Slack for iOS – release notes

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.

Bug fixes

Fixed: If a message from an app had a button, and that button had an emoji in it, the emoji would appear like :this: instead of showing the emoji itself. This bug was very :woman-gesturing-no:, and is now fixed.

Slack 21.02.10

8 February 2021

Bug fixes

If you were to select “People” in the workspace menu, pick someone, click “Message,” and then try to send the message, well, this used to be too much for Slack. Not anymore. Send away!

Slack 21.01.20

25 January 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Custom emoji appear in the picker, right where they should – as opposed to not appearing at all.
Fixed: When using one of your team’s homemade workflows, entering Japanese or Korean characters no longer adds bonus, unintended Japanese or Korean characters.
Fixed: App messages were missing the colourful line that appears alongside their buttons and forms. No longer! Colour has been returned to all the places that it should be.
Fixed: When you’re reacting to a message, Slack puts your most-used emoji up front – because that’s a helpful thing to do. Recently, and in very specific circumstances, Slack has been showing blank spaces instead of emoji. This is much less helpful. And now it’s fixed.

Slack 21.01.10

11 January 2021

Bug fixes

Fixed: Previously, tapping on a link from an app in Slack might have taken you to an unsettling place: nowhere. We fixed that, so now you’ll land in the right place at the right time.

Slack 20.12.10

14 December 2020

What’s new

Sharing files into Slack from outside Slack – say, from your photos app – is now much nicer than before. You’ll see your teammates’ pictures, and their full names, so it’s easy to make sure that you’re sending the right file to the right person. Should things have always been this way? Yes! And so they are.

Bug fixes

Fixed: The ‘Add a file’ button will now work as you might have expected it to, adding files aplenty to your channels and DMs.
Fixed: People who choose to auto-collapse images in Slack were occasionally seeing black squares in the place of delightful GIFs. No more! Now your GIFs will surprise, delight and inspire, at least as much as any one GIF can.
Fixed: Tapping and holding on emoji reactions now shows you the list of people who have reacted. This is an improvement on its previous behaviour, which was to crash the Slack app entirely.

Slack 20.11.21

7 December 2020

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 20.11.20

30 November 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: For the briefest of moments after opening Slack, DMs would sometimes appear unread even if there wasn’t a new message. It was so quick, you might not have noticed, but we fixed it anyway.
Fixed: Sometimes, if you opened the description of an app in Slack, you might encounter some ~strangely~ *formatted* _text_. These app descriptions now appear beautifully formatted, as the developers intended.
Fixed: When you step away from your computer to enjoy a sandwich, drink some water or just stare into the middle distance for a while, you can now tell Slack how long to wait before sending your notifications to your mobile device. Take your time.

Slack 20.11.10

9 November 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: if you were invited to an audio chat and accepted the invite on desktop, sometimes the mobile app continued to ring. It wasn’t your alarm; that was us. We’re very sorry for the extra ringing in your ears, and now things have gone back to normal.
Fixed: your app may have crashed while you were in the middle of formatting a message that had hyphens and spaces. We fixed this, so that you can practise proper punctuation without pesky interruptions.

Slack 20.10.20

26 October 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: We can’t think of any references, cultural or otherwise, that involve swiping left. But now that it’s working properly again, you can swipe left to see the most recent channel.
Fixed: On some phones, the emoji keyboard blocked the message input field, which was very frowny face. We’ve remedied the situation so that now you can both write and emote in your input field, which is very smiley face.

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

We came up with custom emoji so you could express yourself in Slack. What we did not mean to do was cut off the end of a message from a bot if it contained a custom emoji. We’ve fixed that—so express away!

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: A picture is worth a thousand words. None of those words should be “This content can’t be displayed,” which was the case for some linked images in Slack. Images should now appear as intended, their word count fully intact.
Fixed: Sometimes Slackbot or an app will send a message that is for your eyes only. A secret missive from the cybersphere. For some users, they were unable to copy the text of that message. This is now fixed, and you’re all free to copy the ephemera as you see fit.
Fixed: Before, when you set a channel’s topic, we notified everyone with a message that ended with an extra period. We shouldn’t change punctuation rules just for kicks, and will no longer pepper these messages with prolific periods.

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

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you’ve been using an external keyboard with your iPad, you might have tried to accept an auto-correct suggestion and found that Slack sent your message-in-progress instead. Hitting enter at times like these will now accept the suggestion without sending your message early, as you’d want it to.
Fixed: When an image was viewed full-screen, swiping did not dismiss it properly. You may now swipe and dismiss images with confidence.

Slack 20.08.20

17 August 2020

What’s new

We can’t think of any references, cultural or otherwise, that involve swiping left or swiping right. But now, if a message has more than one image, you can tap one of them and swipe left or right to browse between images.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Ever tapped a search result or a saved message and ended up in the right channel, but not at the right message? No? That’s good to hear. But if you have, we’ve fixed it. No more surprise endings — now you’ll always end up exactly where you planned.

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! Hurrah! 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 of our sidebar themes were taking dark mode a bit too seriously and obscuring the status bar. You’ll no longer have to choose between the comfort of your retinas and being able to check the time.
Fixed: iPad users noticed that long-pressing on a pinned or starred item in the Channel Details section caused the app to take an unforeseen nap. It’s better-rested now, so hopefully that won’t be happening again.

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.)

Bug fixes

Fixed: On mobile, some messages from apps would display with missing text. It certainly was not our intention to pull a vanishing act, so we’ve fixed that.

Slack 20.06.20

22 June 2020

What’s new

This is the last version of Slack that will work on iOS 11. To get updates in the future, you’ll need to update your device to iOS 12.2 (or newer).

Bug fixes

Fixed: December 31, 1969 was a fine day (we’re pretty sure). It was not, however, a day in which you received any direct messages, regardless of what our app previously claimed.
Fixed: Some files could not be deleted, and not for lack of trying — the option to delete those files was missing from the menu. This has been fixed and all files can be deleted as desired.

Slack 20.06.10

8 June 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: The /remove command is now working properly, so those with permission can once again remove people from channels if they need to.
Fixed: A pesky bug tried to cut your messages short. We’ve restored the limit to the intended 12,000 characters per message. Write on!

Slack 20.05.20

25 May 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: If you were in a workspace that required secondary authentication, then previews of notifications from that workspace were always hidden (even if you wanted to be able to see them). Now, the previews will show up like normal — as long as you’re currently authenticated. (You can also, as always, choose not to show previews of the messages).

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

What’s new

All bugs that were fixed in this release were too small for the eye to see or too fiddly for human words to describe. Nevertheless, work was done, things tinkered with and the app became subtly better.

Slack 20.04.10

13 April 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: When a message held more than 5 images, a button telling you how many more images were included but hidden (+3, for example) was… not making them any less hidden. Basically it wasn’t working. It now works.
Fixed: When sharing a file you will now only be able to share with users or channels that are active in the selected workspace (and not deactivated users, which could occasionally be selected before)
Fixed: On an iPad, tapping “Archive Channel” will now archive the channel. Instead of crashing the app. Right impulse, overenthusiastic execution.

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

Bug fixes

Tapping the “Tap to expand image” button was sometimes not, wait for it… expanding the image. It will now do the thing it promises. No more, no less.
Using two-factor authentication, which is a brilliant idea in general for all things, was occasionally not working if multiple types of authentication had been enabled (app, SMS, etc). Let nothing dissuade the security-minded: it now works seamlessly once more.

Slack 20.03.10

2 March 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes, when sharing a file to Slack, some usernames appeared, very unhelpfully, as blanks in the list of direct messages, identifying your colleagues as “@“, instead of say, “@jane”. This is now fixed.
Fixed: Sometimes an app or bot would send a long message containing beautiful formatting and links. And sometimes, the formatting didn’t render correctly or the links were untappable and that, we feared, risked angering the bots, as well as not being very helpful for the user. Now, the formatting is honoured, tapping the links works perfectly and the bots are, for now, placated.

Slack 20.02.20

17 February 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sending a “/me” command that contains an emoji made things crash. /me had no idea this was a thing but is glad that it’s fixed :relieved:

Slack 20.02.10

3 February 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: While on a call, people using bluetooth sometimes heard a loud noise not generated by the other people on their call. This was not a ghost, it was a bug (and is now fixed).
Fixed: the /msg and /dm commands that were not acting as they should, now work as expected. For those who didn’t know they existed or worked in the first place, they do, and weren’t, but now are.
Fixed: When uploading an image or file from your camera roll to a channel, multiple channels appeared to be selected. Then you couldn’t deselect them. These shenanigans have been shut down and sharing works as it should.

Slack 20.01.20

20 January 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: @mentioning a user in some languages caused that mention to appear twice. In any language, one mention per message is enough.
Fixed: Translations for @channel and @here were broken in non-English languages. They now work once more in those languages and continue to work in English. Just remember, everyone – if you’re going to @channel, please @channel responsibly.
Fixed: Attempting to send a message that exceeded the character limit would show an error and then delete all of the entered text. This was both hard to trigger (those limits are high!) but very frustrating. The limits still exist, but we now no longer clear everything in the message box.
Fixed: After leaving a workspace, some users were unable to convince that workspace to leave their sidebar. It will now, gracefully, take its leave when asked to.
Fixed: Trying to sign up with a password too similar to your email address resulted in a message that simply read “Error joining team”. We still want you to have a good password… but that error message will now be clearer to point that out.
Fixed: It came to pass that typing, pasting or otherwise entering a large amount of text into the app (the app in this case meaning “the Slack app”, hereinafter referred to as “the app”) on occasion caused that app to undergo issues that would take on the appearance of disappearance or dissolution or, in common parlance, it would appear to crash and need to be restarted. This abdication of our sworn responsibility to take messages of differing length, from the very shortest (e.g. “k”) to the very longest (albeit with an error explaining the imposed character limits of messages and the need to curtail said message), was careless, if not derelict, in our duty, and we have thereby rectified it with an application of technological code that will forthwith allow the entering of large amounts of written matter in the message box of Slack, the app, without risk of unexpected app closure, thus giving free rein to the celebrated verbosity and eloquence of our users in allowing them to enter as large an amount of text as their heart desires, albeit with the expectation that one too long may result in the error message listed several items (perhaps screens?) above this one. Tl;dr: The app was sometimes crashing before as though we had some kind of problem with long pieces of text. We don’t at all.

Slack 20.01.10

6 January 2020

Bug fixes

Fixed: Workspaces were sometimes showing a default workspace icon (a letter on a coloured background) instead of the nice custom icon they had been given. Behold: they are beautiful once more. Or, at the very least, correct. Which is sometimes all we can aspire to.
Fixed: Some complex URLs were being incorrectly treated like email addresses. They will now be treated… wait for it… like URLs.
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

Fixed: When loading messages containing a lot of custom emoji, the app was sometimes getting overexcited to the point of paralysis. We have calmed the app down and this should no longer happen. Emoji away.
Saving a file from Slack and then attempting to open it from the Files app was occasionally causing the app to crash (which was bad). It is now causing the file to open (which is better).

Slack 19.11.20

18 November 2019

What’s new

The size of text is now controlled in the Accessibility settings of your iOS device rather than inside Slack. We used to have a separate preference for it inside the app, but it makes a lot more sense that you would want to have the same size text whatever you’re reading.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Attempting to reorder your workspaces would occasionally result in them ending up in a completely different order than the one you put them in. The order in which you put them? Either way, they no longer belie your reasonable commands and will fall into line as requested, no longer out of order.

Slack 19.11.10

4 November 2019

What’s new

A swish new icon in the top left-hand corner of the app will show the number of notifications you have in your current workspace, as well as taking you to the sidebar, where you can swipe between your channels and conversations, as before.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Sometimes, attempts to delete a message that had failed to send (due, usually, to low connectivity) were themselves failing. Doubling down on things is great – but not, perhaps, when that thing is “failure”. Now, when one thing doesn’t work, the other will.

Slack 19.10.20

21 October 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: On smaller devices, the text on menu items in the “Advanced” menu was unfairly clipped. We love devices great and small: and our menus now reflect that (and make more sense).

Slack 19.10.10

7 October 2019

What’s new

Dark mode users who launched the app for the first time were met with a bright white screen. That was less than ideal. Our sign-in screens now match the rest of the app.
All the default sidebar themes are now dark mode compatible – so when you shift into dark mode, your default theme will subtly shift to complement it.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Uploading multiple files at the same time is now more reliable than it was.
Fixed: In an act of overzealous ennui, sending “/shrug” without any text following it was causing the app to crash. Quite ridiculous. If there was ever a message that could stand alone, it was this. For the good of all humanity, it now works once more.

Slack 19.09.20

23 September 2019

What’s new

The app now fully supports iOS 13. In particular, and most pleasingly, we now follow the system settings for dark mode, so the app will automatically “go dark” at the same time as your other apps. Good news in dark times.

Bug fixes

Fixed: Somewhat oddly, notifications were only clearing once you’d read *all* of your mentions. The ones you’ve read will now be the only ones cleared from the notification centre when you launch the app, leaving the ones you haven’t to be read at your leisure.

Slack 19.09.10

16 September 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Replying to a notification works much more often than it used to. 99% of the time, in fact, which is so close to 100% we can almost smell it.
Fixed: Swiping between channels with two fingers now will now include the “Threads”view, but only, smartly, if you’ve used that view recently.
Fixed: Custom emoji weren’t always rendering correctly in bots and attachments sent via the Slack API. Now? Emoji = :100:.

Slack 19.08.21

10 September 2019

Bug fixes

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

Slack 19.08.20

26 August 2019

What’s new

If you, like all rational people, arrange your phone screens by colour, you’ll now be in quite the quandary, as we’ve added a couple of extra background hues for the app icon. You can find them under Settings -> App icon – just under Dark mode, which is useful, as the new shades work particularly well with that.

Bug fixes

Fixed: When selecting a new profile picture, users were being asked to confirm that picture twice. We now respect your ability to recognise your own face the first time around and will not ask you again.
Fixed: Uploading slow motion videos is now 100% more successful.
Fixed: Custom emoji uploaded on desktop are now, vitally, transferred at lightning speed so that they're immediately available in the iOS app.

Slack 19.08.10

12 August 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: When viewing your starred items, unstarring an item will now remove it from the view rather than making you close and reopen the list.
Fixed: A crash that could occur when a message contained a highlight word, an @-mention and certain non-English characters. We’ve fixed it, completely.

Slack 19.07.30

29 July 2019

Bug fixes

Occasionally, some users were unable to sign in. Given that that's the very first thing we want people to be able to do, we squished the bugs we knew about… but if you ever find more, let us know.
Fixed: Many Slack apps that use BlockKit show confirmation dialogues to allow you to confirm your action and, in some cases, those weren't working. They are now.
Fixed: Users who attempt to confirm their email address after their original email link has expired can now resend that email and then confirm it, and thus log in. Again, people being able to log in to an app is a very important part of the user experience. We’re committed to ensuring they can do that. Back in business!

Slack 19.07.20

15 July 2019

What’s new

As of this update, we’ve removed 3D Touch functionality from a few places inside the app – channel names and DMs – where, let’s be honest, it simply wasn’t doing what it should do. 3D Touch still works on the icon on the home screen and when quick-replying to a notification, as it’s perfectly up to scratch there. (N.B. “Scratch” is not a valid gesture, please don’t go scratching your device on our account.)

Bug fixes

Fixed: When viewing the channel details screen in dark mode, the area showing the channel title is now, like everything else, also in dark mode.
Fixed: Where two channels or users had the same name, they’ll no longer randomly switch places with each other in the channel/DM list.
Fixed: Opening a thread containing a message with a link that contained certain characters made everything crash. And yes, seeing as you asked, that one was satisfying to hunt down. And to fix.

Slack 19.07.10

1 July 2019

What’s new

The first message in a channel or direct message now includes a date header, so you can tell what day it is (or was).

Bug fixes

Fixed: Where sharing a file from Slack to another app did not on occasion work, it now works.
Fixed: And sometimes, when sharing a file did work, it would change the file name from words to a series of numbers. Great for robots, terrible for humans.
Fixed: Messages that included the same custom emoji more than once with no space between them were only displaying that emoji once. So :emoji::emoji: was only appearing as :emoji:. You now receive all the emoji you desire, and no fewer than you deserve.

Slack 19.06.20

17 June 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Where you were promised the ability to add a link to an emoji through the Slack API so that people could tap that emoji and be transported to the link, we were not making good on that promise. We’ve fixed the bug preventing it from working and everything’s rosy now.
Fixed: Some custom bot names were not being displayed correctly, but now they are.
Fixed: The list of apps in a group conversation would sometimes show the list of users instead of apps. And apps aren’t people, are they?
Fixed: Some message buttons wouldn’t display a confirmation dialogue when tapped, which was a bit odd and slightly confusing. Now it’s been fixed.

Slack 19.06.10

3 June 2019

What’s new

Typing Cyrillic characters now allows you to find users or channels containing those characters as easily on iOS as it has been for a while on desktop.

Bug fixes

Fixed: When starting a group conversation that included one or more single-channel or multi-channel guest users, sometimes previously selected users were being deselected. Not any more. Now you’re all in that together.

Slack 19.05.21

28 May 2019

Bug fixes

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

Slack 19.05.20

20 May 2019

What’s new

Want to upload multiple images at the same time from the message box? In both channels and threads? Of course you do. And now, you can! Hurrah.

Bug fixes

Fixed: In some fonts, using asterisks to make part of a sentence bold would result in all of the text after the bold words *also* being in bold. While we like to believe that fortune favours the bold, it has come to our attention that this is not what that phrase means. So we fixed it.

Slack 19.5.1

6 May 2019

What’s new

This is the last release that will support iOS 10 and therefore the last version that will run on 32-bit devices such as the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and fourth-generation iPad. To continue receiving Slack updates, please upgrade to iOS 11.1 or later.

Slack 19.4.2

23 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.

Slack 19.4.1

8 April 2019

Bug fixes

Links in some Slack app buttons were not working, taking you nowhere instead of the expected somewhere. They now whisk you away to the URL you thought they would take you to in the first place.

Slack 19.3.2

25 March 2019

Bug fixes

Fixed: Screenshots and other .png images sent over Slack were looking blurry. We applied a little focus and now we’re in the clear. If the blurriness persists, you might want to consider an eye test.

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.

Bug fixes

Fixed: The text welcoming you to Slack the very first time you launched the app didn’t quite fit the screen on smaller devices. Not the biggest problem in the world (literally), but first impressions count.