When it comes to online streaming, specifically streaming video games, Twitch probably holds the highest position in terms of popularity. With more or less 15 million users daily and more than 2 million broadcasts in a month, it’s not hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of daily activities on that platform.
As a Twitch streamer, it’s vital to engage and interact with your viewers, and one of the best ways to do this is by reading the comments or chats during your stream. Comments are incredibly important, especially since these typically contain jokes, advice, memes, suggestions, and more.
However, if you’ve accumulated a lot of viewers, it can be challenging to keep track of all the comments coming your way. Not only that, Twitch doesn’t make things easier for content creators, as the chats typically fly by due to how fast everything is.
So, what do you do if you see an interesting comment that you want to check out or read a negative review that you want to keep in mind? Fortunately, there are different ways you can read and review all the messages in your chat logs—and that’s what we’ll talk about in-depth in this article.
What Is Twitch?
Before anything else, let’s first discuss what Twitch is all about. Twitch is the number one platform that gamers go to whenever they feel like watching streams of their favorite content creators. While the platform has been around since 2011, the 2020 pandemic caused a surge in popularity as people stayed home under lockdown.
Whether you enjoy watching gameplay videos or simple Q&A chats with your favorite content creators, you’ll surely find a community you love at Twitch. To help streamers engage with their audience, Twitch provided both parties with Twitch Chat. Through this feature, viewers can interact with other viewers and direct messages to the streamer.
What Are Twitch Chat Logs?
We mentioned Twitch chat logs briefly, but what are they exactly? As mentioned, Twitch Chat allows both streamers and viewers to interact with one another while a stream is ongoing. So, a chat log is essentially the entire chat history of a specific stream or broadcast.
Chat logs are a convenient way for streamers to backread and check what kind of comments were being sent and ensure that there are no inappropriate or hurtful ones. In this way, they can also ensure that their community is clean and safe.
Reasons to Check Your Twitch Logs
When streaming on Twitch, you can’t expect that you’ll only get positive reactions and messages from your audience. Chats could be anything, from spam, negative feedback, and complaints mixed in with positive and supportive messages.
If you want to know how to improve your channel and overall content—ultimately making your audience happy—the best way is to check the chat log. If you’re still on the fence about the importance of checking and moderating your chat logs, we’ve compiled some good reasons below:
1. Find Opportunities
Believe it or not, but there’s always a chance that your lengthy chat logs are hiding significant opportunities for you. For example, perhaps a big channel dropped a message to collaborate with you, or a well-known company wants you to promote their products. It might not be a common occurrence, but it really can’t hurt to check just in case.
2. Examine Disciplinary Actions
More often than not, there are so many instances when users get unfairly banned from your channel either by your moderators or by Twitch itself. By checking the chat logs, there’s a chance that the user appealed to you and informed you about the ban. Of course, you need to check their comment first that led to them being banned, and if you see that it doesn’t violate any rules, you can then appeal to Twitch or your moderators to lift the said ban.
Even if the user initially said something terrible, a temporary ban is already enough rather than being permanently cast away. Plus, this is a great way to check if your moderators are banning users due to personal agendas. Your viewers will surely appreciate you for showing how much you care about them.
3. Look For Inappropriate Comments
Suppose you’ve accumulated a decent following, so much so that you can consider yourself to be a big channel. In that case, you definitely understand what it’s like having to deal with a deluge of messages every time you stream. Since your viewers are more often than not complete strangers, there’s a very high tendency for some of these users to start to troll and cyberbully others.
Even though the Twitch team is doing everything they can to get rid of such appropriate behavior, some still pass through the cracks. That’s why it’s essential for you to regularly check your chat logs for inappropriate comments because choosing to have that kind of user pollute your community can seriously affect your channel. In fact, you could risk losing a lot of followers if you don’t do anything about trolls.
4. Gather Feedback
Of course, you won’t find just negative comments or spam within your chat logs. You’ll also see comments that give you insight into improving your channel and boosting it to greater heights every now and then.
5. Understand Your Audience Better
Similar to the previous point, checking your Twitch chat logs allows you to understand the different ways your audience reacts to what you say, do, or broadcast. Viewers typically put out their thoughts on Twitch Chat, so you’ll know which parts they found boring within your stream and which parts they enjoyed the most.
In general, this helps you understand what your audience wants from you to improve your content even more.
6. Familiarize Yourself With New Slang and Memes
If you’ve been a Twitch streamer for a while, you’ll eventually build a community full of loyal followers who constantly watch your broadcasts. When this happens, your followers will begin to create inside jokes, slang, memes, and other such content related to you and your channel.
It’s essential to familiarize yourself with these as soon as they come out because not only are they fun, but they can also boost your engagement.
7. Hunt Down Spammers
Lastly, it’s essential to check your Twitch chat logs because spammers never stay down. When a user violates Twitch’s TOS or breaks your personal channel rules, they would typically get banned as a punishment. However, many users tend to create new accounts to keep spamming or trolling your community.
So, by accessing your chat logs, you can see when a specific account was first made, and you can also check what kind of comments they typically send in the Twitch Chat. Using the information you’ve gathered, you’ll be able to identify the similarities between the new user and the old banned user. From there, you can ban that burner or spam account, ultimately keeping your channel clean.
5 Ways to Check Your Twitch Logs
Now that you understand why checking your Twitch logs is vital, here are five different ways you can access these logs.
1. Through a Third-Party Program
Although Twitch has its own chat tracking tools you can use, they typically aren’t that robust and comprehensive. For the most part, you’ll be left still wanting more. Because of this, most content creators turn to third-party programs such as Chatty to assist them in monitoring all their comments for an extended time.
Chatty, a Java-based open-source software, is quite popular among Twitch streamers, primarily because it’s jam-packed with excellent features that help you stay on top of everything. That said, it might take some time for you to get used to the interface, as it’s inspired by the classic IRC clients. We also recommend that streamers use VPNs to hide their location from third-party software and avoid being tracked.
2. By Changing to Moderator View
If you’re a Twitch moderator, this tip will be life-changing. To quickly check the chat logs, all you need to do is switch Twitch to Moderator’s view. From there, you can select any username that catches your attention to see what they’ve been chatting about on the stream.
To go to Mod View, tap on the sword icon situated on the bottom-right corner of your screen. You’ll see many helpful information here, such as their past chats, how many times they’ve been banned, etc.
3. Through a Chatbot
Another way you can easily monitor your Twitch logs is by using a Chatbot. One of the most popular Chatbot among streamers these days is called Nightbot, and you can rely on it to ensure that your channel’s chat section is maintained and conducive to its viewers.
Streamlabs also has a fantastic Chatbot you can check out if you’re looking for other options. If you don’t have moderators for your channel, these Chatbots can become your moderator for you and can make the overall chat experience lovely.
4. By Looking at Your VOD
If you want to read the users’ comments in their raw, unedited form, you can do so by viewing your VOD. This method also allows you to check the comments that your moderators deleted. VOD, otherwise known as Video On Demand, is a chat recording tool that essentially records EVERYTHING—yes, even all the comments.
This is a relatively new feature on Twitch, and many content creators are obsessed with it. With the VOD recording feature, you’ll be able to look for specific users and see what they’ve been posting on the Twitch Chat, even during previous streams.
That being said, the data on VOD won’t be around forever, and you’re given about a couple of days to a few weeks to view the recorded content.
5. Through the Search Command Feature
Saving the best method for last: you can use the Search Command feature to quickly check previously banned users who are now using new accounts to troll on your stream. This is perfect for individual user searches and gives you access to various information, such as when the account was first made and what kind of comments they’ve been leaving so far.
How to Delete Twitch Chat Logs
Now that you’ve scoured through all the messages in your chat logs and you have no more need for the data, you can go ahead and delete everything. This can come in handy, too, for those streams wherein the comment section is just full of inappropriate messages that aren’t worth saving. Here’s what you need to do to delete your Twitch chat logs:
- From there, tap on the Settings menu and head over to the Mod Tools section.
- Turn on the Mod Icons toggle by ticking the box if it’s unchecked. By doing so, you give yourself access to all the mod icons.
- In your chat field, type and enter the command /clear.
After hitting enter, your chat logs will be wiped clean.
Does Twitch Save Your Chat Logs?
The straight answer is that no, Twitch doesn’t save or keep your chat logs. However, if you try out the different methods mentioned above, you’ll be able to retrieve your chat history with no problems efficiently.
How to Download Your Twitch Chat Logs
Perhaps a particular stream of yours had an entertaining chat history, and you want to keep that log offline to make it available to you whenever you want. While Twitch doesn’t keep your chat logs, here are two ways you can download those logs for offline viewing:
Through Open-Source Tools
There are two open-source tools that we highly recommend for downloading your Twitch chat logs. You can choose between RechatTool or Twitch Chat Downloader.
Through Chatty
Not only can you use Chatty to moderate your chat logs, but you can also use it to download them. However, you’re only given a limited number of lines of comments. Still, it’s a convenient way for you to download your Twitch chat logs and transfer the data to an external file.
Can You Check Other Channels’ Chat Logs?
As a Twitch streamer, is there a way for you to check the chat history of another content creator? Well, if the channel owner didn’t give you access to their chat logs, the only other way to check would be through their VODs. However, it’s worth noting that this would only work if the other channel has allowed viewing their streams via VODs.
Conclusion
As a Twitch streamer, you probably want to improve your channel and be the best possible version of yourself for your audience. In order to be on top of your game and provide a safe and wholesome community for your followers, it’s essential to maintain and regulate your chat history regularly.
