Friends, Teams & the Hub
5Stack is built around playing with other people: friends, parties, teams, chat and voice, all reachable from the hub without leaving the page you're on.
The hub
On desktop the hub is a floating dock on the right edge of the screen. Each icon is an app. Resting the pointer on an icon opens it beside the dock, a click opens it straight away, and moving away puts it back. The page underneath never changes width.
| App | What it holds | Badge |
|---|---|---|
| Inbox | Invites, reminders and every other notification | Red: how many are waiting on you |
| Party | Your party's seats, invites, party voice, and the mode picker to queue | Red for party invites; a dot while you're in a party; the search clock while queueing |
| Voice | The voice channel you're in, or the channels you can join | How many are in your call; green while you're in one |
| Friends | Your friends, and Others: everyone else who is online | Red for friend requests, otherwise how many friends are online |
| Chat | Every chat conversation and room you're in | Red for direct messages and tags of you; white for other new messages in rooms |
| Matches | Your recent games: wins, losses, win rate and most-played maps |
The pin at the bottom (Keep the hub open) holds it open, and a pinned hub makes room for itself instead of floating over the page. An unpinned hub also closes on Escape or a click elsewhere. Moving the pointer away doesn't close it while you have a half-typed message in it. While you're in a voice call, a bar with Mute and Leave call sits under every other app.
Conversation shortcuts
Your most recently active conversations sit under Chat on the dock: up to three people and two rooms by default, and a team's room shows the team's logo. Right-click a shortcut to mute it or choose what it notifies you about (see Muting a room), Pin to the dock, Remove until a new message, or Never show on the dock. Right-click Chat to set how many people and rooms the dock shows (0 to 5 each) and to bring hidden chats back. These choices are saved per browser, since dock space depends on the screen.
Match and party rooms aren't shortcuts: the match page and the Party app are their homes.
On a phone
The grid button in the top bar opens the hub. Its badge is red for notifications, friend requests, direct messages and tags of you, and white when only other chat is unread. The hub slides in over a dimmed page; swipe right to close it.
Friends
Your Steam friends sync in (Sync Friends), so the people you already play with show up without adding them by hand. The Friends app lists each friend's online state, what they're doing in 5Stack ("In a match", "In a lobby", "In draft lobby"), and, with Steam Presence, what they're doing in CS2 outside 5Stack. From a friend's row you can invite them to your lobby or draft room, join them, message them, or remove or block them. Players in Others can be sent a message request from their row.
When a friend comes online the dock tells you: one arrival shows their face on the Friends icon ("{name} just came online"), several show the count, and the list marks them Just came online until you've looked.
A player's profile has Add as friend (then Requested, which you can cancel), Message, and a ⋮ menu with Block and any staff actions you have.
Teams
Create and manage teams and invite friends straight into them. A team page carries its Elo and awards, its league history, its veto tendencies, and its Scrim Finder settings.
A team that is short of five starters reminds anyone who can invite to it, in the Inbox.
Every team has a permanent team chat for its roster and owner, pinned to their chat rail and opened from Team Chat on the team page. The team's owner and roster Admins moderate it, not site staff.
The owner can't leave their own team. Ownership is handed to another player on the roster first, by the owner or by staff, and the new owner becomes a roster Admin.
Parties & lobbies
Group up in a party to chat, talk, and queue together. The Party app shows your seats, invites and an Invite button for each open seat, Join party voice, and the queue: the captain picks the mode and starts the search, and everyone sees the search clock and the ready-up.
A party has a captain who drives ready-up and team decisions, and stays together through matchmaking (see Quick Play & Matchmaking).
For structured pick-up games, with captains drafting, snake pick order and substitute waitlists, see Draft Lobbies.
Chat and voice
Every match, team, lobby, draft, tournament and organizer room, plus direct messages, is in the Chat app, and match chat is relayed to and from the game server. See Chat for @tags, muting a room, reactions, edits, attachments, GIFs and message requests.
Talk to your party in a lobby, or to your team on the match page, with voice chat built into the panel.
Blocking players
Block is in a player's profile ⋮ menu, the player menu anywhere their name appears, and their row in your friends list. Blocking someone:
- removes your friendship, and cancels every pending invite between you,
- stops either of you inviting, friending or adding the other to a lobby, team, draft, match, tournament, league or event roster ("You can't do that with this player."),
- closes direct messages both ways,
- hides their messages and reactions from you in every chat room, right away and on every device, and stops their @tags reaching you,
- hides their news comments, and the replies under them.
Staff adding players, and players joining something themselves, aren't stopped by a block. Moderators and above still see a blocked player's lines in group rooms other than team chat, marked Blocked, so blocking can't hide abuse from them. In-game chat can't be filtered per player.
Settings → Blocked Players lists everyone you've blocked, with Unblock. Unblocking doesn't restore the friendship. The same page holds the Message requests switch.
Linked accounts
Settings → Linked Accounts connects your other accounts to 5Stack.
- Discord: Link Discord connects your Discord account, so the matches you play through the Discord bot track your stats and the bot can move you into your team's voice channel. Unlink Discord removes it. The card shows once the bot is set up, or while you're linked. Admins configure what the bot and the Discord notifications do; see Integrations.
- Twitch: Link Twitch signs you in with Twitch, which proves the channel is yours. Unlink Twitch removes it. The card shows once an administrator has set Twitch up.
While you're live on a linked Twitch channel in the Counter-Strike category:
- your profile shows Live · {count} in its header and a card with the stream's preview: click it to play the stream on the profile, or Open on Twitch. Offline, the header links your channel instead,
- the Players list marks you Live, and can filter to Live on Twitch,
- the match you're playing lists your stream as {name} POV (see Live Streaming).
While you're playing or coaching a live match, nobody in it sees your Twitch, live or not, and you don't see theirs. With Require Sign-In to View Live Streams on, signed-out visitors don't see the Twitch of anyone in a live match.
Notifications
Invites, match turns, reminders and messages reach you in the Inbox, as toasts, as push notifications, by flashing the browser tab, and with sounds. See Notifications.
Getting around
- Back returns lists to where you left them. Players, Matches, Teams, Leaderboard and Highlights come back on the page of results you left, and Teams keeps its search, sort and filters too. The lists inside team, tournament, league, event and award pages do the same.
- Empty sections stay out of the navigation. Tournaments, Events, News and Highlights only appear in the navigation once there's something in them. Players who can create tournaments, events or news posts still see those links, so they can add the first one.