Introduction

What Nowly is, the three pieces that show your browser activity on Discord, what a presence can display, and where your data goes.

What is Nowly?

Nowly shows what you watch, listen to or browse on websites as a Discord Rich Presence: the card under your name with a title, artwork, a progress bar and sometimes a button. It is free, and you don't need an account.

Nowly is made of three pieces:

• The browser extension, for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera and other Chromium browsers, and for Firefox. It lives in the browser's side panel.
• The desktop app, for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is the local bridge to the Discord app. The extension calls it Nowly Desktop.
• Presences, installed from the library: one small script per website, such as YouTube, Netflix, Twitch or Spotify.

What is a presence?

A presence is a script written for one website. It runs only on the addresses listed for it, reads what it needs from the page, and prepares the activity Discord will show. Every official presence is reviewed and signed before it is published, and the extension checks that signature before running it.

Depending on the website, a presence can show:

• the platform name and the type of activity (watching, listening, playing),
• the title of the video, episode, track, stream or page,
• a second line such as the channel, the artist or the episode number,
• artwork or a thumbnail, with a play or pause badge,
• the time elapsed, or a progress bar with the time remaining,
• up to two buttons that let your friends open the same page.

Most presences also have settings, such as showing activity while browsing or a privacy mode that hides titles.

How it works

1. You open a supported page. The matching presence reads it in your browser tab.
2. The extension applies your settings: pause, schedules, hidden tabs, language.
3. It sends the activity to the desktop app on your computer through native messaging.
4. The desktop app hands it to the Discord app through Discord's local connection.
5. Discord shows it on your profile.

The activity never goes through Nowly's servers. Discord in a browser tab or on a phone cannot receive it: the Discord desktop app must be running on the same computer.

Start here

1. Follow Installation: extension, user scripts, desktop app, Discord.
2. Install a first presence, as described in Installing Presences.
3. If something stays empty, go through Troubleshooting.

Want to add a website? The Presence Development section explains how to write, test and publish your own presence.