pChat (Chat customization & help: look/notification/sound/automation/history) — install it, and know whether it still works

Install it — the whole route, ending with it running

Which platform this route is for

PC (Windows/Mac) — this page's install route is the PC/Mac one. Console: no console signal appears anywhere in this addon's files or its listing, so we cannot say whether a console build of it exists. Either way the download on this page is not the console route: console players get add-ons from the in-game add-on browser only. “You cannot use Minion or any other download source to install them to your console. To download and install AddOns on your console you must use the ingame addon browser on your console!” — source, read 2026-08-22. What is and is not possible there: ESO addons on console.

Step 1 — what has to be installed with it

6 other things have to be in your AddOns\ folder as well, and this is the order to add them in — each is its own folder beside the addon, never inside it. It is the full dependency closure, not just the first level: libraries first, then whatever needs them, then pChat (Chat customization & help: look/notification/sound/automation/history) itself.

“Also bundled elsewhere” means other addons ship their own copy of that folder. The game loads exactly one folder of a given name — see “Duplicate libraries” below.

“Version floor” is the minimum the manifest asks for (## DependsOn: LibAddonMenu-2.0>=41 means version 41 or newer). “Must dependency: Another addon or library which must be installed and enabled in the in-game addon manager in order to enable the addon in question at all. The AddOn will not load in total in that case. The must dependency is defined via the ## DependsOn: tag in the txt files of addons.” — source, read 2026-08-22

Optional — declared with ## OptionalDependsOn. The addon loads without these and uses them if they happen to be there, so install none of them unless you want them for their own sake: LibChatMessage, LibCustomTitles, LibHarvensAddonSettings, LibSlashCommander, LibStub.

Step 2 — where the files go

The only shape the game reads is AddOns\X\X.txt. Getting this wrong — one folder too deep — is the commonest install failure there is.

Right:

Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\AddOns\ 
  ├─ pChat\            ← this addon
  │     pChat.txt      ← the manifest the game reads
  ├─ LibAddonMenu-2.0\            ← beside it, never inside it
  ├─ LibAddonMenuSoundSlider\            ← beside it, never inside it
  ├─ LibCustomMenu\            ← beside it, never inside it
  └─ (every other addon, also at this level)

Wrong:

Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\AddOns\ 
  └─ pChat\
        └─ pChat\         ← ONE FOLDER TOO DEEP
              pChat.txt    ← the game never looks here

“C:\Users\< username >\Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live\AddOns\< AddOn A FolderName >\< files >” — source, read 2026-08-22

“Important: The live/AddOns folder will be created after your first login to the game, it will be missing if you had not logged in before at least once!” — source, read 2026-08-22

Step 3 — make the game see it

A newly added folder is not picked up by /reloadui. Close the game fully and relaunch it — at minimum log out to the launcher and back in. /reloadui re-reads the files of addons the game has already listed; it is the right tool after editing an addon you already had, and the wrong one after adding a new folder.

“The game read those txt files in total at first client login, and not always "in total" if you just do a character switch or /reloadui ingame).”

Step 4 — enable it

At character select, open Add-Ons and tick pChat (Chat customization & help: look/notification/sound/automation/history) and every library it needs — libraries appear in that same list as their own entries, and an unticked library reads to the game exactly like a missing one.

Step 5 — confirm it is actually running

Success looks like: it appears in ESC → Settings → Add-Ons in the list of loaded add-ons.

Failure signatures, and what each one means:

• Red Dependency next to it in the add-on list — a required folder is missing or is installed but switched off. “If a dependency of an AddOn is missing you are able to see it directly in the in-game AddOn manager’s list, at the right column. The text "Dependency” is indicating it.” — source, read 2026-08-22 This is a real engine state, not a UI hint: the live API exposes “* ADDON_STATE_DEPENDENCIES_DISABLED” — our own measurement of the live API dump, read 2026-08-22.
• Greyed out / “Out of date” — the addon's declared ## APIVersion is lower than the client's. The game loads it anyway; that flag is a comparison of one manifest line with the client's API version, not a test of whether the addon works.
• Nothing in the list at all — the folder is at the wrong depth, or you are looking at a different live\ folder than the game is. “Search for UserSettings.txt or AddOnSettings.txt file on your harddrives/sdds and check which folder it is in (with the most up2date date and time!). Below this folder, in the subfolder AddOns, your addons need to be located so the game will find them as well.” — source, read 2026-08-22

Duplicate libraries

Another addon may already ship its own copy of LibAddonMenu-2.0, LibCustomMenu, LibDebugLogger. The game loads exactly one folder of a given name, and which one it picks is not something you control from the add-on screen. If a library shows up twice in your AddOns\ folder, keep the standalone folder and let the bundled copy be the one you delete — the standalone one is the copy its author updates. Each library's own folder page lists every addon that ships a copy of it.

Removing it

Delete pChat\ from AddOns\. 3 other addons in the ESOUI catalogue declare a dependency on this one, so deleting it can stop those loading too (who uses this folder). Its settings are kept separately in live\SavedVariables\ — leave that file alone and your configuration comes back if you reinstall; delete it to start clean. “SavedVariablse are stored in live/SavedVariables but we do not have access to the files directly, only via the ZO_SavedVars wrapper class” — source, read 2026-08-22

If it breaks

An in-game Lua error names the file it died in, like user:/AddOns/pChat/pChat.lua:214. The segment straight after user:/AddOns/ is a folder name, and pChat\ is this addon's own folder (see everything that ships a folder by that name). Paste any error line into the error-line resolver and it names the addon for you.

“Important: It must not be the causing addon but could be just a library which is missing.” — source, read 2026-08-22

“Please do not create screenshots and send the screenshot of the error messages! They will be missing information then.”

“Attention: If the numberis missing you need to enable them at the ingame addon manager (press ESC to get to the menu -> AddOns) and enable the checkbox "Advanced UI errors".” — source, read 2026-08-22

Where to report it. The comments tab of this addon's own ESOUI listing: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info93-pChatChatcustomizationhelplooknotificationsoundautomationhistory.html. “Do not use the forums to request new features. Use the addon comments of the particular addon you want new features for as the authors will see this way easier than having to search any forums.” — source, read 2026-08-22 We make no claim that Puddy answers — the only responsiveness signal we have is the release history, and the last release was 2026-09-29.

Longer walkthroughs: which addon is crashing my UI · the red “Dependency” fix · addons out of date after an update.

Evidence — every number on this page, and where it came from

8,257 downloads in the last month · 1,854,554 lifetime. Both come straight from the ESOUI feed; the lifetime number counts every download since the addon was first published, which is why an abandoned addon can still show millions.

API versions declared in its manifests: 101051, 101050 (the game checks only the highest of these — at 101051 it matches the live API exactly.)

Author-declared compatibility — the game versions the author flagged on the listing. This is a declaration by the author, not a test by anyone: Season OneSeason Zero Pt.2Season ZeroSeasons of the Worm Cult Pt2Feast of Shadows Seasons of the Worm Cult Pt1Fallen BannersUpdate 44Update 43Gold Road

24 Lua files and 1 manifest file in our corpus copy. Its code calls 140 distinct game-API symbols (code index 2026-09-28).

Top of its changelog: Maintained by Baertram. Please do not ask for new features. I'll just keep the addon running. Thanks for your support Changelog: ## v10.0.7.4 ## 2026-06-08 Udated API version and dependencies Fixed usage of old chat variable (in history restore) ## v10.0.7.3 ## 2026-04-14 Added Chinese translation, thanks to lolo77777 ## v10.0.7.2 ## 2026-01-21 Fixed

11 screenshots on the author's page — see them there (they are the author's images; we link, we do not rehost).

The author takes donations: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info93#donate

MD5 of the current zip (as published in the feed): 7ea055f732bb9189b31264924d77b971

Other Chat Mods addons — and what each one does

Same category, biggest first, each with its own one-line description so you can tell whether it does the thing you actually want.