There are many reasons why you may want to see deleted messages on Discord. Although the platform doesn’t offer any native feature to do this, it’s possible to see deleted messages with various third-party tools. In today’s post, we’re going to cover how to see deleted messages on Discord both with plugins and bots.
Can You See Deleted Messages on Discord?
According to Discord’s privacy policy, when you erase certain types of information, such as messages you sent, these are deleted for good. This means that there’s no way to natively restore deleted messages from Discord since those deleted messages are instantly deleted from Discord’s servers as well.
However, you can keep a message log by using third-party tools, like bots or plugins. This will allow you to recover deleted messages at your discretion. Either way works just fine, and we’re going to cover both ways in today’s tutorial.
How to See Deleted Messages on Discord Using BetterDiscord
The BetterDiscord message logger is a plugin you can add to Discord that offers many features. Among them, one is the possibility of recovering deleted or edited messages.
However, you should know that it’s not possible to recover deleted messages prior BetterDiscord’s setup. Thus, it’s a good idea to set up BetterDiscord before you need to recover any messages. This will allow you to have a message log available whenever you need to recover a message.
1. Install BetterDiscord
First, head on to BetterDiscord’s website and click on the ‘Download‘ button.
Once the app finishes downloading, execute the .exe file and accept the license agreement. The next step is to click on ‘Install BetterDiscord‘, select the Discord version you own (in most cases the first one, as shown in the image below), and then click on ‘Install‘. Once the program finishes the installation, Discord should relaunch.
2. Download MessageLoggerV2
Now, it’s time to download the plugin that will enable BetterDiscord to create a log with all the server’s messages. The original plugin doesn’t work anymore. Luckily, another developer has fixed it, and you can find the files on the developer’s GitHub.
To download the fixed version, head on to the MessageLoggerV2-fixed GitHub repository. From here, you need to download two files: the MessageLoggerV2 plugin, and the XenoLib plugin. Here are the direct links to download each plugin:
3. Add the Plugins to Discord
Now, go to Discord and head on to ‘User Settings‘ by clicking on the gear icon next to your username at the bottom left corner of the screen.
From here, you’ll see a long list of options on the left side of the screen. Scroll down until you see the BetterDiscord section, and click on ‘Plugins‘. Then, click on ‘Open Plugin Folder‘.
This will open BetterDiscord’s plugin folder. Now, drag both files you just downloaded (MessageLoggerV2.plugin and 1XenoLib.plugin) to the plugin folder.
3. Enable the Plugins
Back to Discord, you will see that the MessageLoggerV2 plugin has been added to the library, as well as XenoLib and ZeresPluginLibrary. Click on the toggle icon next to each plugin to enable them all.
4. Message Logger Setup
Right-click on your server’s icon and select the ‘Message Logger‘ option. From there, click on ‘Add to Whitelist‘. Now the plugin will start creating a log for all the server’s messages.
To see a deleted message, click on the ‘Open Logs‘ option that appears in the same place. This will open a window where you’ll be able to see all the deleted, edited, and purged messages, as well as ghost pings in the server.
Additionally, you can see deleted and edited messages within the server’s channels. Deleted messages will appear in red, while edited messages will appear in grey:
How to See Deleted Messages on Discord Using Dyno Bot
There are several bots that allow you to see deleted messages on Discord, such as Logger and Dyno Bot (we’re going to use the latter for the tutorial).
Dyno Bot has a feature called ‘Action Log‘. From here, you’ll be able to keep track of different things happening within your server, from members joining and leaving to deleted messages. Let’s see how to set this up.
1. Add Dyno Bot to Your Server
To add the bot to your server, head on to Dyno Bot’s website and click on ‘Add to Server‘.
Then, a new tab will open where you’ll be able to select your server.
After that, click on ‘Next‘, then on ‘Authorize‘, and complete the captcha to add Dyno Bot to your server. Then, you’ll be redirected to the Dyno Bot website to a screen in which you can complete the bot’s setup. Simply complete the information requested to finish the Dyno Bot setup.
2. Create a Message Log Channel
Back to your server, create a private text channel for your message log.
To this channel, add Dyno Bot as a member. Don’t add any other person you don’t want to have access to the server’s logs.
3. Set Up Dyno Bot’s Action Log
Back to Dyno Bot’s website homepage, click on the ‘Manage Servers‘ button. Select the server you want to manage and click on the small arrow next to the ‘Modules‘ option on the left side of the screen. A drop-down list will appear. From there, click on ‘Action Log‘.
Then scroll down a bit to find the ‘Log Channel‘ section. Here, select the channel you’ve just created for the message log.
Below the ‘Log Channel’ section, you’ll find an ‘Events‘ section. Select all the options you want to track within the log. For this tutorial’s purposes, we’ll select the following events: Message Delete, Message Edit, and Image Delete. This way, when someone deletes or edits a message, a log will be created in the designated channel.
Now, every time a message is deleted or edited, you’ll receive a message in the private channel, including the content of the message.
And that’s how to see deleted messages on Discord! If you are looking for moderators to help you manage a server, check out these staff application questions for Discord moderators.
