Discord has dropped some big news on the digital communications front. As of yesterday, they rolled out Video Chat and Screen Sharing to 5% of Desktop users. They’ve made it pretty clear that this is a small beta test and not to expect a full launch for at least another month.

Have Access? Here’s How it Works

You can start a video call with anyone – even if they’re not in the 5% who got access. Presently, video chat and screen sharing are only available via private DMs (up to groups of 10 people). To initiate a call simply click the video button. You can choose to switch seamlessly between camera or screen share at the press of a button.

There are three different camera views to choose from in addition to fullscreen. If you click out of the main conversation during the call to browse other servers or DMs, the main feed will persist on top of your Discord window. You can dock the video feed to any corner of the app.

Worth Noting

Bad roll-outs, bugs, broken UI, and crashes are all things we’d rather do without. If complications arise during the testing phase, they may turn off the functionality. By starting with a smaller subset of users, Discord hopes to iron out the issues prior to a full launch. Adding more servers, evaluating feedback, and testing will still need to be done before they’re prepared to do a full launch.