Presence

Documentation from convex/presence, recorded October 23, 2026. APIs and setup may differ in the Bijection adaptation.

Presence Convex Component

A Convex component for managing presence functionality, i.e., a live-updating list of users in a "room" including their status for when they were last online.

It can be tricky to implement presence efficiently, without any polling and without re-running queries every time a user sends a heartbeat message. This component implements presence via a single deployment-wide worker (a batch-worker loop) that sleeps until the next session timeout is due, such that clients only receive updates when a user joins or leaves the room and heartbeats don't schedule any work.

The most common use case for this component is via the usePresence hook, which takes care of sending heartbeart messages to the server and gracefully disconnecting a user when the tab is closed.

Installation

Copy codenpm install @convex-dev/presence

Examples

See the example directory for a simple example of how to use this component. The example-with-auth directory shows how to use the component with authentication.

There's a hosted version of example-with-auth at https://presence.previews.convex.dev.

Usage

First, add the component to your Convex app:

convex/convex.config.ts

Copy codeimport { defineApp } from "convex/server";
import presence from "@convex-dev/presence/convex.config.js";

const app = defineApp();
app.use(presence);
export default app;

convex/presence.ts

Copy codeimport { mutation, query } from "./_generated/server";
import { components } from "./_generated/api";
import { v } from "convex/values";
import { Presence } from "@convex-dev/presence";

export const presence = new Presence(components.presence);

export const heartbeat = mutation({
  args: {
    roomId: v.string(),
    userId: v.string(),
    sessionId: v.string(),
    interval: v.number(),
  },
  handler: async (ctx, { roomId, userId, sessionId, interval }) => {
    // TODO: Add your auth checks here.
    return await presence.heartbeat(ctx, roomId, userId, sessionId, interval);
  },
});

export const list = query({
  args: { roomToken: v.string() },
  handler: async (ctx, { roomToken }) => {
    // Avoid adding per-user reads so all subscriptions can share same cache.
    return await presence.list(ctx, roomToken);
  },
});

export const disconnect = mutation({
  args: { sessionToken: v.string() },
  handler: async (ctx, { sessionToken }) => {
    // Can't check auth here because it's called over http from sendBeacon.
    return await presence.disconnect(ctx, sessionToken);
  },
});

A Presence React component can be instantiated from your client code like this:

src/App.tsx

Copy codeimport { api } from "../convex/_generated/api";
import usePresence from "@convex-dev/presence/react";
import FacePile from "@convex-dev/presence/facepile";

export default function App(): React.ReactElement {
  const [name] = useState(() => "User " + Math.floor(Math.random() * 10000));
  const presenceState = usePresence(api.presence, "my-chat-room", name);

  return (
    <main>
      <FacePile presenceState={presenceState ?? []} />
    </main>
  );
}

This uses the basic FacePile component included with this package but you can easily copy this code and use the usePresence hook directly to implement your own styling.

React Native support

If you're using React Native, install these optional dependencies:

Copy codenpx expo install react-native expo-crypto

and then import the usePresence hook from @convex-dev/presence/react-native:

Copy codeimport { usePresence } from "@convex-dev/presence/react-native";

Note: The component currently doesn't have a React Native equivalent, but you can easily create your own.

Additional functionality

The component interface for the Presence class is defined in src/client/index.ts. It includes additional functions for maintaining presence state and for querying presence for a given user or room.

e.g., you can use the listUser function to check if a user is online in any room.

Reach out or join the Convex Discord Community if you have any questions or feedback!