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.

Jump to:

Every project has its own Chat room. To enter it, open the project and click Chat.

Scroll up at any time to catch up on what you missed.

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 and post it into Chat, a link preview appears automatically so your team knows what they're clicking on.

@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.

With the Admin Pro Pack, 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

In any Chat room, click the 🔔 Notifications button on the upper right to start or stop receiving notifications.

Screenshot of a Basecamp Chat room with the Notifying button highlighted in the upper-right corner.

The counter next to Chats in your New for You shows the number of new posts in rooms you’re following.

When Chat is active, you won’t get a notification for every new message. If several people are chatting while you’re away, you’ll come back to one notification instead of 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.

View multiple chats side-by-side (Bonfire)

Keep an eye on several project chats at once with Bonfire. To open it, click the ••• menu in any chat and choose View in Bonfire, or open the Jump menu and type "Bonfire."

  • Add a chat: click the (+) and pick a chat from the dropdown. You can have up to 8 open at once.
  • Reorder: drag and drop chats into the order you want.
  • Close a chat: click the X on any chat you no longer need.
  • Jump between chats: hold Shift and press C to move from chat to chat.

Bonfire remembers your open chats in the browser you're using, so they won't follow you to another computer or browser. Bonfire works with project chats; Pings can't be added.

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.

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