Conversation availability

Find guides for checking whether a Convai character can hear the player right now, and reacting in your UI when it cannot.

Conversation availability is how the Convai Unity SDK answers whether the player can talk to a character right now, and what is in the way when they cannot. A connected room does not mean the addressed character can hear anything — the service has to announce the character first, and ConvaiManager.ConversationAvailability is the single place that answer lives. Everything in the SDK that takes player input already asks it.

How conversation availability works Understand the states, why a connected room is not enough, and how availability differs from a character's readiness flag.

Gate your UI on availability Bind a custom chat field, send button, or microphone control to the current verdict.

Customise the chat field prompts Reword every state prompt the shipped chat field shows, and tune its slow-connect hint.

React to the player starting to speak Subscribe to local microphone and push-to-talk activity ahead of Convai's own confirmed verdict.

Conversation availability reference Look up every state, event, and method involved in gating player input.

Troubleshoot player input Fix a refused message, a chat field that stays disabled, or a microphone that will not open.

Where availability comes from

Availability is not a room-wide flag. It answers for ConvaiManager.AddressedCharacter — whoever the player is currently talking to — so the same room can report one character Ready while another is still Preparing. The same answer is also available per character on ConvaiCharacter.ConversationAvailability, for UI tied to one specific character rather than to whoever is currently addressed. See How conversation availability works for the model behind the states.

Next steps

Start with How conversation availability works to understand the states, then Gate your UI on availability to wire your own input surface to it.

Multi-character sessions