--- title: How to reply and start a thread url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/chat/replies-and-threads description: A reply points at one earlier message. A thread is a named side-conversation whose messages stay out of the channel. --- > Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further. # How to reply and start a thread Two different tools that people reach for interchangeably and should not. A **reply** answers one message. A **thread** takes a whole tangent out of the channel. ## When do you want each? [#when-do-you-want-each] Use a **reply** when your message answers a specific earlier one and the conversation is short. The reply stays in the channel, so everybody sees it in flow. Use a **thread** when a topic is going to take twenty messages and would otherwise bury the channel. Thread messages stay out of the main timeline entirely. The rule of thumb: if two people are about to have a ten-minute exchange that the other eight people in the channel do not need, that is a thread. ## How do you reply? [#how-do-you-reply] Hover a message, or tap it on a touchscreen, and click the blue reply arrow in the little toolbar that appears. A `Replying to…` line shows above the composer with an **×** to cancel. Send, and your reply carries a small preview of the original above it. Click that preview to scroll back to the original. It scrolls when the original is inside the loaded history; if it is far back, load older messages first. The person you replied to is notified, provided they can still see the channel and have not muted it. ## How do you start a thread? [#how-do-you-start-a-thread] Two ways, and they mean different things. **From a message**: hover it and click the violet speech bubble, name the thread, and you land in it. The message it came from is pinned at the top under "Thread started from". **About something new**: the **+ New thread** button above the composer, with a name and an optional first message. Name threads properly. The name is what everybody else sees in the sidebar and in the channel's Threads strip, and "Re: that thing" helps nobody. ## Where do threads appear? [#where-do-threads-appear] Three places. A **Threads** strip at the top of the channel with a reply count on each. Nested under their channel in the sidebar. And as a **"3 replies →"** link on the message that started one. A thread has its own page with a back link to the channel, and the same composer, tagging and attachments as a channel. The Threads strip holds the newest active threads, so a channel that has been running for a year still shows a readable list. ## How do you finish with a thread? [#how-do-you-finish-with-a-thread] Archive it from the channel's Threads strip: hover the row and click the archive icon. It leaves the strip and the sidebar. **Archiving asks for no confirmation and is not something you undo from the interface**, so archive a thread when the conversation is genuinely finished rather than as a way of tidying up temporarily. Archiving hides a thread. It does not delete anything that was said in it. ## Two things that surprise people [#two-things-that-surprise-people] **Thread messages never appear in the channel timeline.** That is the whole point, and it means a link to a thread message points at the thread page rather than the channel. **Opening a thread does not mark the parent channel read.** They are counted separately, so a channel can still show unread after you have read its busiest thread. ## Does a thread have its own notification setting? [#does-a-thread-have-its-own-notification-setting] No, it follows the parent channel's. Set that from the bell in the channel header, per .