Chat

Chat casually with your team, ask questions, share links, and keep the conversation going without turning everything into a formal post. The Message Board is great for for announcements, decisions, and things that need a record, but Chat is for fast, low-stakes back-and-forth.

Writing and formatting messages

Type your message at the bottom of the window and hit Enter to post.

Click the A icon to open the formatting toolbar. From there you can add:

Bold, italic, and strikethrough
Colors and headings
Hyperlinks
Quote blocks and code blocks
Bulleted and numbered lists

There's also a quick emoji picker right alongside the toolbar. To open the full emoji picker: Control + Command + Space on a Mac, or Windows key + ; on Windows.

You can add images and files to a chat message by dragging and dropping, using the attachment button 📎, or pasting an image URL directly.

When you paste a public URL into Chat, a link preview appears automatically so your team knows what they're clicking on. If you want to remove the preview, you can dismiss it before sending — or edit the message afterward to take it out. [[[SCREENSHOT OF LINK PREVIEW]]]

@mentioning someone

To get someone's attention, type @ followed by their name. They'll receive a notification for the mention.

Replying to a message

To reply directly to a specific message, click the ••• menu next to it and select ↩ Reply. All formatting options are available in replies, including images.

Editing and deleting messages

Click the ••• menu next to your own message to edit or delete it.

Admins and account owners can delete messages posted by others, but cannot edit them — only the original author can edit their own posts.

Account owners and admins can also set how long Basecamp retains chat history for the entire account in Adminland.

Viewing files posted in Chat

To browse everything that's been shared in a Chat room, click the ••• menu in the upper right corner of the Chat room and select 'See all files posted here'.

Notifications

Click the Chat tool to see your current notification status. The 🔔 at the top right shows if you're being notified.

When Chat is active, you won't get a notification for every single message — if several people are chatting while you're away, you'll come back to one notification, not a dozen.

Push notifications are sent only when:

You're @mentioned
A new message arrives after Chat has been idle for 6+ hours

For more on why Chat notifications work this way, read Group Chat, Group Stress.

Connecting external services to Chat (Chatbots)

Developers can connect outside tools and services to post updates directly into Chat using Chatbots. They're handy for software teams, marketers, or anyone who wants to stay on top of things happening outside Basecamp.

We’ve included GitHub to start, but you can add your own chatbot if you’ve built one already. Learn more in our Chatbots API guide.

Playing Sounds

Chat supports a set of fun sound commands. Every command starts with /play . For example: /play greatjob

Here's the full list:

56k ballmer bell bezos bueller butts clowntown cottoneyejoe crickets curb dadgummit dangerzone danielsan deeper donotwant drama flawless glados gogogo greatjob greyjoy guarantee heygirl honk horn horror inconceivable letitgo live loggins makeitso noooo nyan ohmy ohyeah pushit rimshot rollout rumble sax secret sexyback story tada tmyk totes trololo trombone unix vuvuzela what whoomp wups yay yeah yodel

First time? Start with /play yodel .

Chat

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Connecting external services to Chat (Chatbots)