Use Group Chat
Group chat is the shared conversation that lives inside every 4league organization and community group. It is the fastest way to coordinate the next match, confirm who is coming, share a location, or simply talk about the last game — all in one place, alongside your matches and stats.
Each organization or community group has a single group chat shared by all its members. There is no separate channel setup — the chat is created with the group and is ready to use the moment you join.
Members-only access
Group chat is strictly private to the group. Every chat action — reading the message history, checking for new messages, and posting — first confirms that you are a current member of that group. If you are not a member, the request is refused and you see nothing from the conversation.
There is no read-only or "guest" view of a group chat. Non-members cannot see the history, cannot poll for new messages, and cannot send anything — every chat request from a non-member is rejected outright. To take part in the conversation you must first be a member of the group. If you are removed from the group, you immediately lose access to the chat as well.
This is enforced on the server for every single request, not just when you open the screen. That means the rule holds even across app restarts, shared devices, or stale links: access always reflects your current membership.
Join, open, and post
Using group chat takes three steps: be a member of the group, open the chat, and send your first message.
Join the group
Become a member of the organization or community group — for example by entering its invite code or accepting a direct invite. See Group Members for the ways to join. Only members can use the chat, so this step comes first.
Open the group chat
Open the group and tap its chat. The most recent messages load first, newest at the bottom. Scroll up to pull in older messages a page at a time.
Type and send a message
Enter your message in the input box and tap send. Your name and avatar are attached automatically and the message appears for every other member of the group.
On Thursday the Weekend Warriors admin opens the group chat and posts "Pitch booked 10am Saturday — who's in?". Over the evening, 12 of the 15 members reply in the same thread. Because the chat is members-only, the planning stays private to the group, and everyone sees the same running conversation when they open the app.
Practical limits worth knowing
A few built-in limits keep the chat fast and readable. None of them get in the way of normal use, but they are worth knowing.
| Limit | Value | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Message length | Up to 1,000 characters | A single message can hold up to 1,000 characters. Empty or whitespace-only messages are not sent — break a long write-up into a couple of messages if you hit the cap. |
| History page size | 50 messages per page | The chat loads the 50 most recent messages first. Scrolling up fetches the next 50 older messages, and so on — the full history stays available, it just loads in pages so the screen opens quickly. |
| Unread tracking | Per member, per group | 4league remembers where you last read up to, so it can show how many messages are new since your last visit — both for a single group and across all the groups you belong to. |
Each member has their own read marker per group. When new messages arrive after the point you last read, 4league counts them as unread and can surface that count next to the group — so you can see at a glance which of your groups have new activity without opening each one.
Sending the same message twice in very quick succession is harmless — the app is built to avoid posting accidental duplicates if a send is retried, for example after a brief network hiccup.
Good to know
- Identity travels with the message. Your display name and avatar are captured when you post, so messages stay attributed correctly even as profiles change over time.
- Membership is the gate. Adding a member gives them full chat access immediately; removing a member revokes it just as immediately. There is no separate "chat permission" to manage.
- Everyone in the group is equal in the chat. All members can read the full history and post — the chat is a shared space rather than an admin-only announcement channel.
Group chat is part of the wider group experience. See Friends Group for creating and managing groups, and Organization Profile for chats inside federations, associations, and clubs.