If you're looking to make your game feel unique, writing a roblox custom chat gui script is one of the best ways to move away from that generic, out-of-the-box look every other experience uses. Let's be real—the default Roblox chat is functional, but it doesn't exactly scream "personality." Whether you want a minimalist sci-fi look or a bubbly, colorful interface for a roleplay game, taking control of the chat system gives you the power to match your UI with your game's actual vibe.
Building your own chat system might sound a bit intimidating if you're new to Luau, but it's actually a fantastic way to learn how RemoteEvents and UI management work. Instead of relying on the legacy chat or the newer TextChatService, creating something from scratch lets you add features like custom chat tags, specialized colors for VIPs, or even weird animated text effects that the standard system just can't handle.
Why Bother Customizing Your Chat?
You might wonder why you'd spend time on a roblox custom chat gui script when Roblox provides one for free. The biggest reason is branding. Think about games like Royale High or Bloxburg. They don't just use the basic grey box in the top-left corner. Their chat feels integrated into the world.
Another big reason is control. When you script your own chat, you decide exactly how long messages stay on screen, how many messages are stored in the history, and how the scrolling behavior feels. Plus, you can easily integrate your own moderation tools or "system messages" that look exactly how you want them to.
Setting Up the Foundation
Before you even touch a script, you need a place for the messages to live. In your StarterGui, you'll want a ScreenGui. Inside that, the most common setup is a Frame that acts as the container.
The most important part of this layout is the ScrollingFrame. This is where your actual chat logs will appear. To make things look modern, I always recommend adding a UIListLayout inside that ScrollingFrame. Set the VerticalAlignment to Bottom, so new messages pop up at the bottom and push the old ones up—just like every chat app we use in real life.
Don't forget the input area! A TextBox at the bottom of your frame is where players will actually type. You can style this with a UICorner to give it those nice rounded edges that everyone loves. Once your visuals are ready, it's time to make the roblox custom chat gui script actually do something.
The Logic Behind the Script
A custom chat is essentially a game of "telephone" between the client and the server. You can't just have one player's script change the UI for everyone else—that's not how FilteringEnabled works. You need a RemoteEvent in ReplicatedStorage. Let's call it "SendMessage".
Here's the basic flow: 1. The player types a message and hits Enter. 2. A LocalScript detects that "FocusLost" event on the TextBox. 3. The LocalScript fires the "SendMessage" RemoteEvent, passing the text along. 4. A ServerScript receives that message. 5. The ServerScript checks if the message is valid and then filters it (this is huge—we'll talk about this in a second). 6. The ServerScript fires another event (or uses FireAllClients) to tell everyone's game to display that message. 7. Every player's LocalScript receives that signal and creates a new text label inside their ScrollingFrame.
It sounds like a lot of steps, but once you get the hang of the handshake between the client and server, it becomes second nature.
Staying Safe with Text Filtering
This is the part where a lot of developers get tripped up. If you're making a roblox custom chat gui script, you must filter the text through Roblox's systems. If you don't, your game will likely get flagged or even taken down, because Roblox is very serious about safety.
You'll want to use TextService:FilterStringAsync. The server takes the raw string the player sent, sends it to Roblox's internal filter, and gets back a "filtered" version. Only then should you broadcast that message to the other players. It's an extra step, but it's what keeps the platform safe and keeps your game from getting deleted. Always filter on the server, never the client, because clients can be tampered with by exploiters.
Making It Look Professional
Once you have the functional roblox custom chat gui script working, it's time to polish it. Plain white text on a black background is fine, but we can do better.
Using Rich Text
Roblox supports Rich Text tags, which are a lifesaver for custom chats. You can use simple XML-like tags to make a player's name bold or a different color without needing five different TextLabels. For example, <b><font color="#FF0000">Admin:</font></b> Hello! looks way more official than a standard string.
Handling Message Overflow
One annoying thing about custom chats is when a message is too long and goes off the side of the screen. You'll want to enable TextWrapped on your message labels. Better yet, use GetTextSize from TextService to dynamically resize the message frames based on how much text is actually inside them. This prevents huge gaps between short messages.
Adding Chat Tags
Everyone loves a bit of status. You can easily modify your server script to check a player's Rank in a Group or their UserId. If they're the owner, your roblox custom chat gui script can prepend a "[Creator]" tag to their name. It's a small touch, but players eat it up.
Improving the User Experience
The "feel" of a chat is just as important as how it looks. If the ScrollingFrame doesn't automatically snap to the bottom when a new message arrives, it's going to frustrate your players. You can fix this by setting the CanvasPosition of the ScrollingFrame to a very high number whenever a new message is added.
Another nice touch is a fade-out effect. If nobody has chatted for 10 seconds, you might want the chat background to become more transparent so it doesn't block the gameplay view. When someone types again, it fades back in. You can do this easily using TweenService.
Performance Considerations
If your game lasts for hours, that ScrollingFrame could eventually end up with thousands of TextLabels. That's going to tank the performance for players on lower-end phones.
To keep your roblox custom chat gui script running smoothly, you should implement a simple "cleanup" function. Every time a message is added, check how many children are in the container. If there are more than, say, 50 messages, delete the oldest one. Most players aren't scrolling back three hours into the past anyway.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
One mistake I see all the time is forgetting to handle the "spam" problem. If you don't put a small debounce (a cooldown) on your RemoteEvent, an exploiter or even just an annoyed player can fire that event 100 times a second and lag the entire server. A simple check on the server that says "Has this player sent a message in the last 0.5 seconds?" is usually enough to stop the worst of it.
Another thing is the "empty message" bug. Make sure your script checks if the string is empty or just a bunch of spaces before sending it. There's no reason to broadcast a blank message to thirty people.
Wrapping It Up
At the end of the day, creating a roblox custom chat gui script is about making your game feel like a cohesive experience. It's a project that combines UI design, client-server communication, and safety protocols. While it takes a bit more work than just checking a box in the game settings, the result is a much more professional-looking game.
Take your time with the styling, don't forget the TextService filtering, and keep an eye on performance. Once you have the core system down, you can keep adding to it—emotes, chat bubbles that appear over heads, or even private messaging systems. The sky's the limit when you're writing the code yourself. Happy scripting!