Discord is considered one of the most innovative and feature-packed Voice over Internet Protocol application that is free to download and use. First created in 2015, its user count rose to 130 million in May 2018, which is really impressive. The platform is preferred by gaming communities mostly, as it allows text, video, audio communication between players. Download Discord - Talk, Chat, Hang Out and enjoy it on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Discord is your place to talk. Create a home for your communities and friends, where you can stay close and have fun over text, voice, and video. Disable Windows Defender. Windows Defender—the built-in anti-virus on Windows 10—uses certain. The reasons why your Discord Overlay won’t open or isn’t showing in games differ from one computer to another. Nevertheless, with deep research, it can be found the most common cause are Discord permission, hardware acceleration settings, third-party software on your PC, and the system crash.
- Make sure that all instances of Discord, including the browser version, are closed out before attempting the steps. If you're seeing Kernel32.dll errors, please reference this article! If you're on Windows 7 and these steps haven't worked for you, try the steps listed in this article as well!
- Download the best app to communicate over video, voice, or text. Available for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android devices.
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Discord Overlay Not Working Overview:
Gamers recently often hit upon Discord overlay not opening, not showing up, or just not working in games, like World of Warcraft and League of Legends.
If Overlay doesn’t work in Discord, you won’t be able to send messages and screenshot of games, or talk with your companions. For gamers, that can be rather frustrating. The in-game Overlay is not working in all games or in Steam games specifically. So move on to get rid of this Discord overlay not working Fortnite, Borderlands 2, League of Legend, etc.
What is Discord? What is Discord Overlay?
In brief, Discord is a free VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) application incorporating text, video, audio and image especially for gamers. And the Discord Overlay, gamers all know that it is a feature of Discord used to enable users to chat with your friends in the form of both voice and text during full-screen games.
Related: Discord Screen Share Audio Not Working on Windows 10
What Games Does Discord Overlay Work With?
But prior to specific solutions, you would better be well-informed that some games actually doesn’t support Discord Overlay, so there is no point saying why my overlay is not working in games. Generally speaking, of course, some popular and latest games like Minecraft, Fortnite, WoW, Dota 2, CS: GO, and League of Legends are supportive of Discord overlay, whereas some old games and those with Vulkan Support are not working with Overlay.
Therefore, after you confirmed that your game works with overlay, the problem comes down to Discord Overlay not showing.
How to Fix Discord Overlay Not working?
The reasons why your Discord Overlay won’t open or isn’t showing in games differ from one computer to another. Nevertheless, with deep research, it can be found the most common cause are Discord permission, hardware acceleration settings, third-party software on your PC, and the system crash.
Solutions:
Solution 1: Reboot the Computer
Whether your Discord Overlay is not showing up or can’t open or refuse to work for games, closing all the running apps like WoW game, Discord, and any other. And then determine to restart Windows 10, which can fix most errors for most users.
After signing in again, launch the game and Discord to see if this time Discord Overlay runs in games and allows you to communicate with others in games. This may also helps when Discord won’t open on your computer.
Solution 2: Enable in-game Overlay in Discord
In fact, to use Overlay in games, you need to hit Overlay hotkey to activate it in games before you start playing the game. So it is likely that you forget to enable the in-game overlay for the games you are playing, which is why you come across Discord overlay not working or not showing due to Discord blank screen. So there is much need for you to enable the in-game Overlay in Discord so as to make Overlay serve games.
1. Open the Discord.
2. Then on the left side of Discord, at the bottom, hit the User Settings (a gear icon).
3. In User Settings, in the left pane, scroll down to pinpoint App Settings > Overlay.
4. In Overlay settings, on the right corner, choose to Enable in-game Overlay.
Now you will have switched on Discord Overlay, and it is high time that you tried to enable it for the specific game on Windows 10.
5. In User Settings, on the left pane, find out Game Activity. And then click Add it to add the game to configure Overlay settings for it.
6. Then browse to Add game to let it use Overlay.
7. Turn on Overlay for the specific game and now you can play it with Overlay on as you wish.
Now start your game to see if you can voice chat in full-screen games with the help of Discord Overlay. If needed, you can take the similar steps to turn off Discord Overlay.
Solution 3: Run Discord as Administrator
Sometimes, users can’t open Discord and Discord Overlay for games due to the application permission. Or in some games, it is required to run Discord with administrative privileges in order to use in-game discord on Windows 7, 8, 10.
1. Right click the Discord app from the Desktop to open its Properties.
2. Then under the Compatibility tab, tick the box of Run this program as administrator.
3. Then stroke Apply and OK to save changes.
In doing so, from then on, every time you need to open Discord, it will be launched with administrative rights. In this way, Discord Overlay not working Apex or PUBG will be removed.
Solution 4: Disable Discord Hardware Acceleration
Discord hardware acceleration does smooth the performance of this freeware, but it can also causes troubles in some conditions for unknown reasons, of which the most likely one is game stuttering with FPS drops and features lose functionalities.
As turning off this feature for Discord helped fix the Overlay not showing in all games for many users, you may make an attempt to do so.
1. In Discord application, hit the gear icon of User Settings as well.
2. In User Settings, pick out Appearance under App settings.
3. Then under Appearance, on the right pane, slide down to the bottom to locate and turn off Hardware Acceleration under Advanced.
Then a window of Change Hardware Acceleration will pop up warning you that changing hardware acceleration settings for Discord will quit and re-launch Discord.
4. Hit Okay to confirm the change.
Reboot the Discord app to take effect. At this moment, you might as well start your game like Fortnite, PUBG, Word of Warcraft to check whether Discord Overlay not showing or not working will still come up again. In a large sense, stopping Discord hardware acceleration can also fix Discord mic not working on Windows.
Solution 5: Check the Third-party Software Whitelist
Many a user tend to get antivirus programs for PC for the sake of safety, nevertheless, it is likely that your third-party software has blocked Discord or the game, thus Discord Overlay won’t open or work on Windows 10 for the games. It takes Discord as malware and hampers it from running during game play.
In this part, you are supposed to open the antivirus program to make sure it hasn’t added the Discord app to the untrusted apps or blacklist. And then add it to the trusted programs if available.
Otherwise, you may have to uninstall the third-party software in Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program > Uninstall.
Then reboot your PC and you will be enabled to voice chat or send message in games using Discord Overlay.
Related: How to Uninstall Avast on Windows 10
Solution 6: Scale the Discord Overlay
It sounds absurd. But actually it did help fix Discord Overlay not working in any game to rescale the size of Discord app. So, you would better try to change the size of the app to the recommended one or the original one if possible.
1. Go to Start > Settings > System.
2. Under Display, find out Scale and layout and the make it 100% (Recommended).
3. Boot your game and enable Overlay for it again.
You will notice Discord Overlay is showing and working on Windows 10 in proper size.
Solution 7: Use No Proxy
It is said that Proxy is more prone to be infected by virus from hackers, which may prevent Overlay in Discord from working. In case any errors caused by Proxy, there is much need for you to use VPN rather than Proxy on Windows 10. Here if you are to fix Discord Overlay not showing or working, try to disable Proxy and use VPN instead to see if it works.
1. Search Internet Options in the search box and then stroke Enter to go further.
2. Under the Connections tab, hit LAN Settings.
3. Then uncheck the box of Use a proxy server for your LAN.
4. Click OK to save changes.
Use a VPN and enjoy your game while chatting with your friends with Discord Overlay.
Solution 8: Uninstall and Update Discord
It is your last resort, but it can also be the most straightforward way to solve Overlay not showing up in games, which is to get rid of the problematic Discord app to remove the corruptions. And then download the updated Discord in hopes that games can enjoy Discord Overlay function with the reinstalled Discord software.
Navigate to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program > Uninstall Discord.
Reboot your PC to take effect if you are asked to do so.
The instant you removed Discord, it is time to download the latest version of Discord from the official site.
The newly downloaded Discord software will better improve the performance in-game overlay for PUBG, League of Legends, and WoW on Windows 10.
In general, ways in this tutorial can fix Discord Overlay not showing or working for most users.
People who are avid players of online PC games are likely familiar with Discord. In many ways, you can consider the app as Skype for gamers. It is designed to help players coordinate and communicate via private servers, providing them with access to text and voice chat features. In recent years, Discord’s popularity increased exponentially, with more and more users installing the app and creating their personal accounts.
However, like other software programs, Discord is no stranger to issues. So, you might ask, “What if I can’t install Discord on Windows 10?” This is a question that many people have asked recently. Needless to say, you are not the only one experiencing the problem. Many users reported that they had encountered the ‘Installation has failed’ error message while trying to add Discord to their computers.
You have to know that Discord can run into various problems, and most of them have something to do with corrupted files. After all, Windows 10 updates have been known to interfere with new programs that users add to their PCs. The update files may come in conflict with internal Discord packages. Once you try to remove and reinstall the app, you might see the error message.
In this post, we are going to teach you how to fix Discord install issues in Windows 10. After reading this article and following our instructions, you should be able to add and use Discord without having problems.
P.S. If you don’t want to read the full article, you may simply watch a short video showing a quick fix here:
How to Fix the Discord Installation has Failed Issue Easily?
First Step: Removing Discord from Your PC
- On your keyboard, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Doing so should launch the Task Manager.
- Make sure you are on the Processes tab, then look for any entry associated with Discord.
- Select any Discord-related processes, then click End Task.
- Exit Task Manager.
- Go to your taskbar, then click the Search icon.
- Type “Control Panel” (no quotes), then hit Enter.
- Click Uninstall a Program under the Programs category.
- Right-click Discord, then select Uninstall.
Second Step: Removing Discord Leftover Files
- Launch the Run dialog box by pressing Windows Key+R on your keyboard.
- Once the Run dialog box is up, type “%appdata%” (no quotes), then click OK.
- Now, delete the %LocalAppData%/Discord and %AppData%/Discord folders if you see them.
- Restart your PC.
Once you’ve performed the steps above, you can try reinstalling Discord.
By the way, this can also help you to fix disk space issues manually.
Additional Troubleshooting Steps
If you’re still encountering Discord installation issues, try to recall if you recently added any Windows updates. If so, try removing the most recent update package to prevent it from interfering with Discord. Here are the steps:
- Press Windows Key+I on your keyboard to launch the Settings app.
- Select Update & Security, then on the left pane, click Windows Update.
- Now, move to the right pane and click View Update History.
- Click Uninstall an Update.
- On the new window, look for the recent updates you installed, right-click them, then select Uninstall.
- Once you’ve removed the Windows update package, you can try reinstalling Discord.
Pro Tip: If you want to use Discord without any hassle or issues, we recommend that you update your device drivers. You must know that outdated, corrupted, or missing drivers can cause various problems on the app. Of course, you’d want to have the best experience while playing games. If you want Discord to operate to its maximum capacity, you should update your drivers.
Resolve PC Issues with Driver Updater
Unstable PC performance is often caused by outdated or corrupt drivers. Auslogics Driver Updater diagnoses driver issues and lets you update old drivers all at once or one at a time to get your PC running smoother
Discord Won't Update Fix
You can visit the hardware manufacturer’s website to download and install the drivers manually. However, this method can be time-consuming and complicated. If you happen to add the driver version that is incompatible with your processor or operating system, you might cause more issues to your PC. Thankfully, there is an easier and safer way to update drivers. You can use Auslogics Driver Updater and conveniently perform the task with one click of a button.After installing Auslogics Driver Updater, it will automatically identify what operating system version and processor type you have. With a click of a button, this software program will search for the latest, manufacturer-recommended drivers for your computer.
Do you need to fix other Discord-related issues?
Why Won't Discord Download Update On Macbook Pro
Let us know in the comments below, and we might feature the solution in our next article.