Frequently Asked Questions

What are the DJ and Bot Commander roles?

FocaBot has 4 different permission levels, User, DJ, Bot Commander, and Bot Owner.

All of them, excluding User and Bot Owner are plain old Discord roles.

That means if you want to give someone DJ permissions, all you have to do is create a discord role called DJ (case-sensitive), and give it to that person.

If you're hosting the bot yourself, you can change the role names to whatever you want.

Here are the differences between permission levels:

User

  • The lowest permission level. Everyone has this level by default.
  • Song requests limited to 30 minutes long by default (can be changed with f'config maxSongLength)
  • Have limited control over the queue (they can remove, skip, and modify items as long as they're requested by themselves)

DJ

  • People with the DJ role.
  • Song requests limited to 12 hours in length
  • Full control over music commands (instant skip, shuffle, loop, remove, swap, etc)
  • Access to restricted filters (volume, loop, etc)
  • Able to add playlists and livestreams

Bot Commander

  • Guild owners and people with the Bot Commander role.
  • Song requests limited to 24 hours in length
  • Able to change bot settings for the guild (see configuration)

Bot Owner

  • The owner of the bot
  • Bypasses all limits
  • Access to administrative commands (restart the bot, run code, change the username, etc)

What are inline commands / How do i enable them?

Inline commands allow you use commands inside a message, like this:

Inline Commands

To enable them, just run f'enable inlineCommands

What sites does FocaBot support?

Essentialy, FocaBot supports most sites supported by youtube-dl, but here's a list of sites that were oficially tested and should be expected to work most of the time:

  • YouTube Videos
  • YouTube Playlists
  • YouTube Streams
  • SoundCloud Tracks
  • SoundCloud Artists
  • SoundCloud Playlists
  • Bandcamp Tracks
  • Bandcamp Albums
  • Beatport
  • Facebook Videos
  • Twitter Videos
  • Twitch Streams
  • Discord Attachments (send the file with f'play as message)
  • Direct links to media files
  • Most internet radios (with direct link)

Of course, you are welcome to try other sites. If you find another major site supported by FocaBot, you can contact me and i'll add it to the list.

How do i make FocaBot run in the background / at startup

FocaBot only runs as long as you leave the terminal / cmd window open, but this can be a disadvantage if you're running it on your own computer or a server, where it's desirable to keep it running in the background.

There are different ways to do it, but i personally recommend PM2. It's what i use in my production servers and so far i've had no issues at all.

To install PM2, use this command:

npm install -g pm2

If you installed the npm package, run this command to start FocaBot in the background:

pm2 start focabot

If you installed FocaBot from source, first cd into FocaBot's directory and run this:

pm2 start daemon/pm2.yml

If you're on Linux or on a VPS, you can go even further and make the bot run at startup with:

pm2 save && pm2 startup

Then follow the instructions.

Text search doesn't work, but links do / Links from X site don't work anymore.

Sometimes, youtube-dl breaks, so it's pretty common to see some sites stop working.

Most of the time, those sites are fixed the same day they break, and just require an updated version of youtube-dl.

I don't have enough free time to constantly check if everything is ok, so if i forget to update youtube-dl, just send me a DM and i'll update it as soon as possible.

If you're hosting the bot yourself, just run f'update ytdl to update youtube-dl

The bot doesn't respond to my commands on some guilds

First, make sure you're using the correct command prefix. Most self-hosted versions have a different command prefix than the default.

Second, make sure you have permission to use the bot. Guild owners can restrict the bot to a single channel or even disable the bot entirely for normal users.

Third, make sure you have permission to run the command you're trying to use. The bot fails silently if you don't have permission to use a command. Guild owners also have the option to restrict specific commands.

The bot is stuck in the voice channel and doesn't play anything

First, make sure the current song is not paused with f'np. If it's paused, ask a DJ to use the f'resume command. Vote Skipping also works on paused songs.

  • If the current song appears as playing, but you don't hear anything:
    • Try disconnecting and reconnecting from the Voice Chat. Discord has a bug that makes bots go silent if they disconnect on other guilds you share with them.
    • If you don't hear anything after reconnecting, try running f'seek 0.
    • If that doesn't work, use f'skip.
  • If f'np produces no output, or the above steps didn't work.
    • The queue is likely corrupt. Use f'clear as a last resort.
    • If that doesn't solve the problem, contact me immediately (@TheBITLINK#3141).