Twitch is making it much easier to catch up on chat

Twitch is rolling out a new chat history feature that should make it much easier to catch up on what’s going on in a streamer’s chat.

When you switch to a stream, you’ll be able to see either the last 50 messages or the last hour of what was said in the chat, whichever option has fewer messages. This may sound like a potentially large gap between options, but I think it serves both large and small streams well.

For much larger streams, chat flies at a mile a minute, with discussions happening and changing at a rapid pace. Fifty messages is probably enough to get the conversation going before moving on to something else. Smaller streams may only have a few dedicated conversations that may not post enough to reach the 50 message threshold, so being able to see the previous hour of messages allows you to catch up on what was probably a more focused set of conversations.

Chat history has been rolling since Monday, according to Twitch, and the rollout will happen “over the next few days.” I don’t have it yet, but I’m looking forward to getting it.