Allow bots to use all emotes

[muddyfish]

Currently, a bot is able to use emotes from servers it's part of, as they get Nitro perks for emote usage.
This is super helpful for some things like welcome messages, reaction menus and the like.

However, bots are limited to emotes from servers they are currently in, so these features will break if say a user with Nitro wants a welcome message with emotes from their servers that the bot isn't in for instance.

The current 'solution' for this is to create a dedicated emote server (or more!) for your bot and upload the emotes you want your bot to be able to use, if statically predetermined. Otherwise, you end up with a few servers that end up effectively acting as emote caches for your bot when it needs to send messages with certain emotes.

Whilst this does work pretty well, as the actual number of visually unique emotes is pretty low, it would probably be much less strain on developer and Discord's resources if bots were able to use emotes from servers they aren't in. I imagine this would be implemented easiest by simply removing the check for 'does this message contain invalid emoji' for messages sent with a bot token.

[advaith1]

You can already load the image for any emoji with just the id, and you would need the id to send it

The only thing this would change is adding the ability to send it inline instead of as an image attachment.

[TapuCosmo]

If this is done, do it for webhooks too.

[advaith1]

@TapuCosmo It was added for webhooks a few weeks ago

[TapuCosmo]

So webhooks can now use any emojis without needing a bot token?

[advaith1]

yes

[GoldenAngel2]

@advaith1 are you sure it works for webhooks at the moment?

[muddyfish]

yes

[Andre601]

Webhooks require to have the emote on the same guild they're created in.

[AEnterprise]

no webhooks can use all emoji from all guilds, it does require the everyone role to have use external emoji perms in the channel

[Andre601]

no webhooks can use all emoji from all guilds, it does require the everyone role to have use external emoji perms in the channel

My personal experience tells me otherwise.
I grant usage of external emotes, yet the webhook can't display any that aren't in other Discord Servers.

[muddyfish]

Can we please keep this thread on the topic of allowing this for bot users, and not webhooks?

[advaith1]

This would also be very useful for bots that repost content from normal users such as starboard bots; there isn't a workaround for those like there is for admin-set or dev-set emojis.

[Skye-31]

For a starboard bot now, you could actually use webhooks, which are able to use all emojis, as they are now capable of editing and deleting messages

[muddyfish]

Webhooks technically can't use all emojis, they need to be non deleted and they can't be unavailable (from a guild which lost a boost causing the emoji to grey out). Possibly also emojis that are role locked but I can't remember that.

[0x57e11a]

Webhooks technically can't use all emojis, they need to be non deleted and they can't be unavailable (from a guild which lost a boost causing the emoji to grey out). Possibly also emojis that are role locked but I can't remember that.

Those are reasonable restrictions.

[Joshix-1]

Webhooks can use Twitch-Emotes from other servers.

[t-wy]

Some bump on this as the is an ongoing issue of the same topic. The solution had been fine in past years, but has since become more restricted over years:

• In 2022 (Interaction follow-ups aren't using bot permissions #5279), it was stated that the external emoji permission was changed to follow the everyone permission, bots were able to bypass the everyone permission to use emojis by using edit original response endpoint.
• During 2023 and 2024 (Bot-owned webhooks can't send emoji's from servers the bot is not a member of #5357), bots may use defer reply or edit follow-up that utilizes webhook to grant the external emote permission just like normal webhooks, but the method was since "patched" that bot-created webhooks become much different from user-created webhooks, that bot interaction webhooks cannot access any external emoji in servers the bot is not in either despite all bypasses anymore.
• Currently the thing that still work is when emojis are used by the bot who is a member of the emote guild or used as in "Views" (those buttons and dropdowns).

It may seem that Discord intentionally implements such complications to weaken bots that has the ability to mimic nitro behaviors (e.g. NQN), but it seems that the behavior is tarring all bots with the same brush that makes what being previously possible no longer works (e.g. starboard, message edit/delete log, etc.). Even with the bot emoji feature, it introduces it specific problems (#7557) that complicates the development progress as development bots cannot use the same set of emojis as the main bot.

• Still a reminder that emoji images have always been available just by the URL with only emoji ID needed, including deleted ones. This means it is still always possible for such emoji to be used outside the message content.