Gather Info | Updated 21 May 11th |
Welcome to Gather!
Gather is a wonderful new tool for getting to both explore and chat with other people. It is also a very new tool and has a few quirks. This document is to help you with the basics so you can discover and play on your own.
What you need:
- A desktop/laptop with a mic and camera.
- A web browser (Chrome or Firefox recommended).
- We strongly recommend using headphones to help prevent feedback.
- That’s it! There’s nothing to install, no software to download.
How it works:
- Gather is a video chat platform that has avatars move around a map. As you get close to other avatars, your videos will pop up and you will be able to chat.
- Move around the space using the arrow keys.
- By moving your avatar around you can have spontaneous conversations with those around you. These can be either one-on-one or small groups depending on how many people are around your avatar.
- When your avatar moves closer to an interactable object, it will glow yellow and there will be a notification that shows up saying ‘Press x to interact with -object-’. This can range from informational flyers, playable arcade games, integrated Zoom meetings, and more!
Icon explanation:
Change your avatar character and clothing
Mini map to preview the space you’re in
Screen sharing ability

Emotes that appear above your avatar.
Opens the user settings menu:
- Change Name
- Change Audio/Video Devices, and test your audio level input
- Toggle various features such as HD video quality
- Click for Space Settings (if your user role grants permission): Change room password, change mod message, etc.
Not-So-Obvious Features:
Here are some things you might find useful but aren't immediately obvious.
- There is a messaging feature that allows you to message people in four ways:
- individually by clicking on their name in the participant panel,
- locally to the people you are video chatting with. (“Nearby”)
- globally to all the people in your map. (“Everyone”)
- There is a locate feature to find others by clicking their name in the participant panel. There is also a follow feature to automatically move your avatar to follow another user. The participant panel is the bottom-most option in your toolbar on the left.
- Interaction distance is also sometimes altered by designated private spaces. This allows conversations to only include people inside that space.
- Want to full screen someone else’s video? Just click on their video.
- Talking to a group of people? Click the box with two white arrows to the right of the video carousel to open the grid view.
Privacy Features:
We have three ways for you to control who has access to your map:
- You can add a password via the mod setting for a room
- If you want to only allow certain people you can create an email guestlist
- Domain whitelists allow the moderator to allow entry into the space for all those who share the same email domain (ex. something@gather.town).
For managing people who are already in the space we have the following options:
- Any moderator has the ability to ban individuals during the event
- Any guest has the option to hide a person’s video or mute a person’s audio for themselves only, by using the individual block feature.
Technical difficulties:
- Refreshing the page will fix most things!
- If that doesn’t work, try muting and unmuting your mic and camera in Gather.
- Check if your browser permitted camera and mic access
- Additional troubleshooting at https://gather.town/video-issues
For more information on our platform, please feel free to stop by our Help Center or check out our YouTube tutorials.