Twitch is a very famous social platform for content creators to share live videos or streams of live gaming, cooking, artwork or any other content of choice but with an added choice of live interaction.
Subscribers can comment, donate and sometimes even join their favourite content creators virtually.
What Are Twitch Logs?
Twitch is an interactive platform that is highly reliant on live comments and live interactions and each broadcast has a separate chat log.
This chat log or the entire chat history of a broadcast is called a twitch log. This is only the chat history and does not have the video of the live stream, which is a completely different concept.
Twitch logs are automatically saved and they can be retrieved later, if the content creator needs any information out of it.
In many ways this can help a user to identify audience behaviors, loyal fanbase and also help to check inappropriate behavior.
Since twitch is a social platform mostly used by gamers the chat log feature becomes very important due to the toxic nature of somethings in the gaming community.
How To Check Twitch Chat Logs?
There are multiple ways to check twitch logs. Some of these methods also require external applications which may not be approved by the Twitch app.
There are some twitch commands which are the most widely used methods for getting chat logs and besides these options there are third party apps, which are discussed below.
Use The User Search Command
Twitch allows users to use commands to get specific functions done.
The /User command allows you to see the comments made by any user who commented during your broadcast.
/User <username>
The user command allows you to see the history of the user’s chat messages on your account and their bans and timeouts as well. Also reveals the donations a particular user has made to your account.
You can also use the monitor command if you want to monitor a particular user’s activity on your twitch session.
/monitor <username>
When you select the monitor option, the particular user’s messages show up on the top.
Using Third-Party Apps
Using third party apps can help you accomplish a lot more functions by broadening the horizons of twitch chat functions.
Third party apps like chatty, nightbot or streamlabs offer moderation functions and they have their own storage options for chat logs.
You can customize the options in each software accordingly, chat logs can be extracted, specific user comments can be highlighted and many other options can be enabled to ensure that you have a cleaner and more organized chat.
Fully searchable chats is what thes software claim to offer.
Using Chat Moderator View
The option to check the messages from a user can also be done using the moderator function. The moderator screen can be reached from twitch.tv/moderator link.
The moderator view shows all the live channels you are moderator for and allows you to filter out content for each of these channels. The moderator view option shows you all the security options you have to ensure that your account can be safe and privacy can be maintained.
Playback your VODs
Playing back your VODs means checking your whole broadcast for all messages, this will also show messages that were deleted by the moderator.
The downside of this being a long session has to be reviewed completely if you want to check everything that was posted in the comments section or any flash message that appeared during the broadcast.
VODs are stored only for a limited time, 14 days in most cases and in some special cases for big accounts, it could be 60 days as well. If you want to use this feature to see the twitch logs, better be quick about it.
This also offers an easier road out for people who do not want to install third party apps or do not want extra technicalities from what they are already using.
Why Should You Read Your Twitch Chat Logs?
Twitch chat logs offer a lot of perspective into the viewer base of your channel. It offers cues on what kind of audience behaviour is common among your channel viewers, identifying loyal audience bases and to curb toxic behaviour.
Let us explore these in more depth.
Understanding Audience Behaviour
Twitch chat logs reveal the audience behaviour of your viewer base. This helps to identify what sections of your channel are more loved than others.
Audience reactions to specific game broadcasts may be positive and it could also be negative for some other game, this helps to identify what content is preferred more by the audience members.
This also helps to shape our content as per the audience response to get more viewership and better chances of earning.Since twitter also hugely relies on the approval of live audience, it becomes extremely important to nail this aspect for the success of your channel.
You Check For Inappropriate Behavior
Twitch chat logs are not naturally moderated, it is a free place where anyone can come and comment. This freedom to comment anything can also create issues as there can be a lot of toxic users who resort to hate and bullying on the chat screens.
This is the reason everyone has a moderator who keeps checking what was posted on twitch to ensure inappropriate things are deleted. You can report users with inappropriate language to twitch and ban them from using your streams
Twitch can also reprimand your channel if a hateful comment was not removed and someone reported it. Hence you have to ensure utmost care is taken.
Enables You To Engage With Your Audience
Checking twitch logs enables you to connect with your audience because during streaming it is not possible to keep an eye on every message/comment on twitch chat.
For such cases checking the messages and seeing the donations can really help you connect with your audience and to identify what they really want from you.
Sometimes the audience wants you to play a particular game and they might collectively voice thai out on the chat. Reading the chat and checking such messages can help you decide your next content as well.
Helps Review Moderator Actions
Reviewing chat logs using the VODs will help check the moderator and how they are functioning. Sometimes they might delete content that was not meant to be deleted or left a comment which was later reported, reviewing their actions keeps a check on how they function as well
Since the channel is your and hence so are the rules, it is only customary that you check some moderator actions occasionally to ensure everything is running smoothly and as per plans.
If you run into a lot of trouble due to your moderator not acting on time, it is time to find a new one.
Helps Identify Loyal Viewers
Twitch logs make it very easy to find out your most loyal viewers, the ones that have always stuck with you since your initial days. This really helps to ensure that we can run giveaways and send some random gifts to such users.
Thanking the most ardent supporters and ensuring they are appreciated is a sure fire way of making it into their hearts. It adds to your accessibility factor and makes it feel like they are getting the appreciation from their idol or someone they look up to.
FAQs
Does Twitch store chat information?
No, twitch does not store chat history but you can view it using the saved VODs for a very brief period of time, 14 to 60 days.
Twitch chat logs can also be viewed using third party chat applications which have their own way of saving logs.
Can you check your logs on Twitch?
Twitch logs can be checked using multiple methods,
1. Viewing the Saved VODs which will also show you moderator deleted comments as it will show you the liv comment before it was deleted
2. Third party chat apps – Chatty
3. Using the user command on twitch shows all comments made by a particular user on your account.
How to download Twitch chat logs?
Twitch chat logs cannot be downloaded from twitch itself, third party apps like chatty need to be used to retrieve the chat logs of a live session.