Chat Interface

The Chat Interface is a panel in the GUI in which various messages throughout Old School RuneScape are displayed. These messages include public and private player chat, as well as game messages. The content displayed in the chat interface can be filtered using the six buttons that run across the bottom of the chat panel.

Overview

Old School RuneScape has 5 main chat systems:

Public: this can be seen by people around you on your current world.
Private: this is how you send private messages to someone. To PM them, you have to add them to your friends list. Depending on their privacy settings, they may have to add you back before you can PM them, or you may not be able to PM them at all. You can only PM people that are currently online.
Friends chat: everyone has their own private chat channel. You can enter an FC by typing the name of the person whose FC you want to join (including your own). In your own FC you can set permissions for certain people so you can decide who can join it, talk in it, or kick people from it. If you type in an FC (done by preceding your chat message by a single '/'), everyone in that FC can see your message.
Clan chat: this is the chat for the clan you are currently in. It is similar to the FC, except you can't join any clan chat you wish - only the one of your own clan. To chat in your CC, use '//'.
Guest clan chat: this allows you to visit clan chats of clans other than your own, depending on their settings. To talk in a GC, use '///'.

Filters

There are six filter buttons (also known as tab buttons) that allow the player to filter content that appears in the chat panel, both to view only a specific type of content, and to exclude a specific type of content. Clicking or tapping on one of these buttons will display only the content relating to that filter. For instance, the Trade filter is useful when selling in crowded worlds because it allows the player to see only Trade Requests being made. To show the entire chat with no filters, the All button may be pressed. Right-clicking or long-pressing on a button will show options to control the sub-categories of that content that are shown both when that button is selected and when the All button is selected.

All

The All tab shows all available content, excluding any that are filtered by active filter settings.

The Set chat mode: Public (/@p) option will set your chat box to type in the general public chat, visible to nearby players. This option can be used to undo the selection of one of the below modes.
The Set chat mode: Channel (/@f) option will set your chat box to type only in the connected chat-channel.
The Set chat mode: Clan (/@c) option will set your chat box to type only in the connected clan chat channel.
The Set chat mode: Guest Clan (/@gc) will set your chat box to type only in the connected guest clan chat channel.
The Set chat mode: Group (/@g) option will set your chat box to type only in the group chat channel. This option is visible only to group ironman players.

Game

The Game tab shows game messages that appear as a result of taking actions such as drinking potions, chopping trees, and more.

The Filter option will toggle between two modes:
- The On mode will display all game messages (i.e. "You swing your axe at the tree." or "You get some logs." as mentioned above).
- The Filtered mode will only display major messages to the player such as level advancements, or alerts.
The Configure filter option will offer a minor variation to the Filtered mode, whereupon boss kill-count messages may be included or excluded from the Filtered mode.

Public

The Public tab shows public messages sent by yourself and nearby players. These messages are accompanied by text above that player displaying the same message. There are five different filter options, as well as an option to filter by content, and an autochat option.

The Show autochat option will show only auto-chatted messages.
The Show standard option will show all public messages.
The Show friends option will only show public messages from Friends.
The Show none option will cease the display of all public messages on the screen.
The Hide option will filter all public messages from the chat panel but will allow public messages above players' heads
The Filter public chat function will filter out any messages that do not contain a certain word or words. To set a filter, click "Filter public chat" and then type the desired filter. To clear the filter, click "Filter public chat", and press enter on the blank prompt.
The Autochat function will automatically chat a set message about every four seconds. To set up autochat, click "Setup your autochat", then type in the desired phrase you wish to autochat. After the message is entered, the game will begin to chat automatically. There is then a new option to "Pause autochat". When clicked, it will Pause the autochat, and an option to "Resume autochat" will be added. To clear autochat, click "Setup your autochat", and press enter when the blank prompt appears.
The Clear history option will clear everything contained in the public tab from the moment you were logged in.

Private

The Private tab shows private messages sent to you by other players, messages you sent to other players, and login/logout messages if configured to appear in this tab.

The Show all option will show all private messages received. Anyone can see you as online, even if you are not friends with them.
The Show friends option filters out all private messages from players who are not on your Friends List. Players not in your friends list will see you as offline.
The Show none option will cease to show any received private messages. Everyone will see you as offline.
The Clear history option will clear everything contained in the private tab from the moment you were logged in.

Channel

The Channel tab shows messages sent in the connected chat-channel.

The Show all option will show all chat-channel messages received.
The Show friends option filters out all Chat-channel messages from players who are not on your Friends List.
The Show none option will cease to show any received Chat-channel messages.
The Clear history option will clear everything contained in the chat channel from the moment you were logged in.

Clan

The Clan tab shows messages sent in the connected clan and guest clan, including announcements such as player levels or combat achievements, but not for the guest clan.

The Show all option will show all clan messages received.
The Show friends option filters out all clan messages from players who are not on your Friends List.
The Show none option will cease to show any received clan messages.
The Clear history option will clear everything contained in the clan chat channel from the moment you were logged in.

Trade/Group

This tab will be labelled "Group" if you are a Group ironman or "Trade" if you are any other account type.

The Show all option will show all trade requests received or messages from your group.
The Show friends option filters out all trade requests from players who are not on your Friends List, or messages sent by players not on your Friends list.
The Show none option will filter all received trade requests or messages from your group.
The Clear history option will clear everything contained in the trade or group tab from the moment you were logged in.

Chat input

The chat input line is where messages that are about to be sent will be displayed as they are typed. It is located below the area where messages from the currently selected filter are displayed. The chat input is preceded by the player's name and their badge if they have one.

The chat input redirects messages to the selected tab by default. For the 'All', 'Game', and 'Trade' tabs, the default is the same as the 'Public' tab. The default can be overridden for a single message by prefixing your message with any of these chat prefixes:

/p: Public
/ or /f: Channel
// or /c: Clan
/// or /gc: Guest Clan
//// or /g: Group

The default can be overridden until logout by prefixing your message with any of these chat prefixes:

/@p: None / Public
/@f: Channel
/@c or //@: Clan
/@gc: Guest clan
/@g: Group

Settings

Reporting abuse

If someone is engaging in rule-breaking, they can be reported by doing either of the following:

Right-click on the offender, and select the appropriate rule they have broken.
Alternatively, if they have recently spoken in the chat, right-click their name in the chat box, and select the appropriate rule they have broken.
Click the 'Report' button, enter in the offender's name, and select the appropriate rule they have broken.

After successfully reporting the rule-breaker, the message Thank you for submitting your abuse report. We will inform you via an inbox message if this or any other recently submitted reports result in action being taken. will be displayed as confirmation.

When reporting, the player is presented with a in-game chat interface with keyboard short-cuts for each of the reportable offences.

1. Macroing or use of bots
2. Seriously offensive language
3. Advertising websites
4. Scamming
5. Breaking real-world laws
6. Real-life threats
7. Real-world trading
8. Offensive display name
9. Buying/Selling accounts and services
A. Asking for or providing contact information
B. Solicitation
C. Encouraging rule breaking
D. Player-run Games of Chance
E. Exploiting a bug
F. Disruptive behaviour
G. Staff impersonation
H. Deathmatching
I. PvP Cheating

Chat effects

Public messages can have various effects other than the standard yellow text.

Colour effects

yellow: - Turns text yellow (default).
red: - Turns text red.
green: - Turns text green.
cyan: - Turns text cyan (closest to light blue or aqua).
purple: - Turns text purple.
white: - Turns text white.
flash1: - Text flashes between red and yellow text.
flash2: - Text flashes between cyan and blue text.
flash3: - Text flashes between light and dark green text.
glow1: - Text fades from red to orange to yellow to green to cyan.
glow2: - Text fades from red to magenta to blue to dark red.
glow3: - Text fades from white to green to white to cyan.
rainbow: - Turns text into a rainbow colour.
pattern: - Allows players to send chat messages in multiple colours, where a pattern of 1-to-8 colours will be stretched across the length of the text.
- Letters and numbers that one wishes to use in the pattern must be inputted before the colon. For example, "patternq3q3q3q3:I am a bumblebee!!!" will result in the message alternating between black (denoted by 'q') and yellow (denoted by '3') four times from left-to-right

The colour key for the "pattern" command.

Text effects

wave: - Text moves up and down like a wave.
wave2: - Text waves diagonally.
shake: - Text shakes wackily.
slide: - Text slides in from above and slides out below.
scroll: - Text scrolls from right to left.

Players can combine colour and text effects by typing colour:effect:Message. The colour must be written before the effect.

Chat Log colour Markup

In the chat log messages are displayed as white by default with some game messages having different markup colours. Text that is coloured has the markup format "<col=HEX>TEXT</col>" where HEX is a RGB hex code (lower case) and TEXT is the text to be coloured. For example "Your Ape Atoll Agility lap count is: <col=ff0000>1337</col>."

This is particularly useful if writing/configuring plugins that manipulate the chat log, for example Runelite's chat filter plugin.

Commands

Players have access to a limited set of commands through the chat interface:

::wiki <search term> - Typing in a search term opens the Old School RuneScape Wiki in a new window in the player's default web browser.
::bank - Causes the player to exclaim "Hey, everyone, I just tried to do something very silly!"
::displayfps - Shows the client's current frames per second, memory usage (KB), and, on the Official Client only, the maximum memory usage seen in your current session (KB).
::renderself - Toggles the player's character model visibility to themselves.
::[emote name] - Triggers the emote if one exists; input is case insensitive. ! can alternatively be used as a prefix instead of double colon.
::toggleroof or ::toggleroofs - Toggles roofs on or off. When using this command it is only temporary; doing it in the Settings menu is permanent and will persist between sessions.
::settilerendermode [x] - Sets the tile render mode where x is 0 (camera) or 1 (target).
::map - Toggles the heatmap display on or off.

Commands only available on the Official Client:

::toggleantidrag - Toggles anti-drag, preventing items in your inventory from being moved unless Shift is held. (Unavailable on Old School RuneScape Mobile)
::uiquality - This code changes the interface scaling algorithm by adding a number after it. 0 for nearest neighbour. 1 for linear. 2 for bicubic. (Works on Old School RuneScape Mobile despite the option not existing in the settings)
::setwindowsize [x] [y] - Sets your game window to the specified size. (Unavailable on Old School RuneScape Mobile)
::repairlt - Manually repairs corrupted Loot Tracker database.
::chattimestamp <optional value> - Sets the chat timestamp mode to one of following: NONE, SERVER or LOCAL.

Commands only available on RuneLite:

::mouseovertext - Toggles the visibility of mouse-over text on the top-left screen.
::getdrawdistance - Outputs the current rendering distance.
::setdrawdistance [x] - Sets the rendering distance to the parsed value, in the range 25-90.
::zbuf [x] - Changes the method to determine what objects are closest to the camera if set to 1, disables with 0.
::z - Toggles depth buffer visualization debug.

Further commands may be offered by some game clients such as RuneLite, often prefixed with a !.

Jagex Moderators have an extended command set that serves to make testing content and running community events easier. Some of those privileged commands are:

::errortest - Throw a runtime exception.
::showcoord - Output the player's world coordinates.
::fpson - Show fps information.
::fpsoff - Hide fps information.
::gc - Run the garbage collector.
::clientdrop - Drop the client.
::clientreload - Reload the client.
::sfx8bit - Set sound effects to 8-bit mode.
::sfx16bit - Set sound effects to 16-bit mode.
::playsong [name] - Play a specified MIDI song.
::stopsong - Stop the currently playing song.

Badges/Icons

These badges/icons may appear in your chat interface:

Changes

Date	Changes
7 May 2025 (Update)	A new command, ::repairlt, was added to manually fix corrupted Loot Tracker databases.
26 March 2025 (Update)	Whenever your macroing (botting) report has been reviewed and actioned, you'll receive an inbox message directly in your Message Centre.
29 January 2025 (Update)	Emote can now be triggered using chat commands, either via the `::` or `!` prefix.
1 June 2023 (Update)	Added the "rainbow" and "pattern" chat effect commands.
Date unknown	Using the chat command to toggle roofs now only persists for the current session.
16 December 2021 (Update)	The option text for switching Chat Mode to your Group Iron Man group has been corrected.
17 November 2021 (Update)	The messages sent when drinking alcoholic beverages (in game!) have been added to the spam filter.
21 April 2021 (Update)	Added rendering support for `U+2014 EM DASH` (`—`).
4 May 2017 (Update)	The message when adding ore to the Blast Furnace can now be disabled. Tokkul is no longer included in untradeable drop notifications.
13 October 2016 (Update)	Some messages on Rogues' Den reward traps are now filtered.
2 June 2016 (Update)	Prevented the "A magical force stops you from moving." message from spamming the chat window when trying to auto-retaliate against an NPC whilst frozen.
10 December 2015 (Update)	Filtered game messages when drinking Sanfew Serum.
5 November 2015 (Update)	The chatbox has been optimised during update timer countdowns and broadcast notifications.
22 October 2015 (Update)	The Report Abuse menu has new options, like 'Offensive Name', and rewording other rules for consistency with Jagex's other products.
8 October 2015 (Update \| poll)	Added a toggle that allows you to have private messages remain visible even when your chatbox is hidden. Added messages for attaching a crossbow stock to limbs and stringing a crossbow to the chat filter.
24 September 2015 (Update)	Added game messages related to making pottery to the game filter. Making swamp tar now consistently filters game messages.
17 September 2015 (Update)	Added messages for mixing a guthix balance potion to the game filter.
23 July 2015 (Update)	More challenge messages at the Duel Arena will now appear under the trade chat tab.
18 June 2015 (Update)	The chatbox is now correctly opaque after closing the text-input box. Fixed right-aligned and/or invisible username bug in chatbox.
11 June 2015 (Update)	You can now clear your private message history by right clicking the private chat stone beneath the chatbox and selecting 'clear history'. The transparent chat-box arrow buttons can no longer be clicked through. Optimised the chat box to improve FPS.
7 May 2015 (Update)	Some falconry related messages are now caught by the spam filter.
30 April 2015 (Update \| poll)	A coloured notification now appears in the chatbox when you get teleblocked.
19 March 2015 (Update \| poll)	When interacting with NPCs you will now be able to use your keyboard to skip through chat dialogue and select chat options. You can use the spacebar to continue through dialogue and the numbers on your keyboard to select different chat options.
5 February 2015 (Update)	"10 of your tokens crumble away." has been added to the game filter. "It heals some health" messages have been added to the game filter for more types of food.
29 January 2015 (Update)	When adding players to your ignore list their recently sent messages will now be hidden.
2 October 2014 (Update \| poll)	Added a toggle allowing you to decide whether "user has logged in/out" messages will disappear.
11 September 2014 (Update)	The message that notifies a player when a friend logs in or out will now disappear after 10 seconds. Jewellery teleport messages are re-coloured for better visilibility.
17 July 2014 (Update)	More messages have been added to the game filter including hunting chinchompas, smashing gargoyles and eating food.
10 July 2014 (Update)	The game filter option was added to the chat interface. This can be used to hide many of the unnecessary of repetitive game messages.
26 June 2014 (Update \| poll)	An extra right-click option has been added to the public chat button that allows you to pause your autochat and start it up again without having to re-type the message.
22 May 2014 (Update)	The "autochat" feature has been added, along with options to hide, show, and set up the autochat functionality.
8 May 2014 (Update)	Private messages are now recognised as chat by the report abuse feature.
3 April 2014 (Update)	Your own public chat is now visible when Public is set to Friends.
31 May 2013 (Update \| poll)	The chatbox now applies text-wrapping to long messages.
21 March 2013 (Update \| poll)	Right-clicking on chat messages from your friends will more easily let you reply to them. Pressing 'tab' will reply to the last private message sent to you.
7 March 2006 (Update)	Zero numerals are now recognised by the chat engine.

Trivia

On Old School RuneScape Mobile, the ::displayfps command will always show the memory to be 0.
Using a colour pattern will affect the overhead text of following special attacks, as well as certain responses to NPCs (such as petting the Myths' Guild dog). This is undone by sending a normal chat message.
A number of chat messages are displayed after an account has been logged in for a prolonged period of time.
- After 4 hours: You've been playing for a while, consider taking a break from your screen.
- After 5 hours and 30 minutes: You will be logged out in approximately 30 minutes. Make sure you move to a safe area or log out now.
- After 5 hours and 50 minutes: You will be logged out in approximately 10 minutes. Make sure you move to a safe area or log out now.
- After 5 hours and 55 minutes: You will be logged out in approximately 5 minutes. Make sure you move to a safe area or log out now.
Game messages can contain at most 200 characters. Sometimes the game generates longer messages, causing them to be truncated in the chat box. For example, tagging the Agility dispenser can produce the following message:

You have been awarded a clue scroll, 1 x Blighted super restore(4) and 1 x Adamant platebody, and an extra Blighted super restore(4) from the Agil

Hidden text causes messages to be rendered in a different colour; for example, <col=ef1020>Hello</col> produces Hello. The formatting tags themselves count toward the 200 character limit.