How much data does Discord use? Data usage and minimization
Since its origin, the people at Discord have taken many measures to create an app that is the ultimate in terms of user experience and satisfaction for the gaming community. With features that make texting and voice calling smooth and customizable, Discord has indeed won over the hearts of its user base.
With the many features it has to offer, the data that the app consumes is surely a question that would bug users looking to get the most out of the app. If you also happen to be wondering about Discord’s data usage, then look no further. Below, we’ve given detailed information to answer that elusive question, ‘How much data does Discord use’?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Introduction
- Data usage on PC and Mac
- Data usage on Android and iOS
- Discord data usage for voice and video calls
- How to minimize the usage of data by Discord?
Introduction
Before getting into anything, note that there is no official information provided by Discord about how much data is used on the app. The amount of data depends and varies based on your settings and preferences.
In the below tweet, the engineers at Discord answered the question on data usage asked by a user stating that the content would determine the data usage.
In general, text doesn't take up too much of your data, though sending images can take up a bit more! Voice chat usage is minimal, but can vary based on how often you use it! Video chat uses up a lot of data, and I'd avoid that while you're on the road!
— Discord (@discord) August 5, 2018
As is true for most apps, plain text uses the least amount of data. Images do take a comparatively larger amount of data, and we’ll soon come to how to minimize this. Voice chat has a standard, usually minimal, amount of data based on the number of seconds you are on a voice call. Video calls, of course, exceed this amount by a lot. Discord data usage also depends on the on-screen time, server activities, bot activities, and frequency of use.
Although there is no direct formula using which you can estimate how much data the Discord app will be using, you can make use of the ways we’ve explained below to get a rough estimate. Discord’s data usage on PC and Phone, and how to track it, is explained below.
Discord data usage on PC and Mac
You can track the amount of data used by Discord on your computer through the following ways.
If you are a Windows user, for instance, you can track how much data Discord uses through the following steps:
- Go to ‘Settings’ (Windows Key + I) → ‘Network and Internet’
- Now go to ‘Data usage’ and you will see a list of apps on your device along with the amount of data used by each.
- Note that this data is given separately for each network you are connected to (i.e., wifi, ethernet, etc.) and accounts for 30 days before the present date.
- This should give you a rough idea of how much data was used by Discord over the last 30 days. You can also refresh this data and check how much data is used the next time you open and use Discord.
If you are a Mac user and want to check Discord’s usage stats,
- Use the ‘Activity Monitor’ → ‘Network’ to see the current data usage by each open app.
- This resets every time you restart your computer, and is a good estimate of how much data was used by Discord in a single session.
If you use Discord on your browser and not the app, there are ways you employ to see how much data is consumed by each tab in a browser. However, since Discord is mostly used via the desktop app, we’ve restricted this blog to checking data usage for the app.
Data usage on Android and iOS
To check the amount of data used by Discord on your iPhone,
- Open ‘Settings’ → ‘Cellular’
- Scroll down to the list of apps with the toggle switches next to them. You can see the data used by each app.
- Note that this information is up to the last time that the data had been reset. Check the date since this data was last reset by scrolling down to the bottom of the screen.
On an Android device,
- Go to ‘Settings’ → ‘Apps’ → ‘Manage Apps or Installed Apps’
- Here, select Discord from the list shown and tap the ‘Data Usage’
- You should now be able to see graphs showing Discord’s data usage for a particular time frame and network (mobile data/ wifi).
How much data does Discord use for voice and video calls
We have tracked the Discord app’s data usage for text messages, video and voice calls on Android by using the - Glasswire Android app. You can find other suitable tools, too, compatible with your device to check the data usage.
As seen from the below screenshots, the amount of data used by Discord is minimal for voice calling and standby. During the video call, however, a considerable amount of data was consumed. This data below is a test over a few minutes, and data would vary based on the device, quality, number of members, and other factors.
At the start, this was the data shown by Glasswire. The initial data used by the app was 674kb.
After a 2-minute one-on-one voice call, there was an increase of close to 200kb. Note that no other activities such as transfer of files or text were happening at this time.
After a 2-minute one-on-one video call, Glasswire showed that the app’s data usage had increased to 11.4MB, from the previous value of ~872kb.
This means that for 2 mins of video calling, close to 11MB of data was consumed. Apps like Whatsapp, too, consume about the same amount of data."
How to minimize the usage of data by Discord?
If you are not pleased with the amount of data being used by the Discord app and would like to minimize the usage, you can do so through the following ways:
On your mobile device,
- Go to ‘User Settings’ (the Discord icon at the bottom right of the screen) → ‘Text & Images’
- Under Display Images, Videos and Lolcats,
- Disable ‘When posted as links to chat’;
- Disable ‘When uploaded directly to Discord’
- Under ‘Image Compression’, enable ‘Auto-compress Images’
- Similarly, under ‘Link Preview’, disable ‘Show website preview info from links pasted into chat’
You will also find the same settings on your computer, except for the ‘Notifications’ feature. Note that the gear icon next to your username is the ‘User Settings’ option. Modifying these settings should significantly reduce your data usage.