Slack for Android – release notes

Slack 22.11.40

30 November 2022

What’s new

The app is objectively better today than it was yesterday. This is a scientifically verifiable fact that cannot be challenged or undermined. We appreciate you staying up to date!

Slack 22.11.30

16 November 2022

What’s new

Minor tinkerings and tune-ups across the app. We appreciate you staying up to date! Let us know if you run into any problems by dropping us a line at feedback@slack.com.

Slack 22.11.20

9 November 2022

Oh, sing a song for slower weeks / For those without fanfare / No features to elucidate / No bug fixes to share / We promise we’re still working, and / You’ll notice more in time / But what has changed this week is less / Conducive to a rhyme / So thank you for your patience as / We try to do our best / To write more than “Bug fixes and / performance improvements”

Slack 22.11.10

2 November 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Customized sidebar settings (sorting channels by recent activity, collapsing channel sections) were sometimes reverting to their defaults for no discernible rhyme or reason. Now that Halloween is over, we’re done playing tricks.

Slack 22.10.50

26 October 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Searching with Japanese characters would inevitably return zero results (even when there were many messages that fit the bill). Forgive us—our search was simply at a loss for words.
Fixed: Notifications for DMs and bot messages were always displaying the default blank avatar. While this had the potential to give each new message the thrill of hearing from a secret admirer, the names attached ended up spoiling the mystery.
Fixed: If you posted a message to a thread, then long-pressed on that message and tapped “Send Reply to This Channel,” nothing would happen. We are choosing to blame this lack of delivery on “supply chain issues.”

Slack 22.10.40

19 October 2022

What’s new

If you’re the sort who finds calm through cleaning, find some portable peace by moving channels between sections in your sidebar (provided you’ve created those sections already on the desktop app). Furniture is expensive—why not redecorate your sidebar instead?

Slack 22.10.20

12 October 2022

What’s new

Say more with video, live emoji reactions and more—now included in huddles on mobile devices!

Bug fixes

Fixed: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a “Download” button exists in Slack but does nothing when tapped upon, is it a button at all? We leave the semantics to the philosophers. In the meantime, downloading attachments works once again.
Fixed: The first time you attempted to use the camera within the app, you may have encountered a vague and puzzling permissions error. Please don’t take it personal; the app simply didn’t know who you were. Going forward, it will be more welcoming.

Slack 22.09.40

26 September 2022

What’s new

We are living in a material world, and Slack now supports material design icons for your Home screen. We hope this experience makes you richer.

Slack 22.09.30

19 September 2022

What’s new

This is to notify you of a notification you’ll see if you have notifications disabled in Slack. If you’re someone who says “no” to notifications, tap the button to notify us of your preference and we won’t bother you again.
We’ve added “ALT” badges to images that contain image descriptions, or alt text. Tap on the badge to read additional context for the image, and remember that quality descriptions go a long way for those who rely on screen readers. We’re all in this together!

Slack 22.09.20

12 September 2022

What’s new

Hard work is happening this week, but nothing we can easily describe. It’s like a duck swimming on a river. Under the water, the duck is paddling furiously, but on top all that can be seen is the gentle gliding of a bird on water. This week, Slack is the duck.

Slack 22.09.10

6 September 2022

What’s new

Now when you select text in a message you’re writing, the formatting bar will automatically appear so you can cut, copy or paste with one tap. It’s sort of like when you’re about to sneeze and someone hands you a tissue before you actually do, but less gross.

Slack 22.08.50

29 August 2022

What’s new

Alas, this is the final version of Slack that will work on Android 8.0 or 8.1. But it doesn’t have to be goodbye forever. Simply update your device to Android 9.0 or newer, and keep the good times rolling.

Bug fixes

Fixed: “The Sound of Silence” is a great song, but the actual sound of silence isn’t so great in a huddle. Apologies to any Xiaomi device users who experienced audio issues. You can continue to jam in your huddles.

Slack 22.08.40

22 August 2022

What’s new

Don’t mind us—just making a few small adjustments to keep the app in tip-top shape. More to come soon. Cheerio!

Slack 22.08.30

15 August 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Scheduling a message to send in the future was resulting in a confirmation banner that would trail you from channel to channel, appearing at odd times. It was confusing at best and a little creepy at worst, like those paintings that follow you with their eyes. Should be better now.

Slack 22.08.20

8 August 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Beginning to edit your profile and then canceling those edits would sometimes cause the buttons at the top of the screen to render incorrectly. You’re allowed to change your mind, and when you do, all your options will once again be right where you left them.

Slack 22.08.10

1 August 2022

What’s new

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure everything is polished, well-oiled, and running as it should be. If you notice anything to the contrary, as always, let us know at feedback@slack.com!

Slack 22.07.30

25 July 2022

What’s new

The headers at the top of conversations have been updated to be more informative, less crowded and just a bit cleaner overall. You’ll now see any bookmarks or pinned messages next to the member count, and tapping on that same text will bring you to the conversation details screen.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Apps were showing the dates for upcoming events but not the scheduled start times. Life is more exciting with a bit of mystery, but it’s also more confusing and can cause you to miss meetings.
Fixed: Notification banners were missing the “Reply” button, giving each new alert the air of a press conference where they “will not be taking questions at this time.” Replies are back, the mic is hot, and the floor is yours.

Slack 22.07.20

18 July 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Do you get déjà vu when we’re with you? That was most likely a bug, bringing you to your most recently viewed channel instead of whichever one you tapped on in the sidebar.

Slack 22.07.15

11 July 2022

What’s new

Nothing to report this time. Well, nothing that you can see, but plenty going on under the surface. We’re working hard to make Slack better; this time it’s not so visible.

Slack 22.07.10

5 July 2022

What’s new

Nothing major to report this week. Nothing minor to report either, as it turns out. Work is still happening, mind you—it’s just more the sort that happens behind the curtain in between scenes at a play. We’re quietly setting the stage for what’s to come.

Slack 22.06.25

27 June 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: Those using third-party light filters might have encountered buttons and other controls that refused to respond while the filter was enabled. No need to resign yourself to the #nofilter life—we’ve gone ahead and fixed that.

Slack 22.06.20

20 June 2022

What’s new

We don't have any updates to share this week, but we're laying the groundwork for future changes in this version. Perhaps that sounds frustratingly vague, but we invite you to think of it as mysterious and exciting instead.

Slack 22.06.15

13 June 2022

What’s new

No big changes this time around. Sometimes progress is best measured when you turn around and see how far you’ve come. Did you know we used to be a video game company? Pretty wild.

Slack 22.06.11

24 May 2022

What’s new

Hard work is happening this week, but nothing we can easily describe. It’s like a duck swimming on a river. Under the water, the duck is paddling furiously, but on top all that can be seen is the gentle gliding of a bird on water. This week, Slack is the duck.

Slack 22.05.20

23 May 2022

What’s new

We’ve updated the channel list so you can now sort channels by recent activity, and sorting preferences set on desktop will now sync with your mobile view. You’ll also see your three most recent DMs in the Home tab for added convenience.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Images and videos were not displaying any sort of preview, an experience some found “mysterious and exciting” and everyone else found “broken and annoying.”
Fixed: Selecting an emoji was causing the keyboard to immediately hide itself, which was a pain when you wanted to continue writing your message. It will now reappear promptly rather than assuming each emoji carries all the finality of a wax seal upon your message.

Slack 22.05.10

9 May 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: When a message was deleted, it would very occasionally linger in the mobile app longer than was appropriate. See here, deleted messages: No lingering, loitering, dawdling, dithering or dallying. (Slack penal code 22.05.10)
Fixed: Multi-line code blocks were not readable in dark mode. While “dark mode” is arguably most accurate when it’s impossible to see anything, is it notably less useful.
Fixed: If you flipped your device to landscape mode while editing your profile, the button to save your changes would disappear. This was intentional, so you could meditate on how we are always growing and changing, and how any attempt to stop the flow of time is nothing more than vanity. Just kidding, it was totally a bug.

Slack 22.04.20

25 April 2022

What’s new

A little reminder as you go about your day: The world is a more unique place simply because you’re a part of it, and you’ve impacted others in ways you can’t imagine. Oh, and no big changes to the app this time. Happy messaging.

Slack 22.04.10

11 April 2022

What’s new

Dash on over to the Quick Switcher to find that searches will more accurately return channels with dashes in their names. If your hopes were previously dashed, we ask for a dash of forgiveness and wish to say you’re looking very dashing today.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Uploading a new profile picture was sometimes failing, leaving people stuck with their old ones like an unfortunate driver’s license photo. Contrary to popular belief, we’ve never aspired for Slack to feel like going to the DMV, so retake that photo to your heart’s content.
Fixed: On certain devices, tapping on a notification could lead to a weird state where backing out of a thread would always return you to that message from the notification you tapped. It was a phenomenon as confusing to witness as it is to explain, and we’ll all be pleased to never have to experience it again.

Slack 22.03.20

28 March 2022

What’s new

The size of the Slack app (the amount of data you download) is now a bit smaller, lighter, more compact. More efficient. Trim. Tightly engineered. Streamlined. Pared down to its essentials. You know, unlike this update copy.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Attempting to change your notification settings for a specific channel would routinely fail. Not in an entertaining way, or the sort that teaches you something important on your way to greater heights. It just didn’t do the thing it was designed to do. Sometimes misfortune carries with it no lesson. Anyway, it works again.

Slack 22.03.10

14 March 2022

What’s new

When previewing a channel prior to joining, you’ll now see the channel description displayed with the channel name for a bit more context. For when you’re unsure whether #the-owls is a channel for ornithologists, insomniacs or fans of the show Twin Peaks.
If you’re someone whose workday doesn’t start at 9 am (or if you find Slackbot alerts first thing in the morning to be less of a pick-me-up and more of a put-me-down), you can now choose when your “Tomorrow” or “Next Week” reminders will appear. Head over to Preferences > Notifications to set the default that works best for you.
We love emoji. But they can sometimes overwhelm the screen, particularly when that screen is small and hand-held. So we asked our scientists to determine “a more reasonable amount” of reacji to display at one time, and that answer is 9. But don’t worry—the full panoply of reactions can be experienced with just a tap of your finger.

Slack 22.02.20

28 February 2022

What’s new

Let’s double click on that: If your organization allows you to edit your messages, you can fix that typo quicker than ever. Just double-tap one of your messages to open up the editing view.
Ever reply to a thread only to realize you should have sent that reply back into the main channel? Us too. That’s why you can now retroactively share your threaded messages with the rest of the channel. Just press and hold on the message in question, then select “Send Reply to This Channel.” to give it the attention it deserves.
Images, stickers and emoji from custom keyboards were not previously supported in Slack, leading to “the particular pain of not being able to express oneself with the specific GIF or meme one has in mind” (translated from the German). We support these now, and hope you feel supported as well.
The first time you send someone a direct message, you’ll now see their pronouns displayed at the beginning of the conversation. We hope it’s a small step that will help foster respect among colleagues.

Slack 22.02.10

14 February 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you were someone with a whole bunch of workspaces, attempting to sign out of one of those workspaces was causing the app to freeze. Some people also reported hearing the faintest strains of “Hotel California” as the app refused to complete the sign-out. Now you may check out any time you like, and you can also leave.
Fixed: When attempting to edit your profile, the keyboard was obscuring the text entry field, with no way to scroll down and see your edits. We’d like to say that this is the sort of challenge that ultimately builds character, but instead we’ll say it was a bug which ultimately was just a pain.

Slack 22.01.30

31 January 2022

What’s new

Prefer for tappable URLs to be underlined? We’ve added a new Accessibility option to the Preferences menu to increase visibility for those words that are, in fact, links.

Bug fixes

Long-pressing on a URL would bring up a menu with several prompts, none of which would actually do anything. We’d call it a false dilemma, but that would imply that any of the choices you were given were real options.
People on certain devices were seeing prompts to “Join the huddle happening now,” but found they were unable to join that huddle or dismiss the banner. We can only imagine this is what it would feel like to be repeatedly invited to a party where you are turned away at the door, and for that we are truly sorry.
Attempting to archive a channel shared in Slack Connect would return an unhelpful error. Incorrect, even. Maybe the real error was the errors we wrote along the way.
Tablet users reported that when someone else on a call stopped sharing their screen, the app would abruptly crash. It’s important to learn to share, but it’s equally important to learn how to not have a meltdown when sharing time is over.

Slack 22.01.20

18 January 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you opened the DMs tab and repeatedly scrolled up and down, you may have noticed that the preview text would slowly be replaced by multiple copies of the word “You.” It would seem our “New Year, New You” initiative had gotten a bit out of hand.

Slack 22.01.11

7 January 2022

Bug fixes

We tweaked some things too small to notice or too difficult to explain. We’ll return you to your regular, more interesting types of release next time (we hope).

Slack 22.01.10

3 January 2022

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you manually marked a message as unread, you may have found the app took your instructions to heart with such conviction and intensity that the message could then never be marked as read. Time softens our most rigid postures (a code change doesn’t hurt either), so you should find message read states are now more appropriately fluid.

Slack 21.12.10

6 December 2021

What’s new

No news is good news! Well, some news can also be good news, or no news could perhaps lead to uncertainty and speculation on par with bad news, but in this case our absence of news is a good thing. Or at least not a bad thing. No news is just fine. Carry on.

Slack 21.11.20

15 November 2021

What’s new

The channel list just got easier to command! Tap and hold on any channel or DM in the Home tab to mark a conversation as read, mute notifications, copy the channel name or leave it entirely. All this with the press of a finger.

Slack 21.11.10

1 November 2021

Bug fixes

If you’re someone who sets their screen zoom and font size to the maximum values, you may have noticed that the text editing field was getting pushed offscreen. We want there to be room for everyone in the app, so you should find the editor now remains in view no matter how much you “enhance” the image. 🔬

Slack 21.10.20

18 October 2021

What’s new

New emoji reactions will now appear immediately while in the All Threads view, because it’s exhausting switching back and forth just to see if people laughed at your Squid Game jokes.
If you’re using Slack Connect to share a private channel with another organization, we’ll make sure it stays private on the receiving end. That is, there is no option when accepting a private shared channel to make it public. More peace of mind for you, more security for all.

Slack 21.10.10

4 October 2021

What’s new

You can now record video and audio clips right within Slack. Add some face time to your team updates, talk through feedback, or just say hello. Want to sing your portion of the stand-up? Best check with your manager on that one.
The channel list just got a little friendlier. You’ll now see avatars next to your Direct Messages, and for those group conversations with lots of names, we’ve given you a bit more space to see just who it is you’re talking to.
Channel sections can now be collapsed or expanded with a tap of your finger, making for a tidier, more focused experience.

Bug fixes

Fixed: File uploads were being prevented in Slack Connect channels, somewhat defeating the purpose of the whole “Connect” thing. Assuming the permission is enabled by your Admins, you may once again upload to your heart’s content.

Slack 21.09.20

20 September 2021

What’s new

Minor improvements have been made, and bug fixes taken place, but they’re the kind that are out of sight, behind closed doors, and quietly just doing their job, deep in the inner workings of the app, making things just a little bit better.

Slack 21.09.10

7 September 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Tapping the magnifying glass on the search keyboard while an active search was already underway created a feedback loop of meta-searches, each delving deeper and deeper into the nature of the app’s internal framework before it lost all bearing on reality and crashed. Turns out we just had to remove the line of code associated with existential crises. Weird that it was there in the first place...

Slack 21.08.20

23 August 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: While browsing emoji or searching for people on an older version of Android, the back button would temporarily become ineffectual. This has been fixed, and if you’re doing either of those things you can use the back button to hop back in time to where you were before. Look at you go!

Slack 21.08.10

9 August 2021

What’s new

This will be the last version of Slack that supports Android 6 and 7. In addition, starting on September 1st, you’ll need to be running Android 8 or later in order to connect to Slack. We know this is potentially frustrating news, but these minimum requirements are necessary in order to ensure Slack remains as secure and seamless as we built it to be. Thank you for your understanding.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Occasionally, attempting to switch workspaces by tapping the workspace icon would instead offer the option to sign out, the implication of which was rather rude. Roam if you want to!
Fixed: Rotating the device while there was unsent text in the input field led to a crash, which was frustrating no matter which way you looked at it.
Fixed: In some rare cases, tapping “Threads” would show an error message instead of the threads you were looking for. We’ve sewn up that tear so your threads are once again where you expect them to be.

Slack 21.07.20

26 July 2021

What’s new

We’ve made it much quicker to join Slack from a Shared Connect invite, because never does time move as slowly as when you are filling out forms in the shadow of the place you really want to be. Come on in; the channel’s fine.

Bug fixes

Fixed: You can now set a reminder for a “custom” time of your choosing. You always should have been able to, but our system got a little restrictive there for a minute. Want that “Make a wish” message to remind you at 11:11? The app is your oyster.

Slack 21.07.10

12 July 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Custom skin tones were not being respected in reacji, giving you the generic yellow version instead. Going forward, the emoji you choose will now be the emoji that's shared.
Fixed: If you start a new message with a ‘>’ symbol, the message will be formatted as a block quote, just like it would be on our other platforms. You can (block) quote us on that.

Slack 21.06.30

28 June 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Links were not opening when Slack’s preferences were set to hand off to an external browser app, instead providing a vague and unsatisfying error message. This has been fixed, and the only thing vague and unsatisfying now is the ending to that screenplay we’ve been working on.

Slack 21.06.20

14 June 2021

What’s new

You know how sometimes you just become aware of how much tension you’re holding in your body, then take a deep breath and slowly let it out? This update is like that. It’s still Slack, just with a tiny bit less friction.

Slack 21.06.10

1 June 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you had your settings such that images would not be automatically expanded, our “tap to expand this image” prompt would get mixed up with any text previews generated from a posted URL, leading to similar amounts of confusion as experienced when describing this bug.
Fixed: If a direct message from a bot contained buttons, and you tapped the message to view its details, the buttons would no longer work. Broken buttons beget bitterness, but better buttons bring bliss.
Fixed: In certain cases, muted channels would become unmuted, which was frankly quite rude. That which has been politely asked to remain quiet shall now remain dutifully mum.

Slack 21.05.20

17 May 2021

What’s new

Small thumb update (er, the update is small, but it applies to any size of thumb or appendage) — if you follow a link from one channel to another, swiping to the right will now take you back to the previous channel instead of the channel list.
Did you know you can tap and hold on an emoji reaction to see who reacted to the message? Well if you didn’t, now you do. And if you already knew about that, go ahead and give it another go. We’ve made it dramatically easier to see who’s reacted to what. How dramatically? Eight years of theater school and a summer production of Hamlet.

Slack 21.05.10

3 May 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Long-pressing on the app icon to jump to a recent DM now actually takes you to that DM. We thought it would be better if our buttons actually did the thing we told you they would do.

Slack 21.04.20

19 April 2021

What’s new

If you’re well versed in Simplified or Traditional Chinese — or aspire to be one day — you can now use Slack in those languages. Set your language preferences in You > Preferences > Language & region.

Bug fixes

Fixed: For some people who have Slack set to a different language than their device, we incorrectly delivered a message about switching languages whenever they opened their Slack app. Our delivery owls have been retrained, so you should now only see that message when you manually change the language inside of Slack.

Slack 21.04.10

5 April 2021

What’s new

An emoji is worth a thousand words, and now you’ll be able to access them more easily: both the picker and search are now in the bottom sheet, and you’ll see more of them at a glance.

Bug fixes

Fixed: A pesky bug that used to show an incorrect number of reactions in the Mentions & Reactions tab (or worse yet, didn’t show the reaction at all) has been dutifully squashed. Or collected and gently put outside. Either way, it’s gone.
Fixed: Tapping the microphone icon to search or switch to a new channel might’ve crashed the app if your device didn’t support speech recognition — which was quite the dramatic reaction. We fixed that, so now your device will instead send a polite alert if it doesn’t support speech recognition.
Fixed: Now, instead of getting a blank look from Slack when you tried to type in a channel name that couldn’t be found, you’ll simply be told there are no results for that channel name. Which is far clearer, we hope.

Slack 21.03.20

22 March 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Marking a reminder as complete should give you a deep and profound sense of satisfaction, not an error message. Those errors are gone now, so you can keep blazing through your to-do list.
Fixed: While you were crafting the perfect message, the slightest tap outside the keyboard would take you to a different place entirely. Now, we keep you where you are until you’re ready to leave.

Slack 21.03.10

8 March 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Group DMs were difficult to distinguish because the app would truncate the list of participants. Now it’s easier to see names when composing a message or looking in the quick switcher. You’ll know the names of everyone at the party before you walk into the room.

Slack 21.02.20

22 February 2021

What’s new

Fans of the workspace switcher, take note: First of all, we are flattered you consider yourself a fan of the workspace switcher. Chuffed, even. Second, we’re giving it a refresh, so you can better distinguish your workspaces and switch between them more easily.
For some, search is the heart of Slack. Now, it’s also the feet, because search is moving to its own tab at the bottom of the app.
Sharing files into Slack from outside Slack — say, from your photos app — is now much nicer than before. We’ll suggest DMs or channels for you, making it easier to share with just a few taps. Should things have always been this way? Yes! And so they are.

Slack 21.02.10

8 February 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Tapping a profile picture or username in a thread used to do nothing. We weren’t ignoring you; we’re just really into this show at the moment. Tapping a profile picture or username now opens that person’s profile.

Slack 21.01.20

25 January 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: An obscure, odd, out-of-left-field crash. If you’ve ever tried editing your profile while also rotating your phone, you may have seen this crash. Now, you won’t.

Slack 21.01.11

21 January 2021

Bug fixes

We’ve tuned the engine and given the interior a thorough clean. Everything is now running smoothly again.

Slack 21.01.10

11 January 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes, the Slack app would crash when launched in landscape mode on a tablet device. Things have been turned right-side-up, and the app should start normally in both landscape and portrait mode.

Slack 20.12.10

14 December 2020

What’s new

Previously, the keyboard would appear and disappear in a way that felt inelegant – or even choppy. We’re happy to report that the appearance and disappearance of keyboards has been smoothed out for Android 11 and newer.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Stick with me; this one’s a doozy. Before now, it was possible to crash Slack by viewing a channel that contained a message with an audio attachment, but only if your language was set to Korean. Slack no longer crashes in this surprisingly particular way.

Slack 20.11.20

30 November 2020

What’s new

Noble adventurer, your ‘slash command’ skill has been upgraded. You now have access to the /expand and /collapse commands, and the power to expand or collapse inline images and video courses through your veins.

Bug fixes

Fixed: On phones with a ‘notch’ (you’ll know it if you’ve got it), some content was hidden beneath the notch when viewing images in full screen. Slack is now aware of – and respects – the notch.

Slack 20.11.10

9 November 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: adding a new line to a block quote or code block used to make Slack crash. That was then. Now, we won’t be blocking you from building your blocks however you want to.

Slack 20.10.20

26 October 2020

What’s new

We do these releases every week to keep on top of performance… but sometimes there's nothing specific to tell you. So let's talk about some things that we should have been better about telling you about in the first place. Like, did you know that you can long-press on a message on mobile to set it to ‘unread’, so it's there waiting for you when you get to your desk? Or set a reminder to look at it later? Oh, you did? Never mind, then. Carry on.

Slack 20.10.10

12 October 2020

What’s new

Slack is now available in Korean, which means you can finally DM your favorite BTS member! That was a joke, please do not do that.

Bug fixes

Time may be a construct, but you shouldn’t have to do math to know what hour it is. Now, we match your device's preferences when we display times. If you use a 24-hour clock, you’ll see it reflected when you set a custom status that expires or when you snooze a notification.

Slack 20.09.20

28 September 2020

What’s new

Maybe you’ve heard of Slack Connect, which reduces countless back-and-forth emails by letting you add partners, clients or vendors to a channel. Now, if your organization allows it, you can add another company to a new channel straightaway in the mobile app.

Bug fixes

Fixed: We get it. Sometimes you just have to go back. Previously, repeated tapping of the back button caused the screen to behave poorly. This was our fault, and has been fixed. Back you go, run along now.

Slack 20.09.10

14 September 2020

What’s new

Bugs were squished, performance was improved, work was done, and the result was good. Please enjoy Slack responsibly.

Slack 20.08.30

31 August 2020

What’s new

Sometimes, we make improvements that are important, but invisible. This is one of those times. You shouldn’t notice anything different, and that’s the idea — Slack should just keep working like you expect it to.

Slack 20.08.20

17 August 2020

What’s new

Sometimes we release a new version of our app with improvements and bug fixes so intricate and unseen they can’t be conveyed by a collection of words. So instead of something new, and speaking of collections of words… have you tried keyword notifications — a nifty way to stay tuned in to topics you care about? Set or see your keywords by tapping You > Settings > My keywords. They’re very good.

Slack 20.08.10

3 August 2020

What’s new

New: For something you’ve read but need to come back to later, you can now mark a thread as unread. Long-press on the message you’d like to start from, and then select the option to mark unread from the menu. Yes, you’ve been able to do it with channel messages for a long time, but now, you can do it in threads too. Useful!

Slack 20.07.20

20 July 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: A few people noticed that you could select “Also send to channel” by tapping the blank space next to the checkbox in a threaded reply. We’ve tightened up that space so your replies only appear outside the thread when you want them to.

Slack 20.07.10

6 July 2020

What’s new

You can now customize your notification preferences on a per-day basis, which is a fancy way of saying that you can now pause interruptions with Do Not Disturb down to the day. (Looking for a feature to pause interruptions from pets, kids, or package deliveries? We feel you.)

Slack 20.06.20

22 June 2020

What’s new

This is the last version of Slack that will work on Android 5.0. To get updates in the future, you’ll need to update your device to Android 6.0 (or newer).

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you drafted a reply to a thread, and then that thread was deleted, you were unable to open the draft you’d drafted. This was bad, but now it’s better: you can open, copy, and delete those drafts.

Slack 20.06.10

8 June 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: When viewing the channel list, the ‘+’ buttons that let you browse channels or start a new direct message sometimes, well, didn’t. Now they do, every time.

Slack 20.05.21

2 June 2020

Bug fixes

We’ve tinkered with the internal workings and polished some rough edges. The app is now better than it was.

Slack 20.05.20

25 May 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: When tapping the button to add an image to a channel or DM, the screen of images to choose from was loading far too slowly for our liking. It now loads much quicker.
When long-pressing a message, the menu option to “start a thread” had gone missing, which meant that anyone wanting to start one hit a snag. We hadn’t pulled the thread option, it had just got loose. We’ve now tucked it back into the menu where it belongs.

Slack 20.05.10

11 May 2020

TL;DR: We’ve redesigned the layout of the app. Read more about the improvements on our blog at SlackHQ.com or in our help center. Here though, we’ll stick to what’s new, and what has been fixed.

What’s new

What’s new? Most things. We changed almost all of the things. So many things! Much change.

Bug fixes

Previously, it was complicated to get to the four main things people do on mobile. We’ve fixed this with a new nifty navigation bar at the bottom of the app containing: a Home view for your sidebar, DMs, (still listed most recent first), Mentions (for quickly catching up), and You (because you’re great) (and also because setting your status/preferences on mobile needed to be easier).
The quickswitcher on the desktop app is wonderful, but we discovered an issue where people weren’t using it as much on mobile. So we made the Jump To box more prominent (and smarter) to fix this. Fingers crossed!
It seemed bizarrely hard to create a new message in a channel or DM without finding that precise location first. With an application of logic, software engineering, and a new “Compose” button in the bottom right corner, this has been rectified.
Our apologies to people who have been wanting to easily set reminders, start workflows or access favourite apps in channels and conversations — it was hard to work out how to do that on the move. A new lightning bolt under the message box now gives quick access to shortcuts, and thereby solves this age-old problem.
And finally, it came to pass, as time went by, that in the old version of the app, there was a lot of swiping back and forth to get places. We’ve simplified that: Now, swiping right will reveal your workspace and preferences, and swiping left will get you back to the last conversation you were in. With this change in behavior, we hope to give you the powers of both omniscience and time travel. nbd.
And yes. We know. Change is hard! All our fingers have all built up muscle memory, but after continually adding features and functionality over the years, we needed to step back and make sure things made sense. You can find more about these improvements in our blog post, and as always, we welcome your feedback. Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom. We appreciate it, and you.

Slack 20.04.20

27 April 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: On some devices, the text input area sometimes wouldn’t be visible after changing channels. It hadn’t disappeared, it had just scrolled off the bottom of the screen. Cheeky. It is now once again possible to send messages without playing hide and seek with the message box.

Slack 20.04.10

13 April 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: Some users who are required to use a passcode when accessing Slack were experiencing a crash when entering that passcode. Entering the passcode will now cause you to experience the app. Which, we hope, is better.

Slack 20.03.30

30 March 2020

What’s new

Minor improvements have been made, and bug fixes taken place, but they’re the kind that are out of sight, behind closed doors, and quietly just doing their job, deep in the inner workings of the app, making things just a little bit better.

Slack 20.03.20

16 March 2020

What’s new

While you might not be able to see that anything’s changed, we’ve been hard at work keeping things ticking over. It’s all going swimmingly.

Slack 20.03.10

2 March 2020

What’s new

What’s new? Nothing and everything. Or rather, it’s an update that makes things better but is all invisible to the human eye or not something you could, as a user, put your finger on. Literally. So, in other words: “Bug fixes and minor improvements”.

Slack 20.02.20

17 February 2020

What’s new

The Android app has been looking after itself since New Year’s and as a result, it’s now a smaller download, with faster performance to boot.

Slack 20.02.10

3 February 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: People who use Chrome OS and an external keyboard were finding that some messages would post twice if they used the enter button on the keyboard. It will now return to the amount of times you wanted that message sent (assuming that amount was “once”).
Fixed: Pasting a chunk of text and then editing it to add formatting (such as italics), was inexplicably causing a crash. You can now once again add a little something to your pasted paragraph. Go ahead: Be bold (or italic, or whatever else works for you).

Slack 20.01.20

21 January 2020

What’s new

We’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure everything is polished, well-oiled and running as it should be. If you notice anything to the contrary, as always, let us know!

Slack 20.01.10

6 January 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: In a message from a bot, buttons and menus configured to respond to a user’s actions weren’t actually doing that. This was not the first stage in a robot uprising: it was merely a bug. And is no more.

Slack 19.12.10

9 December 2019

What’s new

For those who love to format their messages on the move, good news, you can now get that done in a few clicks using the new formatting tool in the message field.

Bug fixes

If, by some chance, you rotated your device immediately after sending a message, a copy of that message would sometimes remain in the input field (as well as being sent). Why? Who knows! Technology is weird. But at least it’s now weird and fixed.

Slack 19.11.20

18 November 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sending the /rename command to rename a channel without any other text no longer causes a crash. The /crash command, meanwhile, is still not working at all, so if you were using /rename to get that effect, apologies for the inconvenience to your workflow.

Slack 19.11.10

4 November 2019

What’s new

Nothing to see here… just plenty of tinkering behind the scenes to make room for other features (and bugs, of course) to come.

Slack 19.10.20

21 October 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: The “Aubergine Classic” theme was using the color scheme for the new, (perhaps future-classic) Aubergine theme. We have reverted to classic-classic.
Fixed: Sometimes, when we tried to show a long message in a dialog window, it would show a blank window instead, which is basically the opposite. Sometimes things are said best when one says nothing at all. This, however, was not one of those times. So we fixed it.

Slack 19.10.11

11 October 2019

Bug fixes

We tweaked some things too small to notice or too difficult to explain. We’ll return you to your regular, more interesting types of release next time (we hope).

Slack 19.10.10

7 October 2019

What’s new

Users of dark mode will now find they have three options: On (which switches it on), Off (the same, but off) or an option to honour the system default, which does just that. Users of Android 9 and earlier, on the other hand, can choose for the app to go dark when the device enters Battery Saver mode. Either way, it works!
All default sidebar themes are now also supported in dark mode – so when you shift into dark mode, whichever of our default themes you use will subtly shift to complement it.
In accordance with the unstoppable march of time, updates will only be available to devices running Android 5.0 (aka Lollipop) or later.

Bug fixes

Fixed: The “Connecting” and “Offline” banners are now a little lighter in dark mode (and so easier to read).
Fixed: Sometimes the horizontal list of “quick reaction emoji” would contain too many emoji, causing them to overlap. Unfortunately, this visual omnishambles made reacting slower, so we’ve fixed it.

Slack 19.09.20

23 September 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: In the Threads screen, it wasn’t possible to add other reactions after removing a reaction. If you want to change your mind or your emoji, that’s up to you, and you’re now once again free to indulge in that.

Slack 19.09.10

9 September 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes, if you checked the box in a thread to post your reply in channel as well, the reply would look like it had been sent twice in the thread… until you closed the thread and reopened it. It only ever posted once, but now it looks that way too. Apologies for the confusion.

Slack 19.08.20

26 August 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: A crash that sometimes occurred after sending a message while offline and then coming back online no longer occurs. The app stays up and the message is sent. Everyone wins.
Fixed: For those using Slack in UK English, the “Join channel” button displayed at the bottom of a channel you had not yet joined was reading “Join %1$s”. It has been pointed out to us that this is not how Brits spell “channel”, so we changed it. Awfully sorry about that.

Slack 19.08.10

12 August 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes outgoing messages to a channel looked like they had been sent twice.
Fixed: Sometimes outgoing messages to a channel looked like they had been sent twice. This has now been fixed. Yes, we know. We’ve used this joke before. See what we did? We sent the same thing twice then said it was fixed the second time to hammer home the point. Joking aside, there are really only so many ways that software bugs can manifest. And it turns out “things appearing to post twice when they’ve actually only been posted once” is a repeat offender. We will strive to ensure that this bug never occurs again, or at least until we think of a brilliant new way of writing about it. In the meantime, we will push for either no bugs at all or far more ridiculous ones. On your behalf, we hope it’s the former.

Slack 19.07.31

6 August 2019

Bug fixes

We’ve tuned the engine and given the interior a thorough clean. Everything is now running smoothly again.

Slack 19.07.30

29 July 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: It was very difficult (fine, it was basically impossible) to read code blocks in dark mode. We're sorry about that and we'll continue to iterate and make all these things better.
Fixed: A crash, that mysteriously (and very rarely) occurred when scrolling through search results if one of the results contained a message with a file attached, crashes no more.
Fixed: The buttons that appeared after @-mentioning a user in a channel (“Invite to a channel” and “Share a link”) weren’t performing those actions, which didn’t make much sense. If you experienced this and questioned whether you’d ever pushed the button at all, it wasn’t you going doolally, it was our fault. It’s now fixed.

Slack 19.07.20

15 July 2019

Bug fixes

We tweaked some things too small to notice or too difficult to explain. We’ll return you to your regular, more interesting types of release next time (we hope).

Slack 19.07.10

1 July 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes after tapping an image to view it in full screen, it would disappear, which is the opposite of full screen. It now does the opposite of the opposite, i.e. what it was meant to all along.
Fixed: @-mentioning or searching for users with names containing Chinese, Japanese or Korean characters now works as it should.
Fixed: When trying to add a workspace, some users were experiencing an error claiming that something had gone wrong and that they should try again. We’ve fixed this, by making sure nothing can go wrong. So now trying again is surplus to requirements, because it just works.

Slack 19.06.20

17 June 2019

Bug fixes

We tweaked some things too small to notice or too difficult to explain. We’ll return you to your regular, more interesting types of release next time (we hope).

Slack 19.06.10

3 June 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Every now and again, images that had been sent to a channel wouldn’t appear. Not all images – not all the time, only sometimes – and for no apparent reason. Turns out there was a reason! It was “computers being weird”. So we’ve fixed it and images should now appear properly again.
Fixed: In some cases, when attempting to upload animated GIFs and WebM files, non-animated versions would be uploaded instead, which defeated the object. This has been fixed.

Slack 19.05.20

20 May 2019

What’s new

When selecting an image to upload, you can now give the thumbnail a light tippity-tap to preview it or a long pressity-press (technical terms) to edit the title.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Rotating your phone from portrait to landscape view sometimes mysteriously crashed the app. It now doesn’t. Or, to look at it another way, you now can.
Fixed: On some devices with physical keyboards, the message input field was preventing the Send button from appearing, which rather defeated the object. It now appears.
Fixed: @-mentioning users with characters from RTL (right-to-left) languages now works even when typing out their full name, as is right and proper.

Slack 19.5.1

6 May 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: When long-pressing on a message to perform an action – such as marking unread, setting a reminder or sharing – some of the message actions were overlapping unattractively. They’re much more attractive now.

Slack 19.4.2

22 April 2019

What’s new

Olá, hola and nice to see you (to see you nice). From today, Slack supports three new languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Latin American Spanish and UK English. You can change this in the settings menu under, not unexpectedly, “Language”. Jolly good! Carry on, everyone.
Support for Google Smart Lock has been added, so if you’ve enabled Google Smart Lock on your device, you can now log into Slack with one single glorious tap.

Slack 19.4.1

8 April 2019

What’s new

Clicking the + button at the top of your list of channels always got you to a Channel Browser (true!) but that channel browser has been improved in lots of little ways. The fact it will now indicate which channels you're a member of is but one. Click it to find the others.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Animated gifs sometimes showed a “gif” overlay in the middle of the image. While both informative and accurate, this made it slightly — very slightly — harder to see the gifs. We cannot apologise enough. Please be assured, it is now rectified.

Slack 19.3.2

25 March 2019

What’s new

Your latest unread channels should now get highlighted and sorted to the top of your sidebar faster than before. Spiffing!

Bug fixes

Fixed: Externally-hosted files (such as those hosted on Google Drive) were showing a download button that looked great, but didn’t actually work. Now it looks great, also works, and everything opens as it used to.

Slack 19.3.1

11 March 2019

What’s new

Dark mode can now be switched on (or off) in the Settings menu. Yes, it’s been a long road, but there’s finally dark at the end of the tunnel. N.B. This is mobile-only for now, with desktop coming later – thank you for both bearing with us and for continuing to expect more of us.