}, so for example "🔊 Max". That has an advantage you only notice later: in the channel list everyone sees whose channel it is, and whom to ask before joining.

{count} fits better when the channels are rooms rather than private rounds, for example "Squad {count}".

3. How many fit in

The user limit caps the seats, 0 means unlimited. With a single creator channel this is a default that the owner can change afterwards. It gets more interesting with several: "Create duo" with a limit of 2, "Create squad" with a limit of 5, "Big room" without a limit. Members then pick what they are up to when they join and do not have to adjust anything.

Without Premium you can have one creator channel, with Premium up to five. Every creator channel belongs to exactly one setup.

4. How much the owner may do

In the new channel the bot posts a message with buttons the owner uses to control their channel:

• Rename and change the Limit
• Lock and Unlock: nobody new can join
• Hide and Show: the channel disappears from the list
• Kick and Ban: throw someone out, with a ban also keep them out for good, Unban lets them back in
• Transfer: hand the channel to someone in it
• Claim: take over a channel whose owner has left
• Co-Owner: a second person who may control almost everything, except transferring and picking a co-owner

That is a lot on purpose. A private channel is only private if the owner can throw out uninvited guests themselves, without calling the team. Nobody can kick or ban the owner through the buttons.

One thing is still worth keeping in mind: whoever may rename their channel can also put nonsense there, and the name is visible to everyone in the channel list. Your team can delete any channel in Discord as usual. If this happens often on your server, a name pattern with {count} is worth considering, then an odd name at least stands out sooner.

Why empty channels really disappear

The biggest annoyance with temporary channels is the ones that do not go away. As soon as the last person leaves a channel, the bot deletes it; bots in the channel do not count. If deleting fails once, it tries again on the next leave or after the next restart. Channels that emptied while the bot was restarting are cleaned up when it starts.

Two small rules keep anyone from flooding the channel list: whoever already has a channel of their own and joins the creator channel again ends up back in their existing channel instead of a new one. And there are at least ten seconds between two new channels per member.

Together with AFK Room and Voice Roles

AFK Room. If the AFK Room moves someone out of a temporary channel and the channel becomes empty, the bot deletes it. If the AFK Room later brings the person back, for example because they write in the chat again, the old channel no longer exists. For that the AFK Room has a fallback channel it then brings members back to. Set it if you use both.

Voice Roles. If you use voice roles, you can exclude the category with the temporary channels from the role for any voice channel or give it a role of its own, like "In a private round". The member list then shows who sits in an open conversation and who would rather keep to themselves right now.

The setup

1. Create a normal voice channel in Discord, for example "➕ Create your own channel"
2. In the panel, enable the Temp Voice module under Moderation
3. Add a setup: creator channel, category, name pattern and user limit
4. Optionally set a log channel that records every creation and deletion
5. Save and join once yourself

For this the bot needs the Manage Channels, Move Members, View Channels and Connect permissions. You can redesign the message with the buttons under Message inside the voice channel in the Message Builder; the control buttons always stay in it. Every field is in the Temp Voice documentation.