Making Discord on Desktop Look Just Right: Display Settings to Ease the Eyes (opens in new tab)
Discord’s desktop app offers several display and accessibility settings to make conversations more comfortable and easier to read. Users can control when media and spoilers appear, reduce interface color intensity, simplify names and role colors, manage HDR brightness, and adjust UI density and text size. These options let people tailor Discord to their visual preferences without changing how content appears to others. ## Chat Options for Customizing Conversations - In **User Settings > Display > Messages**, users can control whether images and videos appear automatically. - Media can be shown or manually opened when: - Posted as direct links - Uploaded directly to Discord - **Show embeds and link previews** can be disabled to prevent automatic previews for web links. - Alt text can be displayed by default when image descriptions are provided. - Spoiler content can be configured to appear: - **On click** - **Always** - **On servers I moderate** - Links can always be underlined, improving visibility—especially when interface saturation is reduced. ## Toning Down Discord’s Colors - The **Saturation** setting reduces the intensity of interface colors, including buttons, status indicators, and links. - Saturation can also be applied to custom colors such as server role colors. - User-created media—including avatars, custom emoji, photos, and videos—is not affected. - Role colors can be displayed as a dot beside a user’s name instead of coloring the entire name. ## Reducing Brightness and Visual Distractions - HDR-capable displays may show extremely bright images and videos. - In **Accessibility > High Dynamic Range**, users can switch from **Full Dynamic Range** to **Standard Range** to reduce HDR intensity. - Nitro display-name styling can be disabled through **Accessibility > Text Readability > Display Name Styles**. - Disabling these styles restores standard fonts and colors without notifying other users. ## Adjusting UI Density and Text Size - Discord also provides settings to make the interface more or less dense, depending on whether users prefer more information on screen or greater spacing. - The article introduces additional controls for changing the size and spacing of interface content, though the provided text ends before describing them in detail. Overall, Discord’s display settings can be combined to reduce visual overload: hide media until needed, lower saturation, soften HDR content, simplify names, and adjust spacing or text size for a more comfortable setup.