Channel Preview

The ChannelList Preview prop lets you override the UI for each channel list item. The custom component receives props from ChannelList and the ChannelPreview wrapper, and it is responsible for handling selection (click).

If you don’t provide Preview, it defaults to ChannelPreviewMessenger.

Best Practices

• Preserve selection handling in custom previews to keep navigation working.
• Keep preview rendering fast; it runs for every item in large lists.
• Use latestMessagePreview over deprecated latestMessage.
• Show unread and delivery status only when it improves list scanability.
• Fall back to default ChannelPreviewMessenger when minimal customization is needed.

Basic Usage

To customize the list item UI, pass your Preview component to ChannelList. See The Preview Prop Component for the extended guide.

const CustomChannelPreviewUI = ({ latestMessagePreview, lastMessage }) => {
  // "lastMessage" property is for the last
  // message that has been interacted with (pinned/edited/deleted)

  // to display last message of the channel use "latestMessagePreview" property
  return <span>{latestMessagePreview}</span>;
};

<ChannelList Preview={CustomChannelPreviewUI} />;

Props

channel

This required prop is the channel to be previewed; comes from either the channelRenderFilterFn or usePaginatedChannels call from ChannelList and does not need to be set manually.

active

If the component's channel is the active (selected) channel.

activeChannel

The currently selected channel object.

Avatar

The custom UI component to display the avatar for the channel.

channelUpdateCount

A number that forces the update of the preview component on channel update.

className

Custom class for the channel preview root

displayImage

Image of channel to display.

displayTitle

Title of channel to display.

getLatestMessagePreview

Custom function that generates the message preview in ChannelPreview component.

lastMessage

The last message received in a channel.

latestMessage

Deprecated, use latestMessagePreview instead.

latestMessagePreview

Latest message preview to display. Will be either a string or a JSX.Element rendering markdown.

messageDeliveryStatus

Status describing whether own message has been delivered or read by another. If the last message is not an own message, then the status is undefined. The value is calculated from channel.read data on mount and updated on every message.new, message.delivered resp. message.read WS event.

Possible values are:

• 'read'
• 'delivered' - not read
• 'sent' - not delivered
• undefined - last channel message is not own

Use MessageDeliveryStatus enum to determine the current delivery status, for example:

import type { MessageDeliveryStatus } from "stream-chat-react";
import {
  DoubleCheckMarkIcon,
  DoubleCheckMarkIconRead,
  SingleCheckMarkIcon,
} from "../icons";

type MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator = {
  messageDeliveryStatus: MessageDeliveryStatus;
};

export const MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator = ({
  messageDeliveryStatus,
}: MessageDeliveryStatusIndicator) => {
  // the last message is not an own message in the channel
  if (!messageDeliveryStatus) return null;

  return (
    <div>
      {messageDeliveryStatus === MessageDeliveryStatus.SENT && (
        <SingleCheckMarkIcon />
      )}
      {messageDeliveryStatus === MessageDeliveryStatus.DELIVERED && (
        <DoubleCheckMarkIcon />
      )}
      {messageDeliveryStatus === MessageDeliveryStatus.READ && (
        <DoubleCheckMarkIconRead />
      )}
    </div>
  );
};

onSelect

Custom handler invoked when the ChannelPreview is clicked. The SDK uses ChannelPreview to display items of channel search results. There, behind the scenes, the new active channel is set.

Preview

The UI component to use for display.

setActiveChannel

The setter function for a selected channel.

unread

The number of unread Messages.

watchers

The object containing watcher parameters. See the Pagination documentation for a list of available fields for sort.