
A simpler, more organized Slack - rkwz
https://slackhq.com/simpler-more-organized-slack
======
eitland
If anyone from Slack reads this: One tiny idea. Just because I entered a dot
or a word into a chat doesn't mean I don't expect to find that chat or group
in the exact same spot next time.

By all means put a symlink in a virtual Drafts folder but leave the original
alone.

~~~
rovr138
This is SOOO annoying

Users are lower on the sidebar, I go to write something and it’s not showing
up there anymore.

I then have to stop, start looking closer until I remember or click cmd+k
(mac) and then type the name.

This is so annoying.

------
city41
Slack, _please_ add the ability to not be notified about general messages on
Linux. I want to only have the app icon change to red if I get a private
message or @'d. The blue dot is distracting noise. I edit the app's source
code to remove the blue dot, but have to continually do it every time Slack
updates.

Fitting into these new features, it'd be great if for each channel folder I
could pick how I want activity within them to notify me.

EDIT: it's possible this is only a Linux (or at least, non-Mac) problem. It
seems Mac users do have the ability to do this.

~~~
ilikehurdles
In the Slack options, there is: `Show a badge on Mac on Slack's icon to
indicate new activity` which is by default checked and `Bounce Slack's icon
when receiving a notification` which is by default unchecked. Perhaps you want
to flip both of these?

I also don't get notifications for general messages anywhere. There are 3
levels of notification settings, "Notify me about...": 1. "All new messages",
2. "Direct messages, mentions and keywords", 3. "Nothing". I use (2)
everywhere.

~~~
city41
I believe the badge options are Mac specific. I am on Ubuntu and talking with
some Mac users just now they don't have the problem I have. On Ubuntu, there
is no way (at least that I can tell), to disable the blue dot on new message.
The only way I've been able to do it is with this:

[https://superuser.com/a/1503241/45125](https://superuser.com/a/1503241/45125)

I have disabled notifications and that works as expected.

------
henriquez
By “simpler” I’m sure they mean “lower memory footprint” and “more stable” -
right?

I would really just be happy if they made the video calls work more reliably.
It’s really important now that my whole team is working from home. It’s a
common occurrence that video calls fail to connect and everyone going into a
call has to restart their client.

Over the years Slack has become more and more bloated. I think the scope has
increased beyond where it’s possible to have a stable Electron app. It’s a
shame because the core functionality they offer seems like it should be pretty
simple to get right.

~~~
capableweb
If you read beyond two words from the title, you'll see the full title is
"Introducing a simpler, more organized Slack" which includes "organized", so
probably not related to performance or stability in any way.

Subtitle is "We’re releasing a series of improvements that make working in
Slack easier for everyone" which also implies this is all UX work.

Your whole comment feels off-topic in regards to this, and could have been
made to any Slack submission to HN. Maybe there should be a different channel
for general complaints?

~~~
henriquez
I should have rephrased. I believe Slack's UX team is looking for solutions to
problems nobody actually cares about. Meanwhile the tempo of so-called
improvements that end up being harmful to the product seems to have made the
entire app unstable. The fact that they have to publicly back away from new
features after customers revolt, like their ill-fated rich text editor, seems
to confirm that nobody wants this stuff.

In my opinion I think Slack's time would be better spent collecting money and
maybe building native clients for various operating systems. It was fine in
2017. I wish their UX team would just stop.

~~~
akerl_
I am a Slack user, and I am super excited for the changes in this
announcement, especially custom channel organization.

Thank you, Slack, for this UX work.

------
wasyl
Seems like Slack is focusing a lot on making the app more accessible for
enterprises with email-like message composer or "no-fancy-shortcuts"
navigation. While some of these improvements are nice, I feel like Slack has
been going downhill ux-wise for some time now:

\- new input box, obviously, which messes up the message even when turned off
(edited message with code block will often be different than what I just sent)

\- people with message drafts moving on the list, as many people mentioned
here already

\- often an action I did by mistake can't be undone by pressing escape:
drafting a post, opening image. I can't reproduce this always so it seems like
a bug

\- I now sometimes can't see person's details by clicking their image for some
reason? I need to click their name, but even that not always works. Also not
reproducible 100% of the time, so looks like a bug

\- notifications on Android are broken: they don't disappear when I read a
message elsewhere, sometimes I get mobile notifications _for a conversation
I'm having on the desktop_.

\- when I write someone with notifications off/snoozed, I'm immediately pinged
about this. And every single time I'm thinking that person maybe is online and
replied, but it's always Slack pinging me, with notification and all, that
it's actually the opposite

\- I often see people working while appearing offline, myself included,
because apparently Slack decided to stop asking if I want to go online after I
decline it once or twice (the night before)

Basically Slack is less and less friendly. I used to advocate for it as it was
a huge step up from HipChat that we used, but if it was up to me now, I'd be
looking for alternatives.

------
Hedja
This article has 50MB of GIFs to download. Be careful if you're metered.

~~~
gabagool
Tip for desktop users: uBlock Origin (amongst others) lets you block media
elements larger than n KB. You can then choose to selectively load in specific
blocked media elements.

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-
switches#no-...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-
large-media-elements)

~~~
ufo
Does this feature also work on uBlock Origin for mobile browsers?

~~~
benji_is_me
Just tested, it appears to work.

------
drewg123
While we are asking for slack features, can we _PLEASE_ have an option to
notify once, and only once on mobile for group messages?

I have several co-workers who will chat me while i'm driving, or otherwise
unable to respond, and having my phone binging every few seconds is incredibly
annoying.

~~~
unethical_ban
Light Flow on Android, a notification manager app, has this. "Alert
Throttling". Max of one notification every X seconds/minutes.

I wish Slack had this, too.

~~~
solarkraft
Light flow is pretty amazing and I'm surprised phone makers haven't at least
integrated some of the features.

It started out as a way to do custom LED sequences, but you can also set
custom vibration patterns (at the millisecond level) for every type of
notification.

~~~
solarkraft
Tangent time?

The power of vibration is heavily under-appreciated (less by Apple than by
everyone else).

Our phones are great at precisely creating many different vibration patterns
and humans are pretty good at distinguishing them. We're even more sensitive
when it's happening on our wrists.

Yet instead of using this to create personal and expressive notification
experiences, most manufacturers opt to barely give the user a choice and just
turn on the vibration motor for way too long (or do that twice!), simply
creating a sensation of _pain_ every time.

------
jakub_g
> Organize channels, messages and apps into custom, collapsible sections (you
> know, like folders)

Looking at my three-screens-long list of channels, this is a welcome change.

~~~
noahtallen
An incredible improvement. I really hope they improve notifications at some
point. In some channels, I don’t even want the bold font indicating unread
messages.

~~~
mintplant
I'm still waiting for the ability to be notified for all _non-bot_ messages in
a channel, which they told me they were working on, uh, 7 years ago.

~~~
wool_gather
This has a social solution, which is to complain about bots being added to
channels that are for human discussions. ;)

It has a fairly successful track record for me.

------
tomxor
Great, although i really wish they focused on performance first... on my year
old xps typing in slack is like trying to run in a vat of custard. I wish I
could turn of their horrible wysiwyg thing until it sees a line ending because
it's clearly evaling on every keystroke.

~~~
nitrogen
The wysiwyg editor can be disabled on desktop, thanks to all the noise devs
made after the switch.

~~~
tomxor
that only disables the UI, it's still slow.

------
ben509
> Hasta la vista, context switching.

Context switching is more about time wasted stopping one task to pick up
another. Slack's context switch is when I'm working on something else and the
OS pings me to let me know someone needs me.

When Slack wants my attention, it pings me instantly, and it will ping me
repeatedly if a person... is typing... like... Captain Kirk... talks.

People have tried to address[1] this sort of problem through teaching, but
even if you could get people to read that, there's a degree of systemic
complexity in interaction. Many situations just don't lend themselves to
writing up a detailed question ahed of time.

Slack could mitigate this through technical means. Hell, the OS could do a
better job. Take it further, I'd love to centralize notifications through some
service across multiple devices.

One possibility is to debounce notifications as we do with events in UIs. In
practice, it means Slack holds my messages for a few minutes before I get a
notification. Ideally, the other person should see this so they realize I'm
not going to instantly acknowledge their Hi message. And people who type bit
by bit can do so knowing it won't give me a flood of notifications.

The other possibility is scheduled notification times for low priority stuff.
It's good advice to work in blocks, so it'd make sense at the end of a block
for notifications to pop up if they're available.

[1]: [http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-
questions.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html)

------
dbanisimov
A few of the UI changes - top search bar, activity and files tabs, compose
button - first appeared in MS Teams some time back.

I wonder how much the competition forced Slack to think more about the UI/UX
of it's product.

------
igetspam
I'm happy for any improvement to the chaos but I that statement about "fancy"
shortcuts doesn't meam they're getting rid of any. Keyboards are the fastest
way to navigate a well designed system.

Also I hope this doesn't mean they're forcing that input box on us again. That
was a fustercluck.

------
jeremiahlee
My favorite Slack feature was never knowing for sure which of the 5 buttons in
the upper right corner contained the thing I was looking for.

It's that sort of uncertainty that reminded me of life's uncertainties in
general on a regular basis.

~~~
Minor49er
Mine is how it will reposition your channel or DM name in the sidebar if you
start writing a message, but switch to another section for a moment. I opened
an issue about it because I felt like I was losing my mind. Didn't I _just_
have this open right here? Where did it go? No, it gets placed in some Drafts
section. They won't fix it or create a toggle to stop doing this because
leaving me in a confused state is more productive apparently.

And don't get me started on the little Slackbot notifications for absolutely
everything. (Yes, Slackbot. I requested everything in the channel to be
collapsed. I know what that means. You don't have to drop a message every
single time. Ffs.)

~~~
pwinnski
Moving things into Drafts is the single worst thing they've done, topping even
the super-terrible rich-text changes.

Copying something into Drafts, sure, I can see that. But moving it? Absolutely
broken to the point of unusability.

------
fsargent
When are these features available? It's not listed, and it doesn't seem to be
in the current version.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
If you aren't on the betas[1], that's a good place to start. I got an update
today, haven't seen any new behavior yet, though.

1: [https://slack.com/help/articles/226192087-Join-
Slack%E2%80%9...](https://slack.com/help/articles/226192087-Join-
Slack%E2%80%99s-desktop-app-beta-programme)

~~~
Operyl
The update today seemed to be bringing beta back in line with stable. (4.4.0
was in beta for a bit, and it was released today).

------
dbg31415
Years ago I wrote in and had an exchange with someone at Slack regarding
"folders" for channels. I begged for the feature, and included some mock
screenshots showing how they could do it. This was before Discord did it.

Anyway I got a tone deaf response, and someone on the Slack team passionately
arguing that "folders" were too complicated and that nobody needed them and
that 21 characters for the names were enough. I wrote back, and they doubled
down on how folders were a bad idea.

The response almost turned me off Slack.

Anyway glad they finally changed their tune. Will really help people with
dozens of channels stay organized.

------
tobr
Can’t help but feel like the timing here is very unfortunate - surely the
pandemic has forced a lot of people to try various remote working tools for
the first time this week, including Slack. Rolling out a major update just
days after a lot of new users come onboard. Might be a source of confusion.

------
MapleWalnut
Anyone know how to enable this new UI?

~~~
Thristle
Looking at their release logs it seems that the new UI is still not released
but will be released during march

------
huanwin
My org has just started using Slack (probably like many others), while I used
it before because of my college capstone team -- hoping this helps incentivize
them to adopt it!

------
einpoklum
If it's not FOSS and an open protocol, it's not relevant.

That would be simple and correctly organized.

~~~
dinkleberg
For you perhaps. There is no denying that Slack is relevant to many people
given there are 10mil+ daily active users.

~~~
einpoklum
I was talking about being "simple and organized". If it's opaque and closed,
it's not relevant whether the insides of it are organized.

------
ProAm
Must be for their app only, the web version is still the same

~~~
noahtallen
Isn’t the app an electron app? I imagine they try to share UI. Not sure about
that though, it’d be interesting to learn more.

