StreamElements Commands: The Complete Setup Guide

Default StreamElements Commands

These arrive switched on — or one toggle away — the moment the bot joins your channel. Every one can be renamed, restricted to a user level or disabled entirely, and the ones tied to loyalty do nothing until the points module is enabled.

Two of these are worth deliberate thought rather than leaving on defaults. The gambling commands are genuinely divisive — they drive engagement on some channels and turn chat into a slot machine on others — and the song request queue needs a moderation plan before you open it to everyone. Everything else is safe to leave as-is while you learn the dashboard.

How to Add a Custom StreamElements Command

Custom commands live alongside the defaults in the same section of the dashboard. This is the full path from empty list to a working command.

1. 1Sign in to StreamElements with the platform account you stream from and make sure the bot has joined your channel.
2. 2Give the StreamElements bot moderator status in your chat so its messages and links aren't filtered.
3. 3Open the chat bot section of the dashboard and go to Chat Commands, then Custom Commands.
4. 4Choose Add new command and set the Command field to your trigger, including the exclamation mark.
5. 5Write the Response, using ${variables} for anything that should change per viewer or per stream.
6. 6Set the Access Level — Everyone, Regular, Subscriber, VIP, Moderator or Broadcaster.
7. 7Set both cooldowns: the user cooldown limits one viewer, the global cooldown limits the whole chat.
8. 8Add any aliases and keywords, save the command, then run it once in your own chat to confirm the wording.

Test every new command in your own chat before you rely on it live. A command with a typo in the trigger looks identical to a command that isn't working.

Managing Commands From Chat

You don't have to open the dashboard to change a command. StreamElements exposes a management syntax in chat, which is what you want when a viewer points out a dead link mid-stream.

A worked example: !command add !discord Come join the community: discord.gg/yourinvite creates the command, and !command edit !discord -cd 30 puts a cooldown on it afterwards. Our !discord command guide has response wording that works across every bot, and !socials covers the multi-link version.

StreamElements Variables List

StreamElements writes variables as ${name}. This is the biggest practical difference from Nightbot's $(name) syntax, and it's why command recipes copied from a Nightbot tutorial silently fail here — the bot prints the literal text instead of substituting a value.

The standout here is that StreamElements calculates ${uptime}, ${followage} and ${watchtime} natively rather than borrowing them from a third-party API. That's a real reliability advantage: there's no community endpoint to go down and no error text leaking into your chat. See our guides on !uptime, !followage and !watchtime for the response formats that read best on stream.

For anything the bot can't calculate, ${customapi.…} fetches a plain-text response from a URL and drops it into chat — the same escape hatch every command bot needs, with the same caveat that you're now depending on somebody else's uptime.

Cooldowns, Access Levels and Aliases

Three fields decide how a command behaves under pressure. StreamElements is more granular than most bots here, and it's worth using that.

The separate user and global cooldowns are the feature to exploit. Set a 60-second user cooldown and a 5-second global one on a fun command, and every viewer gets a turn while nobody can machine-gun it. Informational commands are the opposite: a longer global cooldown keeps !socials from repeating three times in a row when several people ask at once.

Timers and Keywords

Timers post on a schedule; keywords fire on a phrase rather than a trigger. Together they cover the two things a command can't do — talking without being asked, and responding to natural language.

The chat-lines minimum works the same way it does elsewhere: the timer only posts if the room has been talking since the last one. Without it, a quiet stream ends up with a bot monologuing to nobody, which is a worse look than saying nothing at all.

How Commands Fit With Overlays and Alerts

StreamElements' real pitch has never been the bot on its own — it's that your commands, alerts, overlays and loyalty points share one account. A viewer earns points passively, spends them through a chat command, and the redemption fires a widget on your overlay. That's a genuinely tidy loop, and it's the main reason streamers stay.

The trade-off is that the loop only closes inside StreamElements' own overlay system. If your scene is built somewhere else — or you want overlays that pull from every platform you stream to rather than one — you're maintaining two systems that don't know about each other.

That's also where the platform gap shows. StreamElements is built around Twitch and YouTube Live; a Kick simulcast sits outside it. If Kick is part of your setup, our Kick commands guide explains which bots actually connect there.

StreamElements vs StreamUps Commands

Both run custom !commands from the cloud with variables, cooldowns and access levels, so the useful comparison is what surrounds them.

StreamElements wins on depth inside its own ecosystem: loyalty points, a mature alerts and widget library, and a bigger default command set out of the box. StreamUps wins on reach — one command list that answers on Twitch, YouTube Live and Kick simultaneously — and on bundling AI chat, merged chat and multistreaming into the same account.

The full side-by-side is on our StreamElements alternative page, and the custom chat commands page covers how StreamUps handles the same job.

Commands Worth Setting Up First

Whichever bot runs them, these five do the most work on a growing channel. Each links to a full guide with response wording you can copy.

StreamElements Commands FAQ