Presences - Docs - Appwrite

The Appwrite Presences API tracks which users are currently active in your app and lets every connected client see those statuses in realtime. You can use it to render online indicators next to teammates, show who is viewing a document, broadcast a "typing" status in a chat, or surface "looking at the same page" cues during collaboration.

A presence is a short-lived record tied to a user. Each record carries a userId, a status string (for example online, away, editing), an optional metadata JSON object for richer context (a cursor position, the document the user is viewing, the device they are on), and an expiresAt timestamp that controls when the record is automatically cleaned up.

Presences are exposed as both a regular HTTP resource and a Realtime channel, so the same record can be written by any client or server SDK and read live by every subscriber that has permission.

How it works

A presence has two sides that are always in sync.

It is durable. When you write a presence, it sticks around until it expires or you delete it. That means you can list() presences at any time to see who is online right now, including from a server-side function, without having to keep a Realtime connection open.

It is live. Every change to a presence fires an event on the presences and presences.<PRESENCE_ID> Realtime channels. Subscribers get upsert, update, and delete events in milliseconds, over the same Realtime connection they are already using for rows and files.

A typical "online dot" loop looks like this:

Client A signs in and calls presences.upsert({...}). An upsert event fires on the presence channels.
Client B, subscribed to Channel.presences(), receives the event and shows A as online.
Client A keeps the record alive by upserting again on focus, route change, or a periodic timer, which slides expiresAt forward.
When expiresAt passes, the record is removed and a delete event fires. B drops A from its list.
If A signs out cleanly, they call presences.delete(...) and the delete event fires immediately, no waiting on expiry.

This gives you two ways to keep a presence alive, and you pick whichever fits your UI:

Heartbeat. Upsert on focus, route change, or a periodic timer to push expiresAt forward. Best when presence should persist briefly across short disconnects (a quick network blip, a tab switch) or when you write presence from server code that has no live socket.
While connected. Call realtime.upsertPresence(...) over an open Realtime connection and the record is automatically deleted when that connection closes. Best for "online while the tab is open" UIs where you do not want to manage a heartbeat yourself.

The realtime.upsertPresence(...) call mirrors the REST presences.upsert(...) signature, but the record's lifetime is tied to the WebSocket rather than to expiresAt:

import { Client, Realtime, ID, Permission, Role } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const realtime = new Realtime(client);

await realtime.upsertPresence({
    presenceId: ID.unique(),
    status: 'online',
    permissions: [
        Permission.read(Role.users())
    ]
});

The SDK remembers the latest payload and re-sends it after a reconnect, so a brief network drop will not flip the user offline. There is no heartbeat to manage. The record disappears automatically the moment the WebSocket closes for good (tab close, sign out, sustained network loss).

Upsert a presence

upsert creates a presence or updates the existing record with the same presenceId. Call it on every page navigation, focus change, or heartbeat without worrying about duplicates. From a client session, userId is inferred from the signed-in user; from a server SDK with an API key, pass userId explicitly. Server SDKs need an API key with the presences.write scope.

import { Client, Presences, ID, Permission, Role } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const presence = await presences.upsert({
    presenceId: ID.unique(),
    status: 'online',
    metadata: { page: '/dashboard' },
    permissions: [
        Permission.read(Role.users())
    ]
});

A few notes on the parameters:

presenceId (required) is the unique ID of the presence record. Use ID.unique() on first creation and persist it for subsequent updates so the same record is reused for the same user across sessions.
status (required) is a free-form string up to 256 characters. There are no reserved values, so pick whatever vocabulary fits your app (online, away, busy, editing, typing).
userId is set automatically from the authenticated session on client SDKs and is required on server SDKs.
metadata is an arbitrary JSON object. Use it to carry any context that subscribers should see together with the status.
expiresAt is optional. Without it, Appwrite applies a default TTL (see Expiry and cleanup below).
permissions controls who can read or modify the presence record, the same way it works on rows and files. Without permissions, only the owner and project keys can see it.

Get a presence

Fetch a single presence by its presenceId. Records whose expiresAt is in the past are treated as not found.

import { Client, Presences } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const presence = await presences.get({
    presenceId: '<PRESENCE_ID>'
});

List presences

list returns the active set. Expired records are filtered out automatically, so the response is always "who is here right now". Pass Queries to filter by status, userId, or any indexed field, and pass ttl to cache the response server-side for a configurable number of seconds.

import { Client, Presences, Query } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const result = await presences.list({
    queries: [Query.equal('status', ['online'])]
});

Update a presence

update patches a subset of fields on an existing record without re-sending the whole payload. Every field except presenceId is optional, so a "go away" handler only needs to send status. One naming difference to watch for: the method is named update on client SDKs and updatePresence (with each language's case convention) on server SDKs, where it also requires userId. This is the only point at which the client and server surfaces diverge.

import { Client, Presences } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const presence = await presences.update({
    presenceId: '<PRESENCE_ID>',
    status: 'away'
});

Delete a presence

delete removes a record immediately and fires a delete event on the presence channels. Use it when you want a user to go offline without waiting for expiresAt to elapse, for example on sign out or admin force-offline.

import { Client, Presences } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

await presences.delete({
    presenceId: '<PRESENCE_ID>'
});

Presence is most useful when other clients can react to it live. Use the Channel.presences() helper to subscribe to the global presences channel, or Channel.presence('<PRESENCE_ID>') to follow a single record. All Realtime subscriptions are gated by the permissions system, so a client will only receive updates for presences it has permission to read.

import { Client, Realtime, Channel } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const realtime = new Realtime(client);

const subscription = await realtime.subscribe(Channel.presences(), response => {
    if (response.events.includes('presences.*.delete')) {
        console.log('Presence expired or removed', response.payload);
    } else if (response.events.includes('presences.*.upsert') || response.events.includes('presences.*.update')) {
        console.log('Presence created or updated', response.payload);
    }
});

The events array follows the same pattern as every other Appwrite resource:

presences.*.upsert and presences.<PRESENCE_ID>.upsert for the unified create-or-update path that fires on every upsert() call.
presences.*.update and presences.<PRESENCE_ID>.update for status, metadata, or expiry changes made via the REST update() operation.
presences.*.delete and presences.<PRESENCE_ID>.delete for records that were deleted explicitly or expired automatically.

Note that there is no separate create event, the upsert event covers both first-time creation and subsequent writes.

This gives you a clean signal for "user just came online", "user changed status", and "user went offline", without writing any custom socket logic.

Presence channels

Channel	Channel Helper	Description
`presences`	`Channel.presences()`	Any upsert, update, or delete event on any presence the subscriber can read.
`presences.<ID>`	`Channel.presence('<PRESENCE_ID>')`	Any upsert, update, or delete event on a specific presence record.

You can also append .upsert(), .update(), or .delete() to Channel.presence('<PRESENCE_ID>') to narrow the stream to a single event type, identical to how channel filters work on every other resource.

Expiry and cleanup

Every presence carries an expiresAt timestamp. Once that time passes, Appwrite removes the record automatically and emits a delete event on the presence channels, so subscribers can react to "user went offline" without any explicit signal from the client that owned the presence.

You can pass an explicit expiresAt up to 30 days in the future. If you omit it, Appwrite applies a sensible default that fits the typical heartbeat pattern: keep upserting the presence every few seconds while the user is active, and let it expire naturally a short time after the last heartbeat.

import { Client, Presences, ID, Permission, Role } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const presence = await presences.upsert({
    presenceId: ID.unique(),
    status: 'online',
    expiresAt: new Date(Date.now() + 5 * 60 * 1000).toISOString(),
    permissions: [
        Permission.read(Role.users())
    ]
});

To remove a presence immediately, for example on sign out or when the user closes a document, use the Delete a presence operation above.

Permissions and scopes

Presences use the standard Appwrite permissions system. Set read permissions on a presence to control who can subscribe to it:

Role.any() makes the presence visible to anyone, including unauthenticated visitors.
Role.users() restricts visibility to signed-in users.
Role.team('<TEAM_ID>') shares the presence with a specific team, which is the right choice for collaboration features where only teammates should see each other's status.

Pass a permissions array to upsert() to attach roles to a presence. For example, to make a presence visible only to a specific team:

import { Client, Presences, ID, Permission, Role } from "appwrite";

const client = new Client()
    .setEndpoint('https://<REGION>.cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
    .setProject('<PROJECT_ID>');

const presences = new Presences(client);

const presence = await presences.upsert({
    presenceId: ID.unique(),
    status: 'online',
    permissions: [
        Permission.read(Role.team('<TEAM_ID>'))
    ]
});

Server SDKs need an API key with the presences.read scope to list or read presences, and presences.write to upsert or delete them. Client sessions can always update their own presence without an extra scope.

If you do not pass a permissions array when upserting a presence, Appwrite defaults to giving read access only to the user who created it, so no other client can subscribe to it. To share a presence more broadly, you must set permissions explicitly.

Use cases

The Presences API is a good fit any time you need to render "who is here right now" rather than "what has been written to storage":

Online indicators in a directory or contacts list
Collaboration cursors that show which document or section each teammate is viewing
Typing indicators in chat or comment threads
Live attendee lists for live streams, classrooms, or shared dashboards
Locking signals that warn a teammate when someone else is already editing a row

For longer-lived state, like a user's profile or settings, use account preferences or a row in your database instead. Presence is intentionally short-lived and self-cleaning.

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