Channels in Rocket.Chat are chat rooms designed to improve communication and collaboration. For example, you can create a dedicated channel for designers in your workspace to discuss design-related topics.
Type of channels
Channels can be public or private. You can find the list of channels you are part of in the workspace sidebar.
Public channels
Open to all members of a Rocket.Chat workspace.
Anything posted is visible and searchable by everyone.
Ideal for sharing information widely, onboarding new members, or building an organization-wide knowledge base.
Common use cases: company-wide announcements, department updates, or programming language discussions.
Identified by this icon:
Private channels
Only visible to invited members.
Used for sensitive or confidential conversations.
Membership is by invitation only. Permissions determine who can invite others.
By default, only administrators, room owners, and moderators can invite members.
Identified by the lock icon:
Channel security and permissions
Rocket.Chat provides options to control who can post or react to messages in a channel:
Read-only channels
Only users with the
Post ReadOnlypermission can send messages.Best for announcements or voting.
To allow reactions:
Go to Channel info > Edit > Advanced settings and enable Allow reacting.
Broadcast channels
Like read-only channels, broadcast channels allow authorized users with the Post ReadOnly permission to write new messages while other users can reply to existing messages.
However, it differs from read-only channels in the following ways:
All messages have a reply button that redirects you to the sender's direct message (DM), replying to the message as a quote.
Users can’t react to messages.
Encrypted channels
Encrypted channels have end-to-end encryption enabled across all messages exchanged by the channel members.
To learn more, see End to End Encryption.
Channel information
To access the details of a channel:
Open the desired Channel from the sidebar.
Click the Room Information
icon from the menu bar to access some details of the channel.Click Edit to access and update all the following channel details:
Channel Name: How the channel appears in the sidebar and search.
Topic: Displayed in the header near the title, useful for providing context.
Announcement: Highlighted in a bar under the room header.
Description: The channel’s description.
Private: Whether the channel is public or private.
Read Only: Indicates if message sending in the channel is restricted to certain users.
Archived: Indicates if a channel is archived. Nobody can post messages on an archived channel and a channel search will not find that channel. Admins can find archived channels using the Directory.
Password to access: Password-protected channels require users to enter the password before joining.
Advanced settings
In the Advanced settings section, you can further customize channel behavior and permissions:
Hide system messages: Choose which automated messages (for example, join or leave notifications) are hidden.
Automatically prune old messages: Enable automatic removal of older messages based on retention policies.
Override global retention policy: Apply custom message retention rules specifically for this channel.
If a Retention Policy is active on this channel, a red warning box appears stating when messages or files are deleted. For more details, see Rocket.Chat Retention Policy.
The general channel
Every workspace includes a general channel created automatically when administrators first log in.
All users are added to it by default.
Admins can manage or delete the general channel like any other channel.
Next steps
To learn how to create channels, visit Create a New Channel.
For more details about managing channels, see Manage Channels.