Slack for Mac - Release Notes

Slack 4.17.0

3 June 2021

What’s new

Bigger is better, or rather, closer is clearer. We now support additional zoom levels up to 200% to reduce the strain on your precious peepers.

Security guidance

This release includes security improvements. Updating is recommended.

Slack 4.16.2

10 May 2021

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.16.0

4 May 2021

Bug fixes

Depending on your zoom level, we weren’t always showing the password field when authorizing the use of a proxy. This, by proxy, made for an unpleasant overall experience within Slack.
Images and notifications were sometimes sharing real estate...inelegantly. We have given them both a talking-to, and they have agreed to joint custody of that section of the screen.

Security guidance

This release includes security improvements. Updating is recommended.

Slack 4.15.0

12 April 2021

Bug fixes

In the Mac app, certain error screens made it very hard to find the part of the window that allowed you to click and drag. To be fair, entire genres of computer games have been built around hard-to-find click targets. Slack, however, is not a game of this genre — so we’ve made the clickable area a bit wider.

Security guidance

This release includes minor security improvements. Updating is beneficial.

Slack 4.14.0

17 March 2021

What’s new

Did you update your Mac to Big Sur? Of course you did, you upstanding citizen. You’ll be rewarded with a freshly-updated Slack icon.

Bug fixes

We improved the restart experience when you’ve gone offline or are having loading issues.
We all have to sign out sometimes. If you sign out of all of your workspaces, you should have an easier time signing back in.
Hopefully you’ll be able to ask “Can you see my screen?” a little less these days. The green border that lets you know you’re screen sharing is back.

Security guidance

This release includes minor security improvements. Updating is beneficial.

Slack 4.13.0

16 February 2021

Bug fixes

When you move or resize Slack, we assume that you are indeed trying to move or resize it – and so the crash that was regularly happening, instead, was unwelcome. We’ve fixed this. Here’s to properly-sized screens!
We’ve fixed several accessibility issues. Making Slack more accessible is a continuous journey, and we’re quite grateful that you’re along for the ride!

Slack 4.12.2

8 January 2021

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 4.12.1

7 January 2021

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.12.0

14 December 2020

What’s new

È pronto! Italian language support has landed!
You can now attach recently used files – in one click – from the paperclip menu. Hasty screenshotters, the world is yours.

Bug fixes

Some small, but important, accessibility improvements for those navigating with VoiceOver or a screen reader.
As a dancer gracefully recovers from a minor tumble, so shall our app gracefully reload whilst throttled by network failures.

Slack 4.11.3

25 November 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.11.1

11 November 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 4.11.0

9 November 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.10.3

15 October 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.10.2

9 October 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 4.10.0

6 October 2020

What’s new

Updates mean that Big Sur is totally supported in a very holistic, west coast, chill way. It’s, like, totally gnarly. Or sick! Whichever means “good”, basically.

Bug fixes

Sometimes, you could not exit full screen mode with escape on windows, which was wrong, because that’s literally what escape means. Now, it works.
We fixed some issues that caused window resizing of Slack to be difficult. We never want to be difficult.
Quickly switching workspaces caused problems. Switching workspaces should only cause opportunities, so we fixed that.
There were a few little bugs that caused crashes, like bugs do. We fixed those, and we’ll fix the next ones too.

Slack 4.9.0

2 September 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.8.0

23 July 2020

Bug fixes

In rare cases, Slack would simply fail to start altogether. While we’re sure we could all use a coffee break, we know you could also use an application that runs. So we fixed that.
We made the screen you see when you have connection problems more useful. We also spruced it up a bit with a fresh coat of paint.
Our notifications system sprung a leak, so we brought it in for a tune-up. Everything should be running smoother now.

Slack 4.7.0

2 July 2020

What’s new

We’ve upgraded all the backend stuff that the apps run on, resulting in better performance and fewer bugs.

Slack 4.6.0

21 May 2020

What’s new

Batten the hatches! The app sandbox is now enabled for all web content. This is a fancy way of saying we’ve dialed up the security of the app. It wasn’t unsafe before, but it’s double safe now.
A preference that allows you to choose a unique save location per download, instead of choosing a folder for all of them. For the choosy types.

Bug fixes

Downloading app updates is less prone to timing out on slow networks, as we’ve extended the timeout to something reasonable.
The Close button has returned to its rightful place on notifications, for all your dismissing needs.
If you found yourself, in some distant past, trying to start a song on Spotify with your keyboard’s play button, and it did not respond to your command while Slack was front and center, pesky hardware media keys were the problem. And this version is the cure.
The app should be less spicy to your CPU when you’re viewing certain network error pages.
When a download completes, we’ll show an in-app prompt rather than a bothersome system notification.

Slack 4.5.1

13 May 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.5.0

1 May 2020

What’s new

We’ve upgraded all the backend stuff that the apps run on, resulting in better performance and fewer bugs.
Our spellchecker has been swapped out for a newer model that’s faster, leaner and capable of fixing your typos in… wait, surely not? “Multiple languages at the same time”! Open the “Language & region” preferences to choose your languages. And for whoever it is out there requires that functionality: our hats off to you. We can barely type in one language right now.

Slack 4.4.2

31 March 2020

Bug fixes

We're always working on performance improvements – and this release repairs a previously broken performance diagnostic tool. You won't notice the difference, but we'll have an easier time improving Slack.

Slack 4.4.1

20 March 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 4.4.0

18 March 2020

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.3.3

21 January 2020

What’s new

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

Bug fixes

Slack would sometimes crash when the user right-clicked to see the context menu. In context, that was unhelpful. So it no longer does that.
When maximized, the app had developed a bit of a distracting flicker. That flicker is now part of Slack history.
Occasionally, a restart would result in connectivity issues for Slack… now you should be back online and back to work lickety-split.

Slack 4.2.0

4 December 2019

What’s new

Our newest, fastest, best-performing, shiniest, most nutritious and delicious version of Slack is now fully rolled out, so that’s the one you’re now using!
Like zooming in and out? Use a number pad? Great news! You can now do these things, on that.

Bug fixes

Notifications looked weird if your workspace name was long. Now, no matter what your team name is, notifications look lovely.
Some messages were being marked as read when Slack was hidden behind applications, or not visible on screen. Now we won’t mark it as read until you’ve actually seen it. Which seems fair.
Using three finger swipes to navigate channel history on touchpad now works again. And for those who never knew it could work in the first place: it does!

Slack 4.1.2

18 October 2019

Bug fixes

Long workspace names now no longer appear as incredibly long in menus.
Slack menus should now be showing up in the right language (meaning the one that is right for you).
Spellchecker stopped working for a small number of users, leading to a shorp increase in avoidabull erraz. With spellcheck now fully back online for those users, any remaining typos are officially not our fault.

Slack 4.1.0

16 September 2019

What’s new

Thanks to a few tweaks to the engine, a polish of the pistons, and recalibrated valves, the app should be running smoother and faster, than before.
Spellcheck, revamped, is now a much better version of its old self (and back on Linux, to boot) — now it supports Greek, Portuguese and British English. So now spelling correctly should come more naturally to us all (which is good, because “correctly” can be a difacult word to spell).

Bug fixes

After uploading a video into Slack some found it would give an infinite circle of loading, but not play, which was never our plan. Now: it works! It plays; no more circle! Because, it turned out, all circ and no play made Slack a null ‘ploy.

Slack 4.0.3

28 August 2019

What’s new

We’ve updated all the background things to ensure that whenever a new OS update may arrive, Slack will continue to work perfectly. Or, at least, work as expected.

Bug fixes

Now, when we check for network connectivity, it’s more reliable than it was before. Making for a quicker connection, and less frustration

Slack 4.0.2

7 August 2019

Bug fixes

When opening your computer, Slack is now far more likely to launch reliably. Which is, let’s face it, the very least it should do.
Now when we update the app, we’ll send you a polite little notification alerting you to the fact.
An annoying leak involving in-channel videos has been plugged.

Slack 4.0.1

25 July 2019

Bug fixes

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

Slack 4.0.0

15 July 2019

What’s new

Slack is now a little faster, thanks to a few small but important changes.
Admins now have a little more control when configuring the ability to auto-update with a “plist”. We’ve checked and that’s definitely the word. Admins: you apparently know what that means.

Bug fixes

Dragging and dropping files into Slack is much more stable now. That’s a relief.
If you do need to reset the app data for any reason, this is now a smoother process than before.
People in lots of workspaces will find that their icons are now more pleasingly aligned in the sidebar, which is very pleasing. It’s the little things, eh?
When do not disturb is enabled, the icon no longer bounces in the dock. Because do not disturb means do not disturb.
The process of updating Slack is now more stable and we now explain why we’re asking for permissions to do that update, which should be more helpful.
Notifications were not making sounds that might notify you 100% of the time. Honestly, they only had the one job. Now they do it.
Customised Slack shortcuts on macOS that sometimes weren’t working now do the thing you intended them to do (and sorry that that wasn’t the case for some).
Hardware acceleration can now be turned off without foregrounding Slack. If you know what that means, then you know it’s a good thing. And if you don’t – it still is! Thanks for reading anyway.

Slack 3.4.2

23 May 2019

What’s new

Just as day follows night and winter gives way to spring, so have we updated Electron to 4.2.1.

Bug fixes

Things are now cleverer about the way push notifications on mobile get information from the desktop app. Hopefully this is better for everyone (and faster).
Minor stability improvements in general. As always, the best sort of fix is the one you don’t notice at all because nothing’s going wrong.

Slack 3.4.0

18 April 2019

Bug fixes

Launch (and hide) on login now works better than it once did. By “once”, we mean “five minutes ago, before you updated your version of Slack”.
Our Slack app icon was missing smaller icon sizes, which was both problematic and not great aesthetically. It now renders as it should.
Slack would occasionally crash while you were restarting your computer. We looked at the bug causing this, turned it off and on again, and now it works. Technology!
Some people were seeing sidebar icons from other teams they were signed in to instead of the icons they were expecting. These will now show correctly.
Any keyboard and cursor actions you might’ve experienced behaving badly have been shown the error of their ways.

Slack 3.3.8

8 March 2019

What’s new

In a slight change to the way you sign in on your desktop, you’ll now sign in via your browser rather than directly in the app.

Bug fixes

The new app icon was looking a little fuzzy on some docks, which simply wouldn’t do. It should be much crisper now.
Equally, the new loading animation was looking a little stretched, or a little squished, depending on how you looked it. It’s practically perfect in every way now.
If you have had problems logging in using SSO (single sign-on), you should no longer encounter these problems.
We fixed a problem where the “Open the Slack app” button in the browser did not, in fact, open the app. Honestly, it had *one* job. It now does that job.