Restrict direct messages

This feature is only available to organization owners and administrators.

Organization administrators can configure two types of permissions for direct messages:

• Who can authorize a direct message conversation. To send a DM, the recipients must include at least one user who can authorize the conversation (the sender or someone else).
• Who can start a direct message conversation.

These permissions can be granted to any combination of roles, groups, and individual users. They are designed so that users can always respond to a direct message they’ve received (unless organization permissions change). They also provide a lot of flexibility for managing DMs in your organization. For example, you can:

• Prevent 1:1 DMs between guest users.
• Allow members to respond to DMs from an admin or moderator, but not to start DM conversations.
• Disable direct messages altogether.

Regardless of how these settings are configured, users can always send direct messages to bots and to themselves.

Tip: When restricting direct messages, consider also restricting who can create private channels.

Configure who can authorize a direct message conversation

1. Go to Organization permissions.
2. Under Direct message permissions, configure Who can authorize a direct message conversation.
3. Click Save changes.

Configure who can start a direct message conversation

1. Go to Organization permissions.
2. Under Direct message permissions, configure Who can start a direct message conversation.
3. Click Save changes.

Disable direct messages

1. Go to Organization permissions.
2. Under Direct message permissions, set Who can authorize a direct message conversation to Direct messages disabled.
3. Click Save changes.

Related articles

• Direct messages
• Restrict channel creation