Discord migrates all users to end-to-end encryption by default

The social and messaging platform Discord announced Tuesday that video and voice messages sent through the service will be end-to-end encrypted with no opt-in required.

The move comes as other major social media platforms are killing end-to-end encryption for messaging. In recent months, Instagram and TikTok both announced they will no longer offer the feature.

However, Google and Apple announced last week that they are expanding end-to-end encryption to cover conversations between Android and iPhone by default.

Discord, used by hundreds of millions, began experimenting with end-to-end encryption in August 2023 and has spent nearly three years building the system.

In September 2024, the platform began offering “audited end-to-end encryption protocol” for audio and video. As of this week, the feature is available to all users across all surfaces other than stage channels, which are voice channels used to host live events.

The feature is notable because of the wide range of devices it can be used on.

“The thing that makes Discord's voice and video infrastructure unusual isn't just scale — it's diversity,” vice president of core technology Mark Smith said in a blog post. “A single Discord call can have someone on a laptop, someone on their phone, someone on a PlayStation, someone on an Xbox, and someone in a web browser, all in the same conversation at the same time.”

There is no other end-to-end encryption protocol available across all of those functions, according to the blog post.