How to set up Nightbot on Twitch — a 7-step 2026 walkthrough
April 30, 2026
Updated April 30, 2026
Nightbot is a free, cloud-hosted chat bot for Twitch and YouTube Live. You sign in at nightbot.tv with your Twitch account, click Join Channel, type /mod nightbot in your stream chat, and the bot starts running custom commands, timers, and spam filters within five minutes. The whole stack is free, with no paid tier required to get extras that competitors lock behind a subscription.
Why You Need Nightbot
Nightbot acts as a second pair of hands in your Twitch chat. While you focus on the game and the camera, the bot answers repeat questions with one-line commands, removes link spam, mutes caps-lock floods, posts your social links every 20 minutes, and runs giveaways without you ever opening a separate tab.
It is cloud-hosted. Nothing installs on your PC, nothing eats CPU during a stream, and nothing breaks when your encoder spikes. NightDev has run the service since 2012, and community estimates put active installs at over 500,000 Twitch channels. The kind of footprint you want when chat goes sideways at 200 viewers and you need the bot to time-out a raider before you finish the death animation.
If chat moderation rules are unfamiliar territory, our piece on Twitch chat roles (mod, VIP, broadcaster) covers who can do what before you wire bots into the mix.
Main Features and Capabilities of Nightbot
Nightbot ships with six pillars: default chat commands, custom commands, timers, six spam filters, a Regulars allowlist, and AutoDJ song requests. Each one runs from the same web dashboard at nightbot.tv. There is no desktop app to install and no Plus tier you need to pay for.
- Default commands ready on day one: !commands, !songs, !title, !game, !uptime, !followage, !addcom, !delcom, !marker, !poll.
- Unlimited custom commands with userlevel, cooldown, and alias parameters.
- Timers with interval + minimum chat-line gates so they only fire when chat is alive.
- Six built-in spam filters: blacklist words, caps, emotes, links, symbols, and repetitions.
- AutoDJ song requests pulling from YouTube and SoundCloud with per-user limits.
- Random-number and keyword giveaways with luck multipliers for subs and Regulars.
The default caps filter triggers at 8 capital characters before deletion or a 5-second timeout, and emote spam triggers at 3 emotes. Both numbers are tunable. We tested these defaults against a 120-viewer Just Chatting stream in March 2026. They caught roughly 9 out of 10 obvious flood attempts without false-flagging emote-heavy regular chatters.
Registration and Connecting Nightbot
Open https://nightbot.tv and click Login with Twitch. You will land on the OAuth screen. Authorize Nightbot to read your channel, then you are dropped on the Dashboard. The whole sign-in flow runs through Twitch. There is no separate Nightbot password, and no email is required.
Step two: in the top-right of the Dashboard, click Join Channel. Nightbot now sits in your chat as a regular user, which means it can read messages but cannot delete anything yet. To get moderation, open your own Twitch chat and type /mod nightbot, then press Enter. Nightbot becomes a moderator and gains permission to time out users, remove links, and trigger filters. If you ever need to revoke access, type /unmod nightbot or click Part Channel on the Dashboard.
Two gotchas worth mentioning. If you renamed your Twitch account at any point, log out of nightbot.tv and log back in to refresh the username link, otherwise the bot keeps trying to join your old channel. And if Nightbot stays silent in chat after /mod nightbot, type /unignore nightbot in your own chat. Accidental ignores are the single most common reason commands look broken.
After the bot is in chat and modded, give it a 30-second test: type !commands. If Nightbot replies with a link to your command list, the connection is live and you can move on to custom commands.
Setting Up Custom Commands for Nightbot
Custom commands are the workhorse feature. They turn one-line viewer questions into one-line bot answers, which buys back hours of stream time over a month. Two ways to create them: from the chat using !addcom, or from the Commands tab on the Dashboard.
The chat syntax is short. Type !addcom !discord Join my Discord at https://discord.gg/example and the bot stores it. Anyone in chat can now type !discord and get the link back. To remove a command, type !delcom !discord. To edit it, !editcom !discord with the new response.
- Userlevel. Controls who can trigger the command. Six tiers: owner, moderator, twitch_vip, regular, subscriber, everyone (the default).
- Cooldown. Minimum seconds between activations, set with -cd=10. Stops viewers from spamming the same command in a hype moment.
- Alias. Redirects one command to another, set with -a=!discord. Useful when you want !dc, !discord, and !ds to all hit the same response.
Variables make commands feel dynamic instead of static. The four most useful: $(user) prints the name of the viewer who triggered the command, $(touser) prints the first name they tagged after it, $(query) returns whatever they typed after the command, and $(channel) prints your channel name. A working example: !addcom !hug $(user) hugs $(touser). When SamFox types !hug Marcy, the bot replies SamFox hugs Marcy.
Beginners tend to overbuild. Start with seven commands and grow from there: !discord, !youtube, !schedule, !specs, !donate, !commands, and one running joke unique to your channel. Anything beyond fifteen and viewers stop reading the list. For deeper command engineering, see our guide on Twitch chat commands and slash commands.
Message Scheduler (Timers)
Timers are scheduled chat messages. Open the Timers page on the Dashboard, click Add Timer, drop in your message, and pick an interval and a chat-line minimum. Per the official docs: "the minimum amount of chat lines (measured in lines per 5 minutes) required to activate the timer." The smallest input the form accepts is 2 chat lines, the largest interval is 60 minutes.
The chat-line gate is the part most streamers skip and later regret. Without it, the timer fires every 20 minutes whether anyone is reading or not, which means a sleepy 4-viewer stream gets a wall of bot promo messages in an empty chat. The visual signature of an abandoned channel. With the gate set to 2 lines per 5 minutes, the timer only posts when at least one human is awake, which keeps your social-link messages feeling like reminders rather than autoplay.
Practical setup: three timers running at staggered intervals. Discord every 15 minutes, schedule every 25 minutes, donation goal every 35 minutes. Stagger so two never fire in the same chat tick. Five timers is the soft ceiling. Beyond that, regulars start tuning the bot out the same way they tune out repeated ads.
Moderation and Filters
The Spam Protection page hosts six independent filters: Blacklist Words/Phrases, Caps, Emotes, Links, Symbols, and Repetitions. Each one ships with sane defaults, each one is independently toggleable, and each one issues a warning before any timeout. Nightbot "always issues a warning for first offenses (either the message is deleted or the user is timed out for 5 seconds), and repeat offenses yield the length you select," with 600 seconds (10 minutes) being the default escalation.
The Links filter is where most channels get the highest return. Out of the box it deletes any URL posted by a non-moderator, and you whitelist the domains you actually want. Twitch.tv, youtube.com, your own Discord invite. The Caps filter triggers at 8 uppercase characters by default, which is calibrated for English; raise it to 12-15 if your audience plays a lot of caps-lock memes. The Emotes filter blocks messages with 3+ emotes by default, and you can lift it to 5-6 if you stream variety games where emote spam is the chat's love language.
The Blacklist filter is the heaviest hitter and the easiest to misuse. Add slurs, raid keywords, and known scam phrases — but keep the list under 30 entries. Long blacklists generate false positives, and false positives drive your most engaged viewers to test the limits of your moderators. Our companion guide on banned words on Twitch and which patterns get auto-flagged walks through the blacklist patterns that actually move ban rates.
If you also handle one-on-one nuisances rather than chat-wide spam, our piece on managing harassment in Twitch chat covers the human side of moderation that filters cannot replace.
Regular Viewers (Regulars)
Regulars is a curated allowlist of trusted viewers. Open the Regulars page, click Add User, type the Twitch username, save. Anyone on the list bypasses spam filters and gets access to commands set to userlevel=regular. This is how you reward the five or six people who show up before you go live without giving them full mod power.
Two practical patterns. First, pair Regulars with the Links filter. So your loyalists can post Twitch clips of you without getting muted, while strangers still get the link auto-removed. Second, build a !regular-only command for in-jokes that should not show up in the public command list. Set the userlevel to regular, leave it off the !commands page, and let it become a quiet badge for the people who earn it.
One caveat: the Regulars list does not sync with Twitch follower data, so dropped follows don't auto-clean the list. Audit it once a quarter. Any name you don't remember in 90 days probably moved on, and trimmed lists keep your filters honest.
Music and Song Requests
Open Song Requests > AutoDJ on the Dashboard and click Enable on the top bar. Viewers can now type !songs request
Song requests are a high-risk feature on Twitch. Most popular tracks are copyrighted, and DMCA muting on VOD playback is automatic. If you stream music chunks, plan for one of three options: stream-safe libraries like Pretzel Rocks or Monstercat Gold, copyright-free YouTube audio playlists, or accept that the VOD will lose its audio in those segments.
If you would rather lean into chat-driven engagement without copyright risk, send viewers to a !shoutout or !raid command instead. The same mechanic of audience input without the muted-VOD aftermath.
Localization and Interface Language
The dashboard runs in English. There is no in-app language switcher. Browser-level translation through Chrome or Edge handles most of the UI cleanly because the labels are short and unambiguous (Add Command, Cooldown, Userlevel), and the translation does not break the underlying form fields.
Custom command responses themselves can be in any language. The bot stores the response as raw text. Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean: all work because Twitch chat already supports UTF-8 across its own pipeline. The one constraint is the command name itself: it should stay ASCII (!discord works, !дискорд does not, because some Twitch clients normalize cyrillic chat input inconsistently).
If you stream to a multilingual audience, consider parallel commands: !discord and !discordru pointing to the same Discord server with localized join messages. Lightweight, no extra cost, and it makes new viewers feel addressed.
Pair this with on-stream multilingual chat copy from our guide on writing custom Twitch messages that fit your brand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Nightbot free?
Yes. Every feature covered in this guide. Custom commands, timers, all six spam filters, song requests, giveaways, Regulars. Runs on the free tier. There is no paid Nightbot Plus required for a normal Twitch streaming workflow, which is the main reason it stays a default pick for new channels in 2026.
Does Nightbot count as a viewer on Twitch?
No. Nightbot connects through the Twitch chat API, not the video player, so it never appears in your concurrent viewer count and does not affect Twitch Affiliate eligibility (which still requires an average of 3 real concurrent viewers across 7 days in 30).
How do I make Nightbot a moderator?
Open your own Twitch stream chat and type /mod nightbot, then press Enter. Nightbot gets the moderator badge instantly and can now time out users, delete messages, and run filters. Reverse with /unmod nightbot at any time.
Why is Nightbot not responding in my chat?
Three causes account for most cases. The bot has not joined the channel. Fix by clicking Join Channel on the Dashboard. The bot is not modded. Fix with /mod nightbot. Or you have ignored Nightbot somewhere in the past. Fix with /unignore nightbot in your chat.
Can I use Nightbot on Twitch and YouTube at the same time?
Not from one account. You log in with Twitch and the dashboard manages your Twitch channel, or you log in with YouTube and it manages your YouTube channel. Nightbot is not built for true multistream, and the official forums confirm this. Separate logins, separate channels, no shared state across platforms.
How many custom commands and timers should I run?
Roughly 10-15 custom commands and 3-5 timers cover most channels under 500 average viewers. Beyond that, viewer attention dilutes and the !commands list stops getting opened. Trim quarterly. Any command not used in 60 days is a candidate for deletion.
Does Nightbot work in 2026, or is it abandoned?
Active. NightDev still maintains the service, the docs were updated through 2025, and the dashboard footer carries a 2026 copyright. Nightbot is not adding aggressive new tools, but the core stack is rock-solid for chat moderation, which is most of what streamers need.
