# Text chat developer guide

> Learn how to implement text chat features in your Unreal project.

Vivox provides a text chat service:

* **Text chat** - channel-based and directed text chat.

  * Chat messages can contain any language or content up to service-defined size and rate limits.
  * Chat messages are transported over TLS. No chat messages are saved or archived.

The following additional features can be enabled:

* [Adaptive Chat filter](./chat-history/adaptive-chat-filter.md)
* [Chat history](./chat-history/chat-history.md)
* [Text evidence management](./chat-history/text-evidence-management.md)
* [Edit and delete messages](./chat-history/edit-delete/edit-delete-messages.md)
* [Offline direct messages](./chat-history/offline-direct-messages.md)
* [Anti-flooding](./chat-history/anti-flooding.md)
* [Large text channel support](./chat-history/large-text-channels.md)
* [Retrieve conversations list](./retrieve-conversation-list.md)
* [Set Chat Markers](./set-chat-markers.md)
* [Channel-specific options](./channel-specific-options.md) - Core SDK only.

The server can customize a maximum byte count for text messages in its pre-login configuration. By default, the maximum is 320 bytes with UTF-8 encoding. A text message that exceeds the maximum length in bytes is rejected with a VxErrorMessageTextTooLong error. For more information about UTF-8, see [Character encoding](../developer-guide/client-sdk-basics/character-encoding).

Text chat requires a Unicode-supported system to work properly. The Unity Editor has full Unicode support in versions 2017.1 and later.

The following table details text chat policy:

| Service            | Policy option | **Default**           | **Description**                                                                                               |
| ------------------ | ------------- | --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Standard text chat | rate\_limit   | 1000 bytes per second | The maximum rate at which a player can send data over text chat.
This is configured server-side by Vivox. |