Migrate to TextChatService: Removing Support for Legacy Chat and Custom Chat Systems

No. You are simply required to modify your custom chat in a way in which all messages are sent and delivered through TextChatService. This can be quite annoying unfortunately.

This explains it well:

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In my opinion, forcing this change and moderating not only the places but the creators’ accounts is too far. I’d rather have the legacy chat completely removed and for non-compliant experiences to be unavailable to certain audiences until changes are made. At least improve the performance of TextChatService, since for fast paced non cash grab games, every bit of performance matters.

What?

Also does this just mean I have to comply with new API? My games text chat is entirely custom, so do I just have to change message sending/receiving to go through TextChatService? The wording of this announcement is all over the place. “You can use custom chat, but also you can’t!”

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100% Agree with this, couldn’t have said it better myself.

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I have a question about this situation:

I made fully custom chat for my game, which supports RichText fully (color, bold, italic, font, stroke and etc). In order to work, I did it so:

  1. Any message that user has typed is checked for RichText tags.
  2. After, valid RichText tags are removed from string (Invalid are not, so if you type inapopriate things inside it they will be filtered).
  3. Result string is being filtered.
  4. RichText tags are re-applied.
  5. Text is shown to everyone.

One note is that I didn’t use any chat features, only TextService:FilterStringAsync() (I don’t remember exact name sorry)

That’s how this turned out - in studio test environment, I show both my own text and filtered one. My own text instead of “#####” shows original text with red highlight.
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Will it be possible to preserve such functionality of my chat? I spent a heck ton of time doing it and ensuring that there won’t be any possiblity to bypass it.

I am glad that ChannelTabs and UI gradients will be supported in TextChatService and hopefully will roll out next week, now I hope that most community requested features and concerns will be addressed before the removal of Legacy Chat in April 30th, 2025 including the performance issues related to ExperienceChatMain that even affects Legacy Chat and the bugs. The performance issues and the bugs related to TextChatService has been ignored and neglected for the most part and many of them have been left with little to no staff response which is disappointing to say the least, they should be addressed if Roblox wants the migration to be as smooth as possible.

Here’s are the most predominant bugs that affect TextChatService that should be addressed and haven’t yet :-

  1. (❣️ Easy To Fix Bug) Lack of Spacing in Right to left languages (RTL) Chat text Using New TextChatService

  2. Notification icon still appears for removed chat messages (TextChatService)

  3. Emoji Incorrectly Tags in the new Roblox Chat (it affects both chats though)

  4. Overlapping messages in chat while using TextChatService

  5. Chat Input Text Invisible on Mobile (this bug also affects both chats)

  6. Inconsistent chat bubble height between Roblox Player and Roblox Studio

  7. New TextChatService bubble chat is hidden by avatar

  8. [CoreScript] ExperienceChat, Player's TargetTextChannel gets overwritten away from any channel, if their Team Property changes

  9. TextChatMessageProperties Overriding Bubblechat's Text Color by RichText - #7 by RVVZ

  10. Custom Textbox using ChatInputBarConfiguration does not Focus on Keybind Pressed - #19 by hunterk1241 (there has been a staff response on this though and hopefully it will get addressed)

  11. TextChatService Text Box not expanding while typing long messages - #3 by ItzAidfoplays390

  12. TextChatService not correctly adding player to newly created Team's chat channel (CreateDefaultChatChannels=true)

  13. TextChatService Legacy ChatVersion is not respected by ExperienceChatMain

  14. TextChatService:DisplayBubble() does not work for NPCs - #11 by Jhettblocks789

  15. TextChatService OnIncomingMessage rich text overrides OnBubbleAdded text chat color

  16. 'LegacyChatService' Continues To Run A Bubble Chat Heartbeat With Bubble Chat Disabled

  17. Multibyte symbols "exceed the limit" in new TextChatService

  18. TextChatMessageProperties Overriding Bubblechat's Text Color by RichText - #9 by Extuls

  19. Hidden chat messages show in the unread badge

Finally and most importantly all the performance issues that affects ExperienceChatMain, that had numerous bug reports created for them.

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This is also how my chat works. Both versions of Roblox chat didn’t have what I wanted in terms of customization. Is this possible through TextChatService? This announcement is too full of contradictions regarding custom chat windows for me to understand what is possible, or rather allowed now.

You and many others are making this a bigger deal than it has to be. This change is good so that any chat system can now be standardized through one API. You are still allowed to customize and whatnot. I doubt the investors were begging for this change. This is more about keeping players safe considering the largest audience is children.

Will you make the new TextChatService support more options like Legacy Chat System did? Because the reason why I haven’t switched is because I prefer the older system with more flexible options.

If you’re talking about having ChannelTabs, then yes, they said they will add support for that in TextChatService next week. Additionally they will also add support for UI gradients next week.

Now I can use the skull emoji in every game :smiling_imp:

i feel like this is a massive update… as many people said, you’re telling us to migrate to a new api that does not have everything that legacy chat. plus, on top of that TCS is completely different from how LCS handles stuff. i’ll wait until you guys finish the tabs and whatever and then fork the chat window to get me a result acceptable for my game theme

will this break my pre existing scripting?

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Or you could just make the legacy chat service include these things you are listing, but nooo. Because all you think about is the new stuff and not the old stuff, no wonder why I barely do stuff on this site, You keep dropping these updates specifically to get rid of legacy features, when literally you could just improve said legacy features with whatever needs to be improved, I’d rather not have to waste countless hours fixing my own forks of things that use the legacy chatting system, Not to mention how many scripts this would actually break.

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Actually, the investors may have been indeed begging for this change. How is it possible that such a simple and logical parental control feature is being implemented only NOW in such a aggressive and destructive manner? Roblox had all the time in the world to implement this LOOONG ago in much softer ways but instead choose to ram this change onto us without any prior warning.

Roblox was called numerous times a pedophile hellhole with next to no parental control systems yet did not budge, they only budged when a company designed to tank the stocks of other corporations magically revealed pretty much nothing new about them to the public (only technically new thing would have been roblox specifically lying and inflating their own numbers). Only difference being is that bigger parties actually noticed and saw the stuff going down and likely spooked the roblox higher ups.
If this is the actual real story, i don’t know but i also dont doubt that im pretty close to the real deal. No company would try to shot themselves in the foot like this unless the alternative was a million times worse.

Also, check roblox stock. It magically went up not too long after they made this announcement. It’s very hard for me to believe that these changes weren’t specifically the doings of some angry investors when their stock magically shoots up by nearly 10 usd practically overnight while also trying to ram this new change onto us at full speed.

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Does it though? It is less buggy and has more features. That doesn’t seem like something that “sucks”

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Well I guess TextChatService:DisplayBubble() would do the job?

some exciting stuff here, yay!

Call me a idiot or something but I 100% think you misread my comment, I mentioned nothing about games being deleted. You can still be moderated just for not using a specific API.

Well, there was a day when they removed bevels and filtering disabled option. Now it’s time for legacy chat. I guess I have to take a vacation to fix all the scripts until the deadline so roblox doesn’t delete my games and terminate my account :+1:

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