Favorite Messages
Better Messages lets each user star individual messages to bookmark them for later. The starred messages appear in a dedicated Favorites section accessible from the user's messenger sidebar — no need to scroll through long histories to find the link, snippet, or decision shared weeks ago.
What it adds#
- Star/unstar button on every message in every conversation
- Dedicated "Favorites" view, opened by the star in the conversations list
- Per-user storage — your starred messages are private to you
- Works in DMs, group chats, and chat rooms — even messages from blocked-or-removed users stay in favorites
- Quick deep-link from a favorite back to its conversation context
- Survives message deletion by the sender (the favorite stub remains)
How it works#
When a user clicks the star icon on a message, Better Messages stores a user_id → message_id favorite record. The message remains in its original conversation. The favorite is just a saved pointer.
| Action | Outcome |
|---|---|
| User stars a message | Star icon fills, message added to user's favorites |
| User clicks the star in the conversations list | List of all starred messages, newest first |
| User clicks a favorite | Opens the source conversation, scrolled to that message |
| Sender deletes the original message | Favorite stays, but body shows "Message deleted" |
| User unstars | Favorite removed from list |
| Sender edits the message | Favorite reflects the edited content |
Favorites are private per user — there's no team/shared favorites view. Two users in the same conversation can independently star different messages with no interaction.
When users benefit#
| Use case | What gets starred |
|---|---|
| LMS course chat | Lesson links, assignment due dates, instructor announcements |
| Marketplace vendor inbox | Repeat customer info, shipping policies sent multiple times |
| Community manager | Recurring FAQ answers ready to copy-paste again |
| Personal DMs | Important addresses, phone numbers, links shared in conversation |
| Support team | Solution snippets to reuse for similar tickets |
How to enable#
Navigate to WP Admin → Better Messages → Settings → Appearance → Layout → Interface elements.
- Favorite messages — the star on messages and the favorites page. On by default. Turn it off to remove both.
- Favorites button — where the star that opens the favorites page sits beside a conversation. In the conversations list, the default, puts it next to the search box, where it can be reached with a conversation open, and among the narrow list's buttons when the list is collapsed. With no conversation open keeps it on the screen shown before a conversation is picked, where 2.x had it. Where the list fills the messenger, as on phones, the star is always in the list's header.
Favorites button requires Better Messages 3.0.12 or newer. Before it, a messenger with the list beside the conversation had the star only on the screen with no conversation open.
3.0 moved this control. In 2.x it was a Disable Favorite Messages toggle on the Messaging tab. It is now one of the Interface elements switches on the Appearance tab, alongside Full screen button, Search and Unread filter, and it is worded the right way round — on means the feature is on.
Frequently asked questions#
Can a user export their favorites?#
Not via the default UI. The favorites view in the messenger sidebar paginates over a REST endpoint, so a developer can hit that endpoint with the user's nonce to build a custom export tool.
Is there a limit on how many messages can be favorited?#
No hard cap. Power users with thousands of favorites may see slower load times on the favorites view — pagination is built in.
Do favorites work in guest conversations?#
Yes — and they work exactly the same way they do for members. A guest's favorites are stored server-side against their guest identity, not in the browser. What a guest can lose is the identity itself: it is held by the credentials their browser keeps, so clearing site data means returning as a new guest, with a fresh and empty favorites list.
Can administrators see what users have favorited?#
No. Favorites are private. Admins cannot view another user's favorites through the admin UI. (Technically the data is in the database and a custom script could query it, but that's a code-level decision, not a built-in feature.)
Does the AI chat bot's response count as a starrable message?#
Yes — AI bot messages are normal messages from the favorites perspective. Users can star a particularly useful AI answer for future reference.
See also#
- Pinned messages — admin-pinned messages visible to all participants (different use case)
- Search — search across all messages without bookmarking first
- Message reactions — emoji reactions, visible to all participants
- Reply, edit, forward — other message-level actions