
Disable new Slack WYSIWYG editor with this bookmarklet - akhaku
https://github.com/kfahy/slack-disable-wysiwyg-bookmarklet
======
d4rky
You can do it in the desktop app as well. If you run it with
SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true in env vars, it'll enable you to right click to
Inspect Element, open devtools and run this code snippet there

~~~
CraneWorm
I set the env variable but I can't seem to get the access to devtools?

Only regular menu appears on right-click.

~~~
oueasley
Try quitting Slack and just running this from the console.

It worked for me:

export SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true

open /Applications/Slack.app

~~~
d4rky
Instead of using open you can just run the binary inside Slack.app directory:

SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true /Applications/Slack.app/Contents/MacOS/Slack

~~~
ak217
That's not a great idea. If you don't use open, the app won't show up in the
Finder app switcher.

~~~
christefano
Good point! Thanks for mentioning that.

Small nitpick, though. The dock is what runs the app switcher, not the Finder.

------
johnmaguire2013
I've been struggling with the new editor for the past week or so. I finally
sent this feedback to Slack today:

    
    
      Hi there, when the WYSIWYG editor rolled out, I was pleased to see it could be disabled with the "Aa" button in the bottom right. I quickly realized it's not disabled, the toolbar is just hidden.
      
      Here are the problems I run into:
      
      1. Typing ``` and then pasting and typing it again (force of habit from *every other service that uses Markdown* including Slack up until this point), leaving me with an extra ``` inside my code block.
      2. Typing >, pasting, and hitting enter too quickly that it doesn't seem to register. Or it registers for one line, but not the rest. Then I have to fix the rest. I'd prefer the old method of simply typing > in front of each line, consistently. But even when I try this, sometimes > doesn't get converted to quotes.
      3. Typing :emoji_name: often times results in me typing the name too quickly, and, similar to the bad auto-selection of @-names, it chooses an emoji whose name I didn't type (even though I typed an emoji name exactly). Please just don't touch it until the full thing is parsed on send.
      4. *foo*, _foo_, etc. -- again, I type very quickly (~158wpm when going my fastest) and these aren't getting converted. I'd expect if they don't get converted when I type it, they'd at least get converted on send. They don't.
      
      Please give me a way to opt out of this or drastically improve it. Thank you.
    

I was disheartened to hear that Slack is adamant they will not allow this to
be disabled:

    
    
      Thank you for taking the time to write in and provide this feedback. I apologize for the disruption to your existing workflows. Our aim is to build an editor that works for all Slack users to better format their messages and clearly communicate in channels, regardless of their technical expertise. While we are taking all feedback on board, disabling the new formatting tool isn't an option that we will be offering.
      
      We are committed to doing what we can to improve the new experience for you, and will continue to make improvements to the new editor. Thank you for sharing these specific examples as we're carefully reviewing all feedback and passing it over to our product team.

~~~
t34543
Slack is extremely hostile towards user feedback. I sent them comments on what
I believe to be a terrible feature and they also told me it will never be
changed.

~~~
thephyber
"extremely hostile" sounds hyperbolic. Unless you were somehow attacked,
threatened, sent a C&D, or had an account disabled, they simply steamrolled
over your opinions.

And they are far from the first consumer-facing company to deal with user
backlash when a new feature came out. Facebook notoriously got an onslaught of
negative opinions and sometimes press when a feature in the UI changed. The UI
never caused any significant migration away from Facebook, only the
privacy/surveillance concerns, vitriol, and the "embarrassed by my parents"
un-cooling of the platform caused users to leave.

From what I read here and elsewhere about feedback from customer service, I
suspect there is a push from management down to product to hit certain targets
(I don't have visibility into Slack's internal metrics, but this is exactly
how it presented in my previous company).

~~~
t34543
Slack was being jerks telling everyone change is hard and to suck it up. Now,
they backpeddled.

This is what hostility looks like. They think they know better than their
users. They don’t.

------
metalliqaz
I don't use slack so the issue isn't on my radar, but if this has made it to
the top of HN.... I guess Slack reeeealy effed up.

~~~
cycrutchfield
It’s a tempest in a teapot. Yes, the new editor is horrible. But at best it is
a minor annoyance, and most users learn to work around it.

~~~
EricE
"Yes, the new editor is horrible. [...] most users learn to work around it."

What a time to be alive.

------
self_awareness
There are browser plugins like Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey that manage these
kind of patches.

I'm often removing some "functionality" of a website I visit often (e.g.
removing annoying chat boxes)

There are also repositories of scripts like GreasyFork
([https://greasyfork.org](https://greasyfork.org)). I suggest that maybe your
script could be ported to Tampermonkey instead of distributing it as a
bookmarklet.

------
benbristow
I personally don't mind the new WYSIWYG. Doesn't get in the way much at all
really.

The only thing it's weird with I find is the code blocks, (previously 3
backticks, linebreak, code, linebreak, 3 backticks). Not a massive fan of how
after 3 backticks it now puts an inline code format 'block', seems a bit
weird.

~~~
faceplanted
The three backticks is what got me, I tend to paste blocks in and then put
backticks around them, which is just broken now as it just inlines the first
line and does nothing to the last line, I'll just disable it for now and set a
reminder for sometime soon to see if they've fixed it

~~~
holstvoogd
oooh so that's it! I could figure out the issue everyone was having with this.

------
parliament32
Good news, they're backpedaling. Just got this in a support request:

>We really appreciate your feedback, and we hear your frustration. We're sorry
for the impact this is having on your ability to communicate with your team
and on your overall productivity. We made a mistake by forcing everyone into
this feature without providing an opt-out for customers like you: people for
whom the existing behavior was working just fine.

>We've started working on a preference that will let you return to the
previous message composer. We don't have a specific release date to share
right now — it's this team's top and only priority, however, and we expect to
have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks, with Android
following shortly thereafter.

>We will follow up with another note when this option is available to you, and
we'll include instructions on how to enable it.

>Again, we're sorry for the disruption and we're grateful for the feedback. We
missed the mark on this feature! We will do our best to learn from this and
avoid similar mistakes in the future.

~~~
lordfoom
> we expect to have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks,

A couple of WEEKS???

~~~
tempestn
I can't tell if you think that's fast or slow. They're not just rolling back
the feature; they have to add a new user preference, and replace the A/B test
with the ability to run either way. Add in testing and such, and given Slack's
scale, getting that released in a couple weeks sounds about right.

------
perlgeek
Wouldn't this make more sense as a tampermonkey / greasemonkey userscript?

That way it loads automatically when you visit slack, no need to repeat
anything.

Disadvantage would be that you need a browser extension.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Shouldn't be hard to copy-paste the provided code into Tampermonkey.

------
ed_blackburn
I'm not going to do this on every refresh. I predict the market/ecossytem for
guerrilla browser extensions targeting technical Slack users hotting up.

~~~
semiotagonal
How hard would it be to run Slack in a special VM that brokered UI events from
another application?

I.e. the latest Slack would be running in a VM that made everything seem
normal to it, but in reality the UI input and output would be supplied by
another application which was presenting a "Slack Classic" interface to the
actual user.

~~~
londons_explore
At that point, you might as well just use the slack API...

------
heharkon
Isn't it the old functionality with the "Aa" toggle button? At least I don't
have any problems with that after pressing it.

~~~
gknoy
Fenced blocks and `monospaced` stuff still behave frustratingly whether I have
the "Aa" button toggled or not. I hate it -- wish they'd just add support for
plain markdown as an option :(

~~~
heharkon
Ah, true. I rarely use any markdown so I didn't notice any difference :)

~~~
huffmsa
And that's the heart of the issue. This is a "convenience" introduced to make
markdown easier for people who didn't really use markdown, at the cost of
adding a pain point for people who are heavy users of the markdown features.

~~~
sodosopa
Does html work? Why not use it instead?

~~~
notkaiho
No, HTML is not part of how you can format text in Slack.

~~~
pavel_lishin
HTML would also be a pretty verbose way to format text I'm typing out to
coworkers, etc.

------
kodablah
Doing some security debugging on Slack desktop a year or so ago, I saw that
you could easily open up a Chrome debugger port via CLI option to use with
puppeteer/chromedp/etc. I haven't checked lately, but in theory it should be
easy enough to connect to the debug port and run this short script to get the
same benefit in the Electron app.

~~~
tolqen
You should be able to press Cmd+Shift+I and open the developer console.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Doesn't work for me, just opens the channel info window.

~~~
nanny
run slack with SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=1 and then right click and hit "inspect
element"

------
aashcan
Just got another note from them:

    
    
      We really appreciate your feedback, and we hear your frustration. 
      We're sorry for the impact this is having on your ability to communicate with your team and on your overall productivity. 
      We made a mistake by forcing everyone into this feature without providing an opt-out for customers like you: people for whom the existing behavior was working just fine.
    
      We've started working on a preference that will let you return to the previous message composer. 
      We don't have a specific release date to share right now — it's this team's top and only priority, however, and we expect to have it available on the desktop within a couple of weeks, with Android following shortly thereafter.
    
      We will follow up with another note when this option is available to you, and we'll include instructions on how to enable it.
    
      Again, we're sorry for the disruption and we're grateful for the feedback. 
      We missed the mark on this feature! We will do our best to learn from this and avoid similar mistakes in the future.

------
mangatmodi
Thank you. It was kind of Broken. I copy pasted a text with code tags and it
didn't recognized. Quite painful overall.

------
jaywalk
I'd imagine that once this "experiment" is rolled out to 100% of the user base
and no longer an "experiment" they will remove the feature flag and the code
for the old input box.

------
anaphor
This isn't working for me on Firefox 68 (I have a newer version on my other
laptop I'll try out later).

I get CSP errors: `Content Security Policy: The page’s settings blocked the
loading of a resource at inline (“script-src”).`

I doubt it's something that can be fixed without writing a plugin / user
script.

Kudos for figuring out how to disable it though!

------
p0cc
I made a firefox/chrome extension based on this script.

    
    
      * Firefox Addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-slack-wysiwyg/
      * Chrome Extn: Pending Review
      * Source: https://github.com/pocc/no-wysiwyg
    

edit: formatting

------
stefan_
I guess the fact that this is some absurd string-based-programming code is
bonus entertainment. '[19] Bulk add experiment assignments to redux'!

------
machiste77
This is the content I come here for. True hacker news.

------
ipoopatwork
Don't forget to complain using /feedback !

------
Justsignedup
I for one love it.

That is all.

------
jborichevskiy
The fact that surrounding a word with tildes ~like so~ works in the initial
message editor but not when editing a sent message is completely illogical.

------
imhoguy
Get ready for cease&desist from Slack:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17869249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17869249)

------
lukax
You can just toggle the old minimal input by clicking the first/third button
from the right (Aa - Hide formatting).

~~~
randunel
The toggle only hides the UI, bad behaviour stays the same.

~~~
dannyw
If slack made toggling off the UI also toggle off the behaviour, no one would
be complaining.

