Your left sidebar in Slack is an access point for different parts of your workspace. There are a number of preferences that you can set to tailor how your sidebar is organised.
At the top of your sidebar is a list of items to help you quickly browse your Slack workspace. You can customise this list from your preferences:
From your desktop, click on your profile picture in the top right.
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click on Sidebar in the left-hand column.
Under Always show in the sidebar, tick or untick the boxes next to the sidebar items that you’d like to show or hide.
Note: Items at the top of your sidebar are revealed as you interact with different features in Slack, so if you're brand new, you may not see all of them straight away. Click More to see any hidden options.
Choose which conversations to show
By default, your sidebar will show all the channels that you’ve joined and the direct messages (DMs) that you use the most.
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If you like, you can choose to show either all your conversations or unread conversations only:
From your desktop, click on your profile picture in the top right.
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click on Sidebar in the left-hand column.
Under Show, choose either All your conversations or Unread conversations only.
For each section in your sidebar, you can choose to show all your conversations or unread conversations only:
From your desktop, hover over Channels, Direct messagesor a custom section in your sidebar.
Click the three dots icon, then hover over Show to select an option from the menu.
Tip: You can star channels or DMs so that they’re easier to come back to. These conversations will appear in the Starred section of your sidebar.
Sort your conversations
Free version
Pro, Business+ and Enterprise Grid subscriptions
You can sort conversations in your sidebar alphabetically or by recent activity:
From your desktop, click on your profile picture in the top right.
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click on Sidebar in the left-hand column.
Under Sort, choose your sorting preference.
You can sort conversations in your sidebar by recent activity, alphabetically or by priority to list the ones that you use the most at the top:
From your desktop, hover over Channels, Direct messagesor a custom section in your sidebar.
Click the three dots icon, then hover over Show to select an option from the menu.
Show or hide profile photos
By default, peoples’ profile photos will appear next to direct messages (DMs) in your sidebar. If you like, you can adjust this preference:
From your desktop, click on your profile picture in the top right.
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click on Sidebar in the left-hand column.
Tick or untick the boxes next to Show profile photos next to DMs.
List private channels separately
By default, all channels will be listed together in your sidebar. If you like, you can choose to list private channels separately from public channels:
From your desktop, click on your profile picture in the top right.
Select Preferences from the menu.
Click on Sidebar in the left-hand column.
Tick or untick the boxes next to List private channels separately.
Adjust your sidebar width
You can adjust the width of your sidebar to make it wider or narrower or collapse it:
Click and drag the edge of your sidebar to adjust it to your preferred width.
Press ⌘ShiftD (Mac) or CtrlShiftD (Windows/Linux) to collapse or reopen the sidebar.
