Getting started

Welcome to Banwatch! This page gets you up and running in about five minutes. No technical knowledge needed — if you can invite a bot and pick a channel, you're ready.

What Banwatch does for you

Banwatch keeps your community safer by telling you about troublesome users before they cause problems. It watches your bans, lets you look up a user's history across the network, and warns you when someone with a history joins your server. It never bans anyone for you — you always stay in control.

Step 1 — Invite the bot

Click the invite link and choose your server:

https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=1047697525349564436

Discord will show you a list of permissions. Leave them all checked — Banwatch needs them to do its job. (Curious what each one is for? See Permissions.)

Step 2 — Choose your mod channel

Tell Banwatch where to post by running:

/config change

Pick Mod Channel from the menu, then choose the channel you want (a private staff channel works well). The first time you do this, Banwatch adds all of your server's existing bans to its database, so don't be surprised by a burst of messages — that's normal and only happens once.

That's it. Banwatch is now working in the background.

Step 3 — Check the bot can work

In any channel, type:

/config permissioncheck

Banwatch replies with a tidy checklist. Every item should have a ✅. If you see a ❌, head to Server Settings → Roles → Banwatch and turn that permission on, then run the check again. This one command solves the majority of setup issues.

Step 4 (optional) — Tune it to your liking

None of these are required, but they make Banwatch fit your server better:

Let users appeal bans — /config appeals. See Appeals.
Set an invite channel so Banwatch can link back to a banned user's origin server — /invite set_channel.
Set up automatic warning punishments — /warnings punishments. See Warnings.
Hide your server's bans from public lookups — /config visibility.

What happens next?

When someone with a ban on record joins your server, Banwatch quietly alerts your mod channel so your team can decide what to do.
When you ban someone, Banwatch offers to share it with the network (with or without proof) so other communities can make informed decisions too. See Bans.

Need a hand?

Run /config help for in-app guidance.
Run /support for a link to the support server.
Browse the FAQ or Troubleshooting.