In-room chat is a side panel for text, reactions, polls, and images without leaving the call.

Open and send

1. Open the chat panel from the meeting controls.
2. Send a text message — other participants receive it.
3. Opening or closing the panel must not kill camera or microphone tracks.

Message grouping and timestamps should look correct even on burst sends.

Emoji

• Reaction on a message — both sides update reaction counts.
• Emoji picker in the composer inserts emoji into the draft text.

Polls

1. Create a poll from chat.
2. Everyone sees the poll bubble.
3. Participants vote; results update (results modal if the UI provides one).

Images and files

• Attach an image within server size and dimension limits.
• The meeting client pre-checks file size and image dimensions before upload using limits from public settings (chatUploadMaxBytes, chatUploadMaxDimension).
• Oversize files or oversized dimensions are rejected with a clear error (client first; server is still authoritative — 413 / 400 on POST /api/room/:roomId/chat/upload).
• Recipients can open a lightbox for images.

Defaults: 10 MiB per file, 8192×8192 max dimension (when unset).

Operators set limits via:

• chat.uploads.maxBytes / chat.uploads.maxDimension in Configuration
• Admin Chat Uploads tab (chatUploadMaxBytes, chatUploadMaxDimension) in the Admin Dashboard
• Per-user / global storage quotas under chat (maxUploadBytesPerUser, disk/S3 backends)

Retention (client-side)

LiveKit does not persist data-channel chat on the server the way a chat product would. Bedrud applies client-side retention hints:

Env overrides: CHAT_MAX_MESSAGE_COUNT, CHAT_MESSAGE_TTL_HOURS.

After a reload mid-room, history follows that product policy (session restore or clean start) without crashing.

Related

• Meeting Controls
• Joining a Meeting
• API Handlers — POST /room/:roomId/chat/upload