Message times in the chat widget, and a switch to turn them off
November 3, 2026 · release
@voicethere/client 0.20.0
A chat without times is hard to read back. Did the agent answer a second after you asked, or after a minute? From @voicethere/client 0.20.0 each bubble in the embed widget carries the time of the message under its text, in the visitor's own locale. The greeting has none, since it isn't part of the conversation.
The times are on by default, so an existing widget shows them as soon as it loads 0.20.0. If you don't want them, the Widget tab has a new Message times section:
- a switch to hide them;
- a format: Auto (the browser's locale), 12-hour or 24-hour;
- a colour, if the bubble colour does not suit your theme.
The live preview updates while you change these. Deploy publishes them to the CDN config as theme.chat.timestamps. Clients older than 0.20.0 do not know these keys. If you change Message times, those clients drop the whole published look and fall back to the default, so update your snippet to 0.20.0 first. Leaving the defaults publishes nothing new.
The same release adds two options for code-level embeds: display: "inline" puts the chat in an element of your page with no launcher, and startSession lets an app with its own login start the session itself instead of using a client key.
The details are in Embed widget designer. To use the new embed snippet, copy it again from Project → Access.