Today we are announcing the timeline to decommission the legacy Chatters endpoint that some developers may be using for their Twitch integrations to retrieve a list of users present in a channel’s stream chat. While this endpoint has never been documented or supported, we are communicating this change to limit disruption to third-party applications and the creators that rely on your innovation. As promised in the September announcement for the official Chatters API endpoint, here are the details of the shutdown plan.
What’s changing and who will it impact?
If your application only relies on Get Chatters, then this announcement does not apply. The legacy and unsupported Chatters endpoint that begins with “https://tmi.twitch.tv/” is the resource that will be shut down. During the shutdown windows and after the final date below, developers can expect to receive a 404 error response.
When are we making this change?
Given the number of developers who may be using this legacy endpoint, we wanted to ensure developers have time to update applications to the equivalent Twitch API endpoint and are alerted to the change if previous communications have gone unnoticed. As such, a phased shutdown will be implemented similar to other commonly used third-party services in the past. The shutdown windows to expect are as followed:
| Date | Window Length | Range (Click to view other timezones) |
|---|---|---|
|
2023-03-23 |
3-hour | 2023-03-23T17:30:00Z→2023-03-22T20:30:00Z |
| 2023-03-28 | 5-hour | 2023-03-28T17:30:00Z→2023-03-28T22:30:00Z |
| 2023-03-30 | 24-hour | 2023-03-30T17:30:00Z→2023-03-31T17:30:00Z |
| 2023-04-03 | Permanent | 2023-04-03T17:30:00Z |
Why are we making these changes?
Programmatically retrieving the list of users in a channel’s stream chat should be information and permission that the creator or their moderators control. The official “Get Chatters” endpoint provides this functionality while also meeting the expectations of these permissions with the introduction of the moderator:read:chatters authentication scope.
What action needs to be taken?
If your application is using the Chatters endpoint that begins with “https://tmi.twitch.tv,” refer to the "Get Chatters "documentation linked above to learn more about the official endpoint and begin any necessary updates. Should you have any questions regarding those updates, please consider joining the TwitchDev Discord server for assistance.