Freezing Channels

Freezing a channel prevents users from sending new messages and adding or deleting reactions.

Sending a message to a frozen channel returns an error message. Attempting to add or delete reactions returns a 403 Not Allowed error.

User roles with the UseFrozenChannel permission can still use frozen channels normally. By default, no user role has this permission.

Freeze a Channel

const update = await channel.update({
  data: { frozen: true },
  message: { text: "Thierry has frozen the channel" },
});

const partialUpdate = await channel.updatePartial({ set: { frozen: true } });

Unfreeze a Channel

const update = await channel.update({
  data: { frozen: false },
  message: { text: "Thierry has unfrozen the channel" },
});

Granting the Frozen Channel Permission

Permissions are typically managed in the Stream Dashboard under your app's Roles & Permissions settings. This is the recommended approach for most use cases.

To grant permissions programmatically, update the channel type using a server-side API call. See user permissions for more details.

const channelType = await client.chat.getChannelType({ name: "messaging" });

const adminGrants = [...channelType.grants.admin, "use-frozen-channel"];

await client.chat.updateChannelType({
  name: "messaging",
  grants: { admin: adminGrants },
});