Twitch is adding threaded replies to chat

If there’s one thing about Twitch chat, it’s that it’s almost always chaotic. Sure, you can tag a specific user to speak to them directly, but that system makes it nearly impossible to have a conversation that involves more than two people when there’s a lot of going on. In an effort to make all of that chaos more manageable, Twitch is introducing threaded conversations. It’s calling the feature Chat Replies, but if you’ve taken advantage of threaded conversations in other apps you’ll be right at home. Hover your mouse over a message and an arrow icon will appear, tap it and then type in your response.

The company first started testing threaded conversations this past August, and many of the features that are included in today’s release are ones Twitch developed listening to feedback from its community. For instance, keyboard shortcuts — you can simultaneously hit ‘alt’ and ‘enter’ to start a reply — were something that early testers suggested the company add. Another feature to come out of user feedback is the ability to customize the interface. You can set it so that Twitch always displays the context of a threaded conversation, whether you’re involved in it or not, or only shows that information if a thread involves you.  

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