Understanding group roles and permissions

Maybe you don’t want members of your group chat to be able to invite others and want to keep that control to yourself, or maybe you want to have moderators to kick and ban members when you’re not around. Group chats can have roles with different permissions to help you manage your group chat the way you want.

Good to know:

Members can only have one role at a time in a group chat.

Permission list

Here’s a list of permissions that can be assigned to roles in a group chat:

Invite members: Allows the role to invite others to the group chat. Please note that if your group is public, anyone can join without an invitation.
Send messages: Allows the role to send messages in the group chat.
Add reactions: Allows the role to add reactions to messages in the group chat.
Attach media: Allows the role to send media (photos, gifs, etc.) in the group chat.
Kick members: Allows the role to kick members from the group chat.
Ban members: Allows the role to ban members from the group chat.
Manage messages: Allows the role to delete messages in the group chat.
Manage roles: Allows the role to manage roles in the group chat.
Manage group: Allows the role to edit the group chat details, like the group name, photo, banner, and visibility.
Administrator: Allows the role to do everything they want, it’s like all permissions in one.

Find your group roles

Go to your group chat and tap the Group info button (it looks like an i in a circle) at the top right of the screen. Once you’re there, select Roles to check your group roles.

The Everyone role

By default, group chats have one role: Everyone. This role is assigned to all members of the group chat and has the following permissions: Invite members, Send messages, Add reactions and Attach media.

You can always edit the permissions of the Everyone role, for example, if you don’t want members to be able to invite others, you can remove the Invite members permission from the Everyone role.

Important to know: You can’t edit the color and name of the Everyone role, nor can you delete it.

How to create a new role

Go to the group chat you want to create a new role for.
Tap the Group info button (it looks like an i in a circle) at the top right of the screen.
Select Roles and then tap the Add new role button.
You can choose a color for the role, a name, and of course, the permissions you want to assign to it. Each permission has a toggle switch, so you can turn it on or off.
When you’re done, tap the Add role button to create the new role.

How to edit a role

Go to the group chat you want to create a new role for.
Tap the Group info button (it looks like an i in a circle) at the top right of the screen.
Select Roles, then tap the role you want to edit.
You can change the color, name, and permissions of the role. Each permission has a toggle switch, so you can turn it on or off.
When you’re done, tap the Edit role button to save your changes.

How to assign a role to a member

Go to the group chat you want to create a new role for.
Tap the Group info button (it looks like an i in a circle) at the top right of the screen.
Find the member you want to assign a role to and tap the icon.
Under Member role, select the role you want to assign to the member.
You’ll notice how the member now has a badge next to their profile picture with the role color.

How to delete a role

Go to the group chat you want to create a new role for.
Tap the Group info button (it looks like an i in a circle) at the top right of the screen.
Select Roles, then tap the role you want to edit.
Tap the Delete role button.

The Manage roles permission

The Manage roles permission is a powerful one, as it allows the role to manage roles in the group chat. This means they can create, edit, and delete roles, as well as assign roles to members.

But there’s one thing you should know: you can’t deal with permissions that you don’t have. For example, if have the Manage roles permission, but not the Ban members permission, you can’t:

Create a role with the Ban members permission.
Assign a role with the Ban members permission to a member.
Add/remove the Ban members permission from a role.
Delete a role with the Ban members permission.

This way, we prevent many bad things from happening, like someone creating a role with the Administrator permission and assigning it to everyone.

Why bans aren’t user-based?

You might think that bans should be user-based, that way you could ban all the JOIs from a user at once.

We think one of the greatest things about JOI, almost made a flag of ours, is that there’s no way to know who’s behind a JOI or what other JOIs they have.

User-based bans would break this, as you would easily know all the JOIs from a user by banning one of them.