Discord reaction roles: let members pick roles with emoji or buttons

Reaction roles are among the most popular features on Discord servers. Members grab their roles themselves instead of asking for them in chat: ping roles for events, games, platforms, regions or a name color. Your team saves a lot of manual work, and new members see right away which areas the server has.

In this guide you'll learn when emoji reactions, buttons or a dropdown are the better choice, and you'll set up a role menu with Lizbot in a few minutes. After that we cover exclusive picks, menus only for verified members, adding reaction roles to existing messages and the mistakes that most often break reaction roles.

Emoji, buttons or dropdown: which one fits you?

The term reaction roles comes from the time when bots could only hand out roles through emoji reactions. Today Discord also offers buttons and select menus under a message. Lizbot supports all three:

Buttons and dropdowns have one big advantage: after every click the member gets a short confirmation that only they can see, listing the roles that were added or removed. A reaction gives no such feedback. You only notice whether it worked by checking the role in your profile.

Our rule of thumb: for new menus, use buttons or a dropdown. Emoji reactions make sense when you want to keep using an existing message your members have already reacted to.

Before you start: roles and permissions in Discord

Reaction roles only work if the role hierarchy is right. In Discord, open Server Settings, Roles and check two things:

• The Lizbot role sits above every role it should hand out. A bot can only assign roles that are below its own highest role. Drag the Lizbot role upwards.
• The roles have no staff permissions. Roles that members pick themselves don't need any permissions. Create them without permissions, and for ping roles turn on Allow anyone to @mention this role if members should be able to ping them themselves.

Lizbot also needs the Manage Roles permission and, in the target channel, View Channel, Send Messages and Embed Links, because the role menu is an embed. For emoji reactions, Add Reactions and Read Message History are needed as well. How the hierarchy works in detail is covered in the guide Set up Discord roles.

1. Create a role menu in five minutes

In the dashboard, open the Role menus module. It is turned on by default.

1. Click Role menu. The New role menu form opens.
2. Under Channel, pick the channel where the menu should appear, for example #roles.
3. Under Type, choose either Buttons or Dropdown.
4. Fill in Title, Description and Color. The title appears in bold above the menu, the description below it.
5. Add your roles with Add role. For each row you pick the role, a Label, optionally an Emoji and, for a dropdown, a short Description. A menu holds up to 25 roles.
6. Click Save and post.

Lizbot posts the menu as an embed with buttons or a select list. Test it yourself afterwards: click a button and you should see the confirmation and the role. A second click takes the role away again.

If you want it even faster, use Role menu from template at the top of the page. Lizbot comes with ready-made menus, for example for notifications, platforms, games, regions, age group, interests, name colors and pronouns. If the matching roles are missing on your server, Lizbot creates them without permissions. Existing roles with the same name are reused.

An example roles page

A #roles channel with three menus covers everything for most communities:

• Notifications as buttons: announcements, events, giveaways, stream start
• Your games as a dropdown with multiple selection and one line of description per game
• Name color as buttons with exclusive selection

Three clearly separated menus are easier to read than one huge menu with 25 mixed roles.

2. Set up exclusive selection

Some roles rule each other out. A member has only one name color, comes from one region or belongs to one age group. For this, turn on Only one role at a time in the role menu.

• With buttons, a click swaps the member's previous role from this menu for the new one.
• With a dropdown, only one entry can be selected.

Important: exclusivity only applies within a single menu. If you have two separate color menus, a member can take one color from each. So always put roles that belong together in the same menu.

The option also exists for emoji reactions, where it's called Exclusive. If a member reacts with a new emoji, Lizbot removes the other roles of that message and also the member's old reactions. A bot can only remove other people's reactions with the Manage Messages permission. If it's missing in the channel, Lizbot still swaps the role, but the old reaction stays visible.

3. Restrict a menu to certain members

With the Required role option, only members with that role can use the menu. Everyone else gets a notice on click that they don't have permission.

Typical uses:

• Only after verification: As the required role, pick the role members get after verification. That way fresh accounts can't grab ping roles and can't ping the whole team straight away. More on this in the guide Set up Discord verification.
• Only for boosters or supporters: Exclusive name colors as a small thank-you.
• Only for teams: On an esports server, only players with the team role pick their position or lineup.

It's even cleaner if unauthorized members don't see the menu at all. To do that, put it in a channel that only the matching role can view. The required role is then a second safeguard.

4. Add reaction roles to existing messages

If you already have a message with rules or a role overview that members should react to, you link the emojis directly to it. You do this in the dashboard in the Engagement module, Reaction roles tab:

1. In Discord, right-click the message and choose Copy Message Link.
2. In the dashboard, click Reaction role.
3. Paste the copied link under Message link.
4. Under Emoji, enter a standard emoji or a custom emoji in the format <:name:id>.
5. Pick the Role and, if needed, Exclusive.
6. Save. Lizbot adds the reaction under the message itself, so members only have to click it.

Repeat this for each emoji. Members get the role as soon as they react and lose it when they remove their reaction.

Ideally use standard emojis or your server's own custom emojis, because Lizbot can only react with emojis it has access to. If Lizbot can't add the reaction, the dashboard still saves the link and shows you the error. The message also has to be on the same server. How to upload your own emojis is explained in Adding Discord emojis and stickers.

Moving from another bot

If you switch from another bot to Lizbot, you don't have to recreate your reaction roles. The migration assistant in the dashboard under Switch bots scans your server and detects other bots' role menus. Lizbot takes over reaction roles on the existing message when the message names both emoji and role. The message stays as it is and your members keep reacting as before. You confirm uncertain matches yourself. Menus with buttons are rebuilt by Lizbot in the same channel. In the Role menus tab of the migration assistant you can also enter specific message links or channels where Lizbot should look. Everything about switching is in the guide Switching bots and on the migration page. There are dedicated migration guides for Carl-bot and MEE6.

5. Dangerous roles are blocked

With reaction roles, a mistake happens quickly: someone accidentally puts a role with moderation permissions in the menu, and suddenly every member can make themselves a moderator. Lizbot prevents this.

Roles with permissions such as Administrator, Manage Server, Manage Roles, Manage Channels, Manage Webhooks, Kick Members, Ban Members, Timeout Members, Manage Messages, Manage Nicknames or mentioning @everyone are not handed out by Lizbot through role menus and reaction roles. The same goes for roles above the Lizbot role and for roles managed by an integration, such as the booster role or another bot's role.

When you save a role menu, the dashboard names the affected roles. If a role only gets such permissions later and a member clicks it, Lizbot explains why it doesn't work and asks them to let the team know. With emoji reactions there is no such feedback: the role is simply not assigned.

Limits by plan

For most servers, five role menus on the Free plan are enough. If you need more, for example for many game sections or several languages, Pro and above give you as many menus as you like. Emoji reaction roles in the Engagement module are included in all plans.

Checklist

• Lizbot role above every role it hands out
• Self-assignable roles created without staff permissions
• Roles that belong together in one menu, colors and regions exclusive
• Required role set if the menu should only work after verification
• Menu in its own channel where members can't write
• Every role picked once yourself and removed again

Common mistakes

• Lizbot role too low: By far the most common cause. If a role sits above the Lizbot role, Lizbot can't assign it. The Server check in the dashboard checks the role position and helps you fix it.
• Role with staff permissions in the menu: Lizbot won't assign it. Remove the permissions from the role or take it out of the menu.
• Lizbot is missing permissions in the channel: Without Add Reactions and Read Message History, Lizbot can't put the emojis under the message. Members themselves don't need that permission: clicking an existing reaction works without it. If you deny it to them in the roles channel, no random emojis end up there, and you can deny Send Messages there as well.
• Menu message deleted by hand: Then there's nothing left to click. Open the menu in the dashboard and save it again, and Lizbot posts it anew. Conversely, if the message stays up even though you deleted the menu, Lizbot explains on click that the menu no longer exists.
• Too many roles in one menu: 25 buttons are hard to scan. Split them by topic or use a dropdown with descriptions.
• Exclusive roles spread over two menus: Exclusivity only works within one menu.