Discord’s voice and video calls just got much more secure, but it’s still leaving text messages exposed

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a big selling point for a messaging app. E2EE allows two people to chat on an app without people spying on what’s being said, including the company hosting the service. And while it can make it near-impossible to track people misusing the service, it does mean people can chat without fear of their data being exposed.

Discord has just announced that it’s implementing E2EE to its video and audio calls, meaning that people can talk with one another without fear of someone, including Discord itself, peeking in. And if you noticed that I didn’t mention text messages in the previous sentence, it’s because Discord has no plans to add E2EE there.

Your Discord voice and audio calls are now encrypted end-to-end

Your text messages still aren’t protected, though.

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As announced on the Discord blog, the company moved all of its video and audio callsto E2EE in March 2026. However, it has only just now decided to announce what has been going on behind the scenes. All video and audio calls (except Stages, due to their more public design) now use E2EE for all users without the need to opt in. It’s a big win for people who don’t want others spying on their calls.

But wait a minute; what about text messages? Well, Discord covered that in the announcement, and it’s bad news for people who wanted E2EE across all of Discord:

We have no current plans to extend E2EE to text messages. Many of the features people use on Discord were built on the assumption that text isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and rebuilding them to work with encryption is a meaningful engineering challenge.

Hopefully, Discord goes back on this in the future and adds E2EE to text; it’s by far the most common method of communication on the platform. Regardless, it’s good to hear the company has at least worked hard to make video and audio calls a lot more secure.