Slack for Desktop

Like this chat app a lot. Saves me a lot of time with its built-in features as well as the available integrations. Also a big fan of the styling, makes work chat less boring! However, noticed with recent update that the "Slack Helper" processes are chugging CPU time, so much so that the fans on my top-spec Macbook Pro run on medium to high. Didn’t have this issue before so I’m sure this is an optimization they just need to make. One thing I would LOVE to see is the ability to “sleep” a group, so that it didn’t have to be always running in the background. For someone like me, who uses Slack for 9 different groups, having each of those chats actively run leads to each spinning up a Slack Helper process that consumes a fair amount of CPU. Would love to be able to “sleep” less important chats e.g. disable background updates for those groups until I explicitly “un-sleep” it. This would primarily be used for chats of lower priority than others.

Overall Slack is a good messaging/chat/sharing app. Plenty of useful things within the threads or PMs. Nice feature to delete messages and it archives shared images and docs automatically. One annoying bit is the lack of a dark theme for the main message area. Seriously, how hard is it to adjust the style sheet? I’ve read that Slack is just a glorified Chrome app. Older versions of slack could be hacked to display better, why not the latest? Seriously, this looks like amateur hour. Update: Slack got back to me stating this is on their radar. Yeah, far as I know it’s been “on the radar” for years. Come on guys, just do it. Second is the channel ordering on the sidebar. The “scienfific” ordering bears absolutely no resemblance to how I use the channels. All I want is the channels I use most frequently at the top. And those with unread or tagged messages filtered higher to the top. Right now the placement seems random. My most common channel usually makes it to position 1 or 2, but the rest are all over the list, Channels I have never posted to show up higher than ones I use most every day. If I reply to a message in a channel it usually drops to the bottom of the list.

This is a game changer for my digital marketing agency. We use it every day and a lot of my clients are now using it too. I love all the free features it comes with but it be great if I have more privacy features for my team and clients. Because each user has a profile with contact details, it prevents me from mixing my teams together with other teams and clients. I have to create several Slack accounts for different teams/clients. I don't need my clients contacting everyone directly or vise versa. For paid, because I work with such a large team it would be too expensive to upgrade. But if I could pay a flat fee $20 up $50 a month just for that feature (ideally $25) I would pay to keep my team's contact details private and limit use of DM between each other and clients so I can add clients and team members to one channel and limit what my clients can do and DM. To pay per account is not realistiic, it's way too many people. Please add this feature it would be so great and I would pay a flat fee for it! :) I'm still giving 5 stars because the value deserves it. This would just take it to the next level.

I am currently in college and one of my classes requires us to use this program. I could not, and still, havent been able to even join my class group. There are sections where if you "hit a wall" there is no going back and you cant go to the next screen. You are stuck and it is the most infuriating thing ever. It gives the options to skip certain steps but then it gives you errors if you try to skip the steps. I cant for the life if me figure out how to navigate the program and I dont understand how anyone would want to use this program. I cant even say anything about the resst of the app because I CANT GET PAST THE FIRST 4 SCREENS. I AM TRAPPED IN A LOOP OF SCREENS THAT I CANT GET OUT OF. If I try restarting the app it sends me right back to my last screen. it wont even give me the option of switching emails on the app. I tried changing it through the desktop but it wouldnt work. Nothing would work. This is the worst networking app I have ever seen. The developers need to focuse less one the aesthetic and more on making the app user friendly becuase how it is now I would rather use the myspace of 2011 than open this hellhole of an app again.

I still remember back before Screen Hero or whatever it was called was discontinued. I swear it worked better as a separate product. Calling in Slack in my biggest complaint, I wish it was more reliable when it comes to the screensharing portion of things. More often than not the screenshare will freeze requiring the meeting to restart or sometimes requiring the toggle of just the screenshare component. It also uses up an extremely high amount of system resources causing the fans in my MacBook Pro 16" Core i9 to go crazy. A little optimization would be nice. I am writing this review today though as I continue to be annoyed by these problems that haven't been solved for years. Google Meet and Zoom don't have issues like this. One last thing, your "cool" app update messages in the AppStore change log aren't very cool. Why not actually tell customers what you are fixing instead of trying to be so creative while avoiding the disclosure of information. I feel like transparency is a little warranted in today's climate to help build trust in our industry. I for one would like to know what you are fixing so maybe I can feel better about the platform as a whole in case I have encountered or been affected by problems that may have been fixed.

In order of importance: The biggest frustration I have with the app is the inability to change the glaring white in the text window. It's aesthetically incongruent with the dark mode on Mojave, and at night can be very hard on the eyes. The ability to make it black/dark grey would be nice, but what would be better is to make it fully customizable at least to the point the way the sidebar is. Functionality-wise, I wish we could organize channels. On my workspace, users (there are 60 ) can each have their own channels and it really clutters up the sidebar. Putting them into categories would be nice, as well as the ability to minimize said categories or mute entire categories. Lastly, full account/workspace management within the app. It's strange to me that in order to modify settings, etc., that I have to open a Safari window. However, I think the other two issues I mentioned are much more important for day to day use. Otherwise, I like the app and what it does. Minor adjustments to the UI would make it great, and full management in app would make it fantastic.

Themes are way to limited, you can only adjust the color of the sidebar. I just read a post where the dev team said they had to make hard choices about slack and that allowing for a wide selection of themes didn’t make the cut. Fortunately, there are plenty other chat tool dev teams out there that have figured out how to customize their interface, so there are choices. Threading is terrible. I’ve yet to see a team that is able to be disciplined enough to put every message into the appropriate thread for the entire discussion. Give us an option to drag it a message into a thread and add it to the discussion. Even when a thread is on going, it is buried in the initial thread with the responses tracker, making the discussion difficult to follow, especially if you are in several discussions at once. I understand that that’s probably what the All Threads is intended to cure, but that just becomes a long running mess of a discussion as well.

I used to have my reminders sent directly to me via private message or via slack bot. It worked flawlessly. I'm not sure why the product engineering teams at slack were asked to refactor this but my goodness it has been months since the roll out and the new navigation for managing reminders remains VERY broken. When you click on a given reminder it takes you to a random message in the correct channel rather than right message that the reminder was set from; odd and perculiar bug. I notice new tweaks and changes that they've made these past few months but the very utility of reminders is that i didn't have to keep a paper notebook to track following up with members of my team. This feature has been broken for so long that I've now gone back to paper and pen... in 2024.

We work with several universities and a couple of the students wanted to use Slack for some of our research project management and communication. It quickly turned into a hot mess as many of the other researchers (different instituttions) struggled mightily trying to use Slack and a lot of information and communication was missed. We ended up going back to email, texting and using Box to make sure we stayed on top of everything. We have been trying Teams as a potential solution (all institutions have Office 365 available) and while I am not a fan of Microsoft, it does work fairly well. Maybe single organizations can figure out how to use Slack and make it work, but it was not a good option for projects across multiple organizations and different users.

My team has been using Slack for about a year. We use Slack a lot and it has been incredibly helpful. However, the inability to organize channels into hierarchical folders, or even one level of folders, is a serious productivity killer. We have about 50 channels, so hunting for the right place to put information can be a hassle. We already use prefixes (e.g., dev_XXX or partner_YYY), but that isn’t a great solution, and it does little to reduce the visual and cognitive clutter. The team has been otherwise helpful with bugs we’ve encountered, but hasn’t been able to move the needle on folders. Hopefully, they will get to this important feature. Otherwise, Slack is great.

Works great to create “Channels” which are ad-hoc groups that can be messaged at once. The channels can be changed or deleted when needed. The Mac app works well with notification center but a recent bug (Dec 2017) is REALLY annoying. Replies in the notification center now go nowhere. U P D A T E ! Bug squashed as of Jan 2018. Replies are acting as they should. Thanks!!! BTW Notification Center can be set to make Slack notifications persistent so you never miss a message. I can’t find a way to do that on colleagues running Windows 7. Also its nice to know that the developer listens to customers (paying or not) so if you expand to the paid tier you’ll get good service.

The developers responded to this comment and removed the annoying behavior in an update. Thanks! When I reboot, I have several apps last-session windows start up; many if not most people do. Slack repeatedly bring focus to itself. Why, oh why?!? If I want to start work on anything while a dozen safari tabs load, I can't, because of this "feature". For example, it demands attention while I'm typing in a password in another app. Why do you assume the first thing I want to do is slack, every single time?!? At least add a preference "have slack be polite on start-up". I've tried to start it "hidden", but the slack app still has the same needy behavior.

Mac OS (M3, Sonoma 14.3), desktop version. I open Slack and it says I must update to the latest version. OK, cool. I click Learn More and it takes me to the Mac instructions, but they're not right: there's no "Update" option in "Updates" on the App Store. And when I go to Slack's App Store page, the white oblong button just says "Open" (not "Update"). I think "Maybe I have a direct download?" so I try to follow those instructions, which verbatim are "When an update is available, the help icon in Slack will be badged. You can click the help icon then click the update card and select Restart Slack to update the app." The problem is that the app is bricked because the pop-up window tells me I must update, which I'm trying to do (and which makes the "?" help icon unclickable). Well, that doesn't work, of coruse, and neither does any type of right-click on the Slack app in the dock. I was going to give it 2 stars, but I upped it to 3 stars because Slack is still winning by not being a Microsoft product, and is usually user-friendly.

It used to be that you could just simple enter in a word to search for and hit enter. Now if I enter in search, it automatically goes to “most relevant” instead of "most recent". If I mispelled a word, I have to click on the “x” then another “x” to clear the search results instead of just deliveting and retrying again. It takes twice as long to find something, which is slowing down productivity!! If I find what I am looking for, and go to the email program I am using then come back to Slack - the search results have disappeared and I have to click on the 2 sets of “x”’s to enter in the search again. Please simplify the search in Slack. It’s frustrating and slowing everything down!

If you are trying to message a specific person in the company, there is no obvious button to push to find their name. You have to scroll to direct messages and hover until an invisible field turns into a plus sign, then you can type who you want to message. Same with when you want to message on a different channel. Since their last update, if you try to minimize the Slack app window on your computer screen, the minimize button does not work. Lower plans have limits on file storage and delete conversations after a certain number of days. Aside from those points, works well.

The actual messaging service itself and the features it provides are industry leading in my opinion. The call and screenshare quality is also really good, especially since I'm normally calling people across the Atlantic from the East Coast of the US to the United Kingdom. My biggest gripe with the Mac app is unlike its iOS variant, it can't handle a lot of messages. While the use case for Slack at my workplace involves automatic logging from multiple bots, it lags and crashes solely because it uses Electron (a chromium fork). Once we get a native Mac app (and Windows too pleasee while you're at it), I will update this to 5 stars gladly!

Testing out Slack at work for the company, and the interface is pretty pleasing to the eye. Screenshots to channels are nicely embedded making it easy to see and read them. Unfortunately, the default notification sound set is very quiet and it can be difficult to hear them. The big missing feature is a lack of integration for the ability to speak notifications out loud, at the very least, the key words. Also, there’s no way to actually correspond with their support team. You can send them a comment/question, but you don’t enter your name or email address so there’s no way for them to contact you.

Slack is great and getting better, but the anxiety and annoyance notification hell—you come back to slack after a particularly busy 15 minutes, and have 10 channels all with new notifications. The problem isn't receiving that many notifications, it just gets tiresome to click each channel to clear them when you know their contents aren't relevant to you. It would be great to be able to CMD click channels to select multiple, then after two-finger clicking, be able to clear all of the messages.

I originally wanted to use Slack in my web browser. When I went to the Slack website, it said Safari was no longer a supported web browser, and that I could either switch to a supported browser or download the desktop app. I then proceeded to download the desktop app, but the only way to sign in to Slack be redirected to the website, which, you guessed it, doesn't work because Safari isn't supported. Chrome is a battery destroyer and I'm not downloading a niche web browser just for Slack; they need to resolve this issue and allow sign ins within the desktop app if your website is going to redirect people there because as of now I simply can't use Slack on my computer.

Slack just started blurring out messages that are 3 months old or older if you don't give them more money. "Nice messages you have there. Would be a shame if something happened to them." I don't mind paying for Slack. In fact, I already do pay for it. The issue is that they now require that you pay for each workspace. This is just greedy. And the fact that they're taking away features now that you've been using really shows just nasty they are as a company. Who knows what's next?

Overall Slack is very useful and helpful! But, it will be much more appreciated, if the Slack team can add feature to OPT-IN; "thread is visible at all time". I know there is sidebar specifically for thread, but going to that sidebar needing me to leave a whole conversation especially the particular channel group in which I dont want to. It would be more clean if the thread can be indexed the from the initial message so that it can be easily distinguished. Not sure if this feature is already there but my browsing around didnt find any, glad to know if is already there. Kudos to the team!

This app has so much potential. I rely on it for work, yet it never seems to work for me as it should. I depend on my mac for gestures. I love swiping between full screen pages because that’s what a mac can do! That’s what a mac supports! You never need to compromise on screen real estate for any of your apps. And Slack for me needs to be full screen, so I can follow long threads at work, so I can see large images, so I lose none of it! When I open a document while in fullscreen, and then attempt to exit the document and return to my conversation or channel, it always manages to turn black. I am unable to close the application, minimize it, nothing. I have to force quit the app every time. Please please please fix this.

After the new update, notification settings are not working properly. It doesn't follow the special settings for mobile and continues to add badge icons on channels I have muted/want no notifications for. The new "Activity" tab is incredibly difficult to dismiss notifications in, and is purely unnecessary as a whole. I am getting notifications on my desktop app for channels and slack groups that I have set to not notify me either. They updated things that didn't need it, but still group "DMs and mentions" in the same category, when those SHOULD be separate. I just want the previous version back, cause this new update just makes me mad on a daily basis.

I use Slack constantly amongst 5 active spaces. While some of the feedback about how this app is a little sluggish are valid, it's also true that it's a sleek app, a big improvement over using the browser (who wants extra tabs open anyway?), and an absolute no brainer for anyone with multiple accounts they need to switch between quickly. File sharing, video calls, threads, all are working well, and I definitely recommend this app. Thanks Slack!

Overall, the Slack Mac Client works well, but when it comes to Slack Calls, every other call, Slack refuses to take in audio from my Airpods Pro Mic. I've then had issues after I've ended the call and tried using the Mic on my webcam or the internal Mic on my Mac when establishing a new call. Seems like the client has some issues figuring out what Mic it should be using for calls. Hope this gets fixed soon because this is really inconvient and causes me to have to use another tool. I gave my review 2 stars because, like a lot of people right now, I work remotely and this causes a lot of headaches. Thanks.

As an app for a workplace, I find Slack's connectivity problems and Post instability extremely frustrating and detrimental to my company's workflow. Frequently, I will be working on a post (typing up notes, etc) and due to some glitch, the post will freeze, or clear my progress so that I cannot find any of the information again. Furthermore, its text editor is absolutely incompatible with any other text editing interface, and it is impossible to migrate information from another service to Posts, or vice versa. I have begun to rely much more heavily on other collaboration and note-taking software the more that I've had such disruptive experiences.

UPDATE: Learned to live with it, I guess. For updates, please specify what was fixed, at least at a high level. If this is supposed to be an enterprise, treat it as such and give real release notes. I want the thread sidebar to always stay open like it used to, but they removed it (3 panes side by side). I don't care about the new thread window feature. At least, give us back old way of working even if you do keep the new feature. Please just keep thread window open always. Hate how the main view just gets super-wide when thread view on right is not open.

Overall Slack does what it is supposed to do. It is great for keeping up to date with teams or just as a fun chat space for others. One major flaw is that on both the desktop & mobile app notifications are spotty. Some weeks I will get a notification everytime I get a new message (something I want to happen). other weeks I have to conciously check the app to see if I got new messages. It is a bit of a hassel in terms of replying to time sensitive messages or realizing someone messaged you 4 days ago and you never got a notification.

The one thing that would make Slack way better than it already is would be for Slack to go completly open source. If they did become open source this would become a game changer. All developers including my self and many more could have the power of slack in our hands and we could make app development a lot easier and faster. This could mean more stability, more asked for features, and even more custom choices than what we have right now.

I've been using Slack both personally (via communities I'm a part of) and work for several years now, and no complaints whatsoever. The app especially has a lot to offer in the tech industry with reliable features including, but not limited to, automated webhook integration into a channel, informative code/text snippets, and can't forget its video call feature (which I still kinda use to this today)! Highly recommended for all your work and community needs.

The mobile app shows all the workspaces we are members of, and we can select one or the other from the list shown. The Desktop version makes you login to each workspace by automatically sends you out of app to open a browser window for that workspace. If you go back to the app and want to sign into another one, it does the same thing. So why would we need the app in the first place? Why not just start with the browser first rather end with the browser? Mobile app works well.

Slack is a great tool but what would put it over to awesome tool would be to have a better way of showing people on your team your status. When you put in a meeting and someone tries to reach out to you, Slack should auto-reply with “Person currently in a meeting”. Or out of the office where if someone reaches out Slack auto response “Person out of the office”. Or “Person Away”. Something that helps relate the status of the person rather than the sorta faded status that doesn’t really show up.

I’m just writing this review to say I had fun reading the What’s New literature… er, description.. (MacOS 3.1.0).. hilarious but understated. 😂 I had as much fun reading the description as I will have when using the app. The writer has a good sense of humor and I was gonna just smile to myself reading it and not say anything.. but sharing is caring. :) Give this person a promotion or a bonus! Too bad I don’t work there.. here’s a donut and a coffee for the poetry 🍩☕️ The app is pretty good too.. I love the giphy feature.

I understand the essence of adding the ability to use multiple windows, but that shouldn't mean you have to get rid of the split view. This leaves SO much empty space in Slack, looks awful, and makes it use way less efficient. I should be able to choose whether I want to use a split view or multiple windows, not just one choice. When I take my Macbook on and off the dock I'll have to arrange one more windows now, vs having it automatically fix my window each time I login. Please bring back the split view. There should be NO reason you can't build for multiple windows AND Split view.

Slack is a great app, but it comes with a bit of a learning curve. Slack likes to do basic things their own way, instead of just working like every other app on my Mac. Slack doesn't support basic things that every real Mac app supports out of the box for free, like force clicking a link to Quick Look it, opening a channel in a new window, and changing to Dark Mode when I change the Dark Mode setting in System Preferences. I don't even get notifications for new messages unless Slack is already running. Slack uses a ton of memory; it feels bloated and unintuitive.

An upgraded spell checking system was touted in the latest (as of this writing) release notes. Slack certainly sees when I've made a spelling error, but where is autocorrect? Slack doesn't use macOS's built-in services, so you can't right-click to get the otherwise universal spelling, substitution, and transformation options (which I can access even in this comment window). I rely on those! My messaging in Slack—and _only_ Slack—is typo-laden, leading to many little daily gaffes. Slack, please consider using standard OS text components, and add autocorrect.

Slack as an overall product is great. However, the App Store version of this application seems to be updated much less frequently than the version released on the Slack website. There is also an occassional conflict between Slack and Microsoft Remote Desktop. When Slack notifications come in it will sometimes cause both applications to lock-up until one of them is force quit.

TL;DR. Not noticably better than any of the great chat apps through history, and noticably worse in some regards. Don't bother switching if you already have a chat service. Major beefs include: the slack bot is crazy annoying and there isn't a way to turn it off. If you have multiple teams, it's slow to manage and clear all your notifications. Single chats get lost in the silly draft mode section. Common channels get lost among all the other channels in big organizations. I could go on. I've reached out the Slack about these issues and their response is always a blow off. Don't expect the app to get any better over time.

Slack keeps rolling out new useless features instead of spending time fixing this built-with-Electron toilet of an app that is full of bugs. I've reported bugs years ago, and when I follow up the response is that the issue is low priority. Recently, this bug-infested mess gained a new bug where it will not reopen after the app is closed, requiring a complete system reboot just to get the app to open again. Yet another bug that Slack will never fix. Maybe it's time to stop wasting time on nonsense like "huddles" and instead spend it building a stable and reliable app in an effort to retain users.

Is anybody from the developers reading the reviews? I am so glad that you are reading this! Thanks! I will keep this review always updated whenever I have any suggestion. Right now, number 4 is the new comment I have. 1. Can we rename a direct group message, at least in my own end? It is really hard to find the correct direct group message when many of them have overlaps. 2. Please! Please! Please support LaTeX rich text editing! 3. Also, please allow the users to export chatting data to disk, it feels more safe this way! 4. When I set a reminder, it is good that I get confirmation feedback at the very bottom of the chat, but maybe not a good idea to mark that feedback as unread, because after using the reminder once, the user would know where the reminder is, setting it as unread would be unnecessary. Thanks!

Recently Slack has been requesting to update the app, and it's locked the app for me without the update, but there is no way to update. They suggest using the menu bar to find the update button, but it isn't there. Another method they suggested is through the app store, yet the Slack page in the app store doesn't offer the option to update. Horrible UX; I can't believe such a major brand just locks you out of the app without any way to get back in outside of a complete uninstall. I guess no one is using Slack because they want to though

I love this app and use it constantly. The new update is great, it's so much easier to see what workspaces have new activity. However, now if I click on a workspace icon, the column with the workspaces now jumps to the top. I have quite a few workspaces and so have many that are "below the fold" (meaning I have to scroll down to see them), so this jump means additional scrolling down and it's a bit annoying. This didn't happen in the previous version.

I use Slack every day, all day. In general the functionality is great and makes communication a breeze. However, the lack of dark mode, now well over a year after Slack stated they were 'working on it', is ridiculous. Most modern applications now have a dark mode feature. Most developers want dark mode and utilize it heavily on all other platforms. This is consistently asked for by Slack users and yet Slack refuses to truly prioritize it. Until dark mode is enabled, Slack has earned a one-star rating from me. It's simply unacceptable to continue not making an easy and highly pleasing change to the platform.

As a heavy user of Slack for video calls and notes, I always have multiple Slack windows open. On my Mac I am able to switch windows (within an app) using Command-` (tilde) but recently on Slack that stopped working. This makes it really hard for keyboard-focused users like me to jump between them and makes me use the (gulp!) mouse. Please, Slack - bring back the Command-` window switching capability, just like every other Mac app out there! It's great for power users and for accessibility too.

We use this app for work and its great for groups and indivual messages. However, my one gripe with this app is I cannot go one day without having issues with starting a huddle. Sometimes they can't hear me and sometimes I can't hear them. I have checked the setting mulitple times and retried and still cannot connect properly with my team member. Other than that, the app works perfectly.

It's hard to give the Slack for Mac app anything beyond 3 stars. The service called Slack is great: it let's you chat with your coworkers and has some of the smartest cross-device notifications around. The experience of using it in the Mac app is not great though. It takes forever to open, slows down your computer, and none of the UI follows platform conventions that other Mac apps and the Apple guidelines encourage them to do. As a developer, the reasons why are obvious, so let me be clear that I'm asking you to make a native Mac app please. :)

With post via email to a channel, why does Slack have to open a page in my web browser every time it downloads attached files? (To be fair, this doesn't apply to files directly posted in Slack) This is a constant impediment, since I have my browser open to a page for a reason. Viewing shared images (for me, always screenshots with text) is also very cumbersome, just give me the file, please

I wish other chat apps like messages and messenger were as cool as Slack. The things that really set it apart are threads, channels, and the ability to react with any emote on a message and even react with more than one emote if necessary. Additionally, the shortcuts are great, I love all the customizations that can happen, especially with the theme, and the UX is great. I feel like they have a feature for every situation that comes up.

I really like Slack and can't imagine using other app for communications at work. It does detele the history as (when) we have a free version. But it's sleek design, smart bots and tons of useful integration is what I can't imagine talking to team without. My fave is reminders - when dining or on a meeting and open this 'stupid' message, I don't have to worry I'll forget it back in the office. Thank you, guys!

Doesn’t support the latest emoji. And using the system emoji menu (ctrl+cmd+space) to input the emoji results in poor handling of unicode characters because it decomposes modifiers. When I sent a request to their support team, they responded with: "When these emoji are included in Slack messages from iOS or macOS devices that support the newer emoji, they may show up as a base emoji plus gender identifier, or as a little blank square. This is obviously not ideal, and while I can't guarantee **when or if** Slack will support the newer emoji and emoji variations, it is something that we're looking in to and hope to include in a future update.” (emphasis mine) Glad to see you guys are trying your hardest 🤦🏻‍♂️