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Introduction
Sunflare is a chat and voice app for communities: servers, channels, roles, voice calls, and everything around them. This page covers the concepts every user and server owner runs into; the sidebar links go to the developer-facing guides for bots, plugins, and OSC.
Servers, channels, and roles
A server is a community: its own set of members, channels, and settings. Channels come in two kinds: text channels for messages, and voice channels for calls. Channels can be grouped under categories in the sidebar.
Roles control what a member can do: create/manage channels, kick or ban, manage roles below their own, and so on. A member can hold multiple roles; their effective permissions are the union of all of them. The server owner always has every permission and can't be demoted by anyone else.
Invites and Discover
Every server has an invite code (invite.sunflare.me/<code>), random by default, or a custom vanity code if the owner has Cosmos Pro. Settings → Access lets an owner choose a join mode: invite-only, or publicly listed on Discover for anyone to find and request to join.
A server can also require an age confirmation and/or agreement to a rules page before anyone can send their first message. Both configured under Settings → Access.
Voice & video
Voice channels support live audio, video, and screen share. Bitrate defaults to 64 kbps; a channel's bitrate ceiling (and the floor a Cosmos/Cosmos Pro owner's server gets bumped to automatically) scales with the server owner's subscription tier, not whoever's currently in the call.
Direct Messages
DMs work one-to-one or as a group. Settings → Privacy controls who can start a DM or send a friend request (everyone, friends of friends, or friends only). Teen accounts (13–17) start on the more private defaults automatically, and can loosen them the same way anyone else would.
Blocking a user hides their messages from you everywhere: DMs, friend requests, and shared-server channels alike.
Cosmos subscriptions
Sunflare is free to use in full. Cosmos and Cosmos Pro are optional monthly subscriptions (billed via PayPal) that fund hosting and add a few extras: an animated avatar/banner/server icon, a higher voice bitrate floor, larger upload limits, more custom emoji slots, and (Cosmos Pro only) a custom vanity invite code. None of it gates core functionality: messaging, voice, and unlimited channels are free for everyone. Manage or cancel a subscription any time at sunflare.me/billing.
Rich Presence
Settings → Rich Presence can show what you're listening to or playing to other people on your profile and in the member list. Sources: a linked Spotify account (works in the browser too), OS-level media-session detection (desktop app only, picks up Spotify, browsers, VLC, and more automatically), IGDB-matched game activity, or an external tool speaking OSC. Streamer Mode overrides all of it with a generic "Online" status and strips DM previews from notifications.
Trust Rank
Every account has a Trust Rank that rises with account age and messages sent. It's informational (shown on your profile), not a permission gate.
Reporting & safety
Right-click any message or open a profile card for a Report action. It goes to a structured moderation queue, separate from the general "Report a Problem" support ticket flow (Settings → Report a Problem), which is for account/bug issues instead. Server staff actions (bans, kicks, timeouts, role changes) are recorded in that server's Mod Log for anyone with the right permission to review later.