Setting Rich Presence

Update Discord Rich Presence from your application to display activity information.

Overview

Rich Presence allows you to display detailed information about what players are doing in your game. Users can see this information in their Discord profile and friends list and use it to join their friends’ games with Game Invites.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Set up the Discord Social SDK
• Connected to Discord with a valid client instance

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Understanding Rich Presence

Rich Presence allows you to display detailed information about players’ actions in your game. Users can see this information in various places in Discord, including:

• User profiles
• Friend lists
• Server member lists

Let’s talk about the naming of some Discord primitives first. Rich Presence, aka “Activity”, can be thought of as the “current activity of a user” and is represented by the Activity class in the SDK and in our gateway events. This is not to be confused with Discord Activities, which are embedded games that can also set and display rich presence.

Each Activity contains fields that describe the following:

Field	Description	Purpose
name	Game or app name	Displayed in the user’s profile
type	Activity type	What the player is doing (e.g., “Playing”, “Watching”, “Listening”)
details	What the player is doing	Main activity description (e.g., “Playing Capture the Flag”)
state	Their current status	Secondary status (e.g., “In Queue”, “In Match, “In a group”)
party	Party information	Shows party size and capacity (e.g., “2 of 4”)
timestamps	Activity duration	Shows elapsed or remaining time
assets	Custom artwork	Game/map thumbnails and character icons
secrets	Join/spectate tokens	Enable Game Invite functionality
supportedPlatforms	Platform flags	Control where join buttons appear

See below for examples of how to set these fields in your code.

While we support multiple ActivityTypes, games should use ActivityTypes::Playing for type. The SDK automatically associates activity with your game, so fields like name will always show your game’s name.

Customizing Rich Presence

When displayed in Discord, Rich Presence has three main components:

Playing "Your Game Name"          <- Line 1: Game name (automatic)
Capture the Flag | 2 - 1          <- Line 2: Details field
In a group (2 of 3)               <- Line 3: State + Party info

You can control how lines 2 and 3 are rendered in Discord, here’s the breakdown:

• Line 1, Playing "game name" is powered by the name of your game (or application) on Discord.
• Line 2, Capture the flag | 2 - 1 is powered by the details field in the activity, and this should generally try to describe what the player is currently doing. You can even include dynamic data such as a match score here.
• Line 3, In a group (2 of 3) describes the party the player is in. “Party” is used to refer to a group of players in a shared context, such as a lobby, server, team, etc. The first half, In a group is powered by the state field in the activity, and the second half, (2 of 3) is powered by the party field in the activity and describes how many people are in the current party and how big the party can get.

This diagram visually shows the field mapping:

For tips on designing Rich Presence, take a look at the Rich Presence best practices guide.

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Setting an Invite Image

The Rich Presence invite image appears when invites are sent for a 3rd party game or app using the Discord Social SDK. After uploading an invite image for your app, you can see a preview of it to the right (under “IRL Invite Image Example”).

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Uploading Assets

While integrating Rich Presence, you’ll likely want to upload custom art assets for your app. For all Rich Presence assets, it’s highly recommended to make them 1024 x 1024.

To add custom assets for Rich Presence, navigate to your app’s settings and click Rich Presence on the left-hand sidebar. On the Art Assets page, you can upload two different types of assets.

Up to 300 custom assets can be added to your app for later use when setting Rich Presence for a Discord user. These assets can be anything that help orient others to what a user is doing inside of your Activity or 3rd party game.

If you need more than 300 custom assets or want to use images stored somewhere else, you can also specify an external URL as long it still has the proper dimensions and size.

For tips on choosing assets, take a look at the Rich Presence best practices guide.

When uploading Rich Presence assets, the asset keys will automatically be changed to lowercase. You can see this reflected in your app’s settings after saving a newly uploaded asset, and you should keep it in mind when referencing any asset keys in your code.

Once you’ve uploaded these assets, you can use the asset key to reference them in your code when Setting Assets in Rich Presence.

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Setting Details and State

Here’s a simple example setting the details and state of a Rich Presence activity:

// Create a new activity
discordpp::Activity activity;
activity.SetType(discordpp::ActivityTypes::Playing);
activity.SetDetails("Battle Creek");
activity.SetState("In Competitive Match");

// Update the presence
client->UpdateRichPresence(activity, [](discordpp::ClientResult result) {
  if (result.Successful()) {
    std::cout << "✅ Rich presence updated!\n";
  }
});

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Setting Timestamps

You can also include timestamps in your Rich Presence to show how long the player has been in their current activity or how long until their current match ends if it is a timed activity. Here’s an example:

// Setting Timestamps
discordpp::ActivityTimestamps timestamps;
timestamps.SetStart(time(nullptr));
// timestamps.SetEnd(time(nullptr) + 3600);
activity.SetTimestamps(timestamps);

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Setting Assets

Once you’ve uploaded assets to your app, you can reference them using their asset key in your code to set custom artwork in Rich Presence. Here’s an example of an asset with the key of “map-mainframe” and “tank-avatar”:

// Setting Activity Assets
discordpp::ActivityAssets assets;
assets.SetLargeImage("map-mainframe");
assets.SetLargeText("Mainframe");
assets.SetSmallImage("tank-avatar");
assets.SetSmallText("Tank");
activity.SetAssets(assets);

If you need more than 300 custom assets or want to use images stored somewhere else, you can also specify an external URL as long it still has the proper dimensions and size.

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Setting Field URLs

You can set URLs for details, state, assets.large_image and assets.small_image in Rich Presence. When present, these URLs will make the corresponding image/text into clickable links.

activity.SetState("Playing on Mainframe");
activity.SetStateUrl("https://example.com/maps/mainframe");
activity.SetDetails("Rank #1337 in global leaderboard");
activity.SetDetailsUrl("https://example.com/leaderboard/global");

discordpp::ActivityAssets assets;
assets.SetLargeImage("map-mainframe");
assets.SetLargeText("Mainframe");
assets.SetLargeUrl("https://example.com/maps/mainframe");
assets.SetSmallImage("tank-avatar");
assets.SetSmallText("Tank");
assets.SetSmallUrl("https://example.com/classes/tank");

activity.SetAssets(assets);

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Configuring Status Text

By default, Rich Presence will display the game’s name in the user’s status text. You can override this behavior by setting a status display type.

// uses the game's name in the status text (default)
activity.SetStatusDisplayType(discordpp::StatusDisplayTypes::Name);

// uses the activity's state field in the status text
activity.SetStatusDisplayType(discordpp::StatusDisplayTypes::State);

// uses the activity's details field in the status text
activity.SetStatusDisplayType(discordpp::StatusDisplayTypes::Details);

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Setting Party and Join Secret

You can also include party details and a join secret in your Rich Presence to power Game Invites. Check out the Game Invites guide for more information.

// Setting Party Details
discordpp::ActivityParty party;
party.SetId("party1234");
party.SetCurrentSize(1);
party.SetMaxSize(5);
activity.SetParty(party);

// Setting Join Secret details
discordpp::ActivitySecrets secrets;
secrets.SetJoin("your-join-secret");
activity.SetSecrets(secrets);

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Setting Supported Platforms

You can set the supported platforms for your game in Rich Presence. This will control where the join buttons appear in Discord.

If you only want the join button to appear on desktop, you can set the supported platforms like this:

activity.SetSupportedPlatforms(discordpp::ActivityGamePlatforms::Desktop);

See the ActivityGamePlatforms enum for all supported platforms.

Rich Presence Without Authentication

Rich Presence via RPC (Remote Procedure Call) will only work with a running Discord desktop client. It does not support mobile, console or web clients.

Unlike most other features of the Discord Social SDK, Rich Presence can be set without authentication. Instead of using Client::Connect to authenticate with Discord, you can use Rich Presence functionality by directly communicating with a running Discord desktop client through RPC (Remote Procedure Call).

Requirements

• Discord desktop client must be running on the user’s machine
• Your application must be registered with Discord and have a valid Application ID

This direct approach makes Rich Presence integration much simpler for developers who only need basic presence functionality while Discord desktop clients are running.

Setting Up Direct Rich Presence

To use Rich Presence without authentication, simply:

1. Set your application ID using Client::SetApplicationId
2. Configure your activity details
3. Call Client::UpdateRichPresence

auto client = std::make_shared<discordpp::Client>();

// Set the application ID (no Connect() call needed)
client->SetApplicationId(APPLICATION_ID);

// Configure rich presence details
discordpp::Activity activity;
activity.SetType(discordpp::ActivityTypes::Playing);
activity.SetState("In Competitive Match");
activity.SetDetails("Rank: Diamond II");

// Update rich presence
client->UpdateRichPresence(
    activity, [](const discordpp::ClientResult &result) {
      if (result.Successful()) {
        std::cout << "🎮 Rich Presence updated successfully!\n";
      } else {
        std::cerr << "❌ Rich Presence update failed";
      }
    });

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Next Steps

Now that you’ve set up Rich Presence, you might want to explore:

Managing Game Invites

Allow players to invite friends to join their game session or party.

Managing Lobbies

Bring players together in a shared lobby with invites, text chat, and voice comms.

Design Guidelines for Rich Presence

Best practices for Rich Presence UI/UX.

Need help? Join the Discord Developers Server and share questions in the #social-sdk-dev-help channel for support from the community.

If you encounter a bug while working with the Social SDK, please report it here: https://dis.gd/social-sdk-bug-report

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Change Log

Date	Changes
March 17, 2025	Initial release