Slack for Android - Release Notes

Slack 20.01.20

January 21, 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

January 6, 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

December 9, 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

November 18, 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

November 4, 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

October 21, 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

October 11, 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

October 7, 2019

What’s New

Users of dark mode will now find they have three options: On (which switches it on), Off (same, but off), or an option to honor the system default, which does… just that. Users of Android 9 and earlier, meanwhile, 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 therefore easier to read).
Fixed: Sometimes the horizontal list of “quick reaction emoji” would contain too many emoji, causing them to overlap. Ironically, this visual cacophony made reacting slower, so we fixed it.

Slack 19.09.20

September 23, 2019

Bug Fixes

Fixed: In the Threads screen, after removing a reaction, it was not possible to add other reactions. Changing your mind, or your emoji, is your prerogative, and you are now once again free to indulge that.

Slack 19.09.10

September 9, 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

August 26, 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 the British spell “channel”, so we changed it. Awfully sorry about that.

Slack 19.08.10

August 12, 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. Look, 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 some 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

August 6, 2019

Bug Fixes

We tuned up the engine and gave the interiors a thorough clean. Everything is now running smoothly again.

Slack 19.07.30

July 29, 2019

Bug Fixes

Fixed: It was very difficult (fine: it was basically impossible) to read ```code blocks``` in Dark Mode. Forgive us, 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”) not performing those actions, which was illogical. If you experienced this and questioned whether you'd ever pushed the button at all, it wasn't you being delusional, it was us being irrational. It is now fixed.

Slack 19.07.20

July 15, 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

July 1, 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, which was the thing you wanted 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 went wrong" and that they should try again. We fixed this, by making nothing go wrong. So now trying again is surplus to requirements. Because it works.

Slack 19.06.20

June 17, 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

June 3, 2019

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Occasionally, images that had been sent to a channel wouldn’t display. Not all images, and not all the time; only sometimes, and for no apparent reason. Turns out there was a reason! It was "software being weird". So we fixed it, and images should once again display correctly.
Fixed: In some cases, attempting to upload animated .gifs and .webm files would instead upload non-animated versions, which defeated the object. This is fixed.

Slack 19.05.20

May 20, 2019

What’s New

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

May 6, 2019

Bug Fixes

Fixed: When long pressing on a message to perform an action — like 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

April 22, 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

April 8, 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 apologize enough. Please be assured, it is now rectified.

Slack 19.3.2

March 25, 2019

What’s New

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

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Externally-hosted files (like those hosted on Google Drive, for instance) were showing 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

March 11, 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. NB: 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.

Slack 19.2.2

February 25, 2019

What’s New

We’ve updated the background color of the app icon, to make it easier to see.

Slack 19.2.1

February 11, 2019

What’s New

A small detail for the eagle-eyed: We've changed the way we number our releases. The last one was 2.76.1, this one is 19.2.1. Most people won't notice, but we wanted to make sure you knew you hadn't missed anything. Carry on.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: @-mentions and block quotes were sometimes showing up in weird colors and sometimes not displaying at all. This simply wasn't cricket, so we fixed it.

Slack 2.76.1

January 30, 2019

Bug Fixes

We tuned up the engine and gave the interiors a thorough clean. Everything is now running smoothly again.

Slack 2.76

January 28, 2019

What’s New

Uploading a pdf file to a channel or DM, you’ll now, magically, see a preview of the first page.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: The “Close conversation” button stopped working, which is surely the software version of being awkwardly stuck in the corner of the room at a party talking to the person who wants to describe every single traffic issue they’ve ever encountered. Now it works again. Feel free to make your way to the buffet (or “the rest of Slack”, as we like to call it).

Slack 2.75

January 16, 2019

What’s New

From today, you'll notice a shiny new app button that matches our new logo. You can read more about it, should you wish to, on our blog at SlackHQ.com. Change! Everyone loves it. (Having said that, nothing about Slack or how you use it has changed. Just the button.)

Slack 2.74

January 7, 2019

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Custom emojis that did not start off as perfect squares were appearing squished or stretched, and that simply wouldn't do. Our myriad apologies for this terrible state of affairs. It is now remedied.

Slack 2.73

December 10, 2018

What’s New

Fixed: Switching channels then very quickly tapping the message entry box sometimes meant typing wouldn't do anything. This is fixed: let your fleet fingers fly.

Slack 2.72

November 26, 2018

What’s New

Need to pause notifications? Thinking of going on vacation for more than 24 hours? Good news. You can pause them beyond a single day, or until a specific date or time. And we’ve also added two new presets to our existing list: “Until tomorrow” and “Until next week”. A veritable panoply of new options for pausing notifications! Or, at the very least, "several"!

Slack 2.71

November 5, 2018

What’s New

Now, after you confirm your email, you’ll see a list of your workspaces, and pick which ones you’d like to sign into. And then sign into them!
You can now receive notifications while using the app, so If you're catching up on a channel and you receive a DM you won't miss it (and if that doesn't sound like something you'd want, you'll find this in the notification settings menu).

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Enterprise users who were added to a new workspace wouldn’t see the workspace until they signed out and signed back in. They'll now see it far sooner.

Slack 2.70

October 22, 2018

What’s New

If your device is running Oreo or a more recent version of Android, you'll now find your notifications sorted into categories, giving you more control over how and when you see them.
For people whose organization uses Grid, you can now find the channel you need quicker, as you'll now search for — and find — channels in all workspaces, in the "Jump to" menu. (So: if you're in the "Sales" workspace but looking for "#cats" in the "Social" workspace, you can now get there through the quick switcher.)(That presumed that #cats is not already in the Sales workspace, if it is, no judgies, we support your decision on this critical matter.)

Slack 2.69

October 8, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Sometimes, when the app was unable to detect what your status was meant to be, it would crash instead. This was a bad choice on the part of the app, and, after a time-out, the app has apologized and agreed to stop doing that.

Slack 2.68

September 24, 2018

What’s New

Fixed: After ending a Slack call, the call sometimes appeared to be ongoing in the notifications tray. It wasn't (ongoing) but the fact that it was (in the notifications tray) meant a new call couldn't be started. Apologies for this, it's all better now.

Slack 2.67

September 10, 2018

What’s New

Nothing lasts forever. Now when you set your status, you can also set a time (or date) for that status to expire. No longer will people question how you're "Working remotely on Tuesday" when it's Thursday, or wonder why you've been "At the dentist" for 19 consecutive hours.
Fixed: The overflow button that showed up when viewing a user profile was one pixel too low. It is now just right.
Fixed: Starring a message would, in rare cases, result in the star being replaced by a “No Icon” icon. Not no icon; an icon denoting the lack of icon (which is, arguably, in itself, an icon). The "No Icon" icon has now been replaced with the correct icon, and a lingering question over whether "icon" is a word at all.

Slack 2.66

August 27, 2018

What’s New

Message actions come to Android: It's now easier to create tasks, comment on tickets, or follow-up on things while on the move. So if you have important tools like Asana, Zendesk and Jira connected to Slack, you can now long press any message and create a follow up without needing to log into those tools. It's very good. We recommend it.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Restoring the app from a backup would occasionally turn off notifications. We know that was not, is not ever in fact, the intended consequence of restoring your app.

Slack 2.65

August 13, 2018

What’s New

The issue of unruly App Shortcut shapes has been resolved. When you create an App shortcut, the icon will now match the shape of the other icons on your home screen, a feature, we understand, that has been much desired by a user called Ian. So Ian: this one's for you.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Trying to open an attachment that was forwarded to Slack using the special "forward to Slack" email address would crash the app. It no longer does.

Slack 2.64

July 30, 2018

What’s New

Threads now support files — and files support threads. Images and files can be uploaded directly to threads — you can do it by adding files as you normally would. When you comment on a file or an image, it is stored as thread reply. Just like message threads, your replies will now stay nested in a thread attached to the file.
The feature diagnosing notification problems has been behaving better on some devices than others. It should now be best for all.
Searching for, and switching between, channels, is now a markedly improved experience. In terms of performance. Content of said channels remains outside our control.

Slack 2.63

July 16, 2018

What’s New

Searching in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean will now work much, much better.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: A clutch of bugs causing confusion about whether a user was online or off. Now, whether you set availability by typing "/away" or through the user settings menu, your state of green-dottedness (or not) should now be immediately reflected in the app.

Slack 2.62

July 9, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: This is just to say — we have fixed the "delete message" option you found next to your message that had failed to send, and which you were probably hoping would delete the message. Forgive us: it was annoying. So promising, and so nonfunctional.

Slack 2.61

June 18, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Tapping the share button very rapidly over and over again could lead to a loop where the file would get shared over and over again too (until the app was force-quit, or, let's face it, rage-quit). An air of calm now pervades.
Fixed: The application of logic and fine engineering now mean that downloading a file containing the ‘%’ character in the filename will no longer cause a crash.

Slack 2.60

June 4, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: We broke the ability for bots to post under a specified username. This meant their messages would show up with their default name, or just as “bot”. With appropriate deference to our future robot overlords, this errant behavior has been remedied.
Fixed: A bug in the tubes was preventing some users from being able to initiate Slack calls in the Android app. Sorry about this — the pipes have been cleaned and the lines cleared, your call will now go through once more.

Slack 2.59

May 21, 2018

What’s New

If you're having trouble with notifications, a new tool can help troubleshoot and fix them. It's under Settings -> Notifications -> Troubleshoot Notifications. Even the act of opening it might do the trick.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: If you rotated your device at the same time as trying to select a user in the Quick Switcher, the app could crash. We've turned this around.
Fixed: When sharing a message from today, "today" was not capitalized in the footer of a shared message. We cannot apologize enough. It is Now Fixed.

Slack 2.58

May 7, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: The app can now be used when a device's only internet connection is over bluetooth or ethernet, unlike before, when it could only be used when a wifi or cellular connection was available. This is better.
Fixed: When people with particularly long names wrote messages, the date and time of sending were being knocked onto a second line, which was messy. It now, hopefully, is better, and will stop aesthetically offending designers.

Slack 2.57

April 23, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Looking for group conversations through the Quick Switcher was getting sluggish, and less good. It now filters faster.
Fixed: After adding an app to a channel, it wasn't possible to remove that app on Android. Now? Now, if you want it gone, it's gone.
Fixed: Autocompletion was broken for some users until they refreshed their cache. Apologies to those who preferred it broken: it was actually a bug.

Slack 2.56

April 9, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Changing your status on desktop or in another version of the app wasn't always reflected in all the right places on Android, but now is.
Fixed: An edge case in which editing a previous message after beginning a reply to a thread led to the text box for your new reply losing the space buffer on its left side. Yes, it was a marginal error. But now, a fixed one.

Slack 2.55

March 26, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: After migrating their user data to a new phone, some users noticed notifications not working. Or rather, didn't, because they weren't. They now are.
Fixed: File uploads smaller than 1 MB were displaying their size in scientific notation. Knowing your file is 9.320000e+02B may be interesting, but isn't so useful. We now round up.

Slack 2.54

March 12, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: A notification for a new message in a thread will now direct you to the message, as it should.
Fixed: Sometimes, when scrolling through search results, users would find a crash. This turned out not to be something anyone was looking for, so we fixed it.

Slack 2.53

February 26, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: We’ve updated the status of the status feature to “functioning.” Its previous status was “refusing to save your status.”

Slack 2.52

February 19, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: The autocompletion menu, which was not appearing when typing @ on a new line, is now appearing when typed on a new line.
Fixed: When receiving a notification in a thread you haven’t already viewed in the app, you will now be taken to that thread. Which is a significant improvement from the previous experience, which was the app crashing.
Fixed: The search icon (the magnifying glass) was extremely hard to find in certain color themes, which was somewhat ironic. Now it will change colors to be more visible, depending on your color scheme, and thus be more findable, as is apt.

Slack 2.51

January 29, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Sending messages over a spotty connection could cause Slack to crash. That’s now fixed, and we’ll keep working to make Slack easier to use in low-connectivity.
Fixed: If you commented on a file, then immediately shared it to another channel, Slack, overwhelmed, would fall over. We’re better than that.
Fixed: Toggling quickly between “away” and “available,” was sometimes leaving you with the wrong status. Basically, you were in, you were out, you were in, out; in, out: it shook us all about. We did some careful coding, and we’ve turned ourselves around. And that’s what it’s all about.

Slack 2.50

January 18, 2018

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Where users couldn’t sign in with a longer org name of more than 21 characters, they now can, because after all, what’s in a name? (Spoiler: it is “sometimes more than 21 characters”)
Fixed: Trying to upload multiple images at the same time will no longer cause a crash.
Fixed: Tapping on a bot or app icon with no network connection could cause the app to crash. Contrary to appearance, this was not the first sign of the robot uprising, just a bug.

Slack 2.49

December 14, 2017

Bug Fixes

Several obscure crashes, including one that could occur when the app encountered a link to a message also in Slack. This was a step of humility too far. So we fixed it.

Slack 2.48

November 30, 2017

What’s New

Group conversations were not sending notifications as often as they should. Now they correctly respect the notification settings you’ve set, and should therefore get lost less often.

Slack 2.47.1

November 16, 2017

What’s New

Slack now officially, and fully, supports Japanese. Along with the already available French, German, Spanish, and, of course, English (of the US variety).

Slack 2.47

November 9, 2017

What’s New

Forgot to select an autocomplete result when mentioning someone? We’ll try to select the right person for you automatically. Less tapping, more working.
We added a new, simpler way to sign into all workspaces associated with an email address.

Bug Fixes

Handful of trifling bug fixes too small for the human eye.

Slack 2.46

October 26, 2017

What’s New

On devices with Android Oreo, our launcher icon is now adaptive. Which means that it is either a circle or, apparently, a “squircle” depending on the device you’re using.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where we would display empty attachments for some App Integrations. The attachments were not empty. Now, the displays aren’t either.
Previously, some folks were left with a crash when tapping the up-navigation button, and what went down was not right. So we fixed it (up).

Slack 2.45

October 12, 2017

Bug Fixes

Fixed: A sneaky issue where the "User is typing" text was hard to read because of the light text color.
Fixed: The Unread Badge for a Direct Message was sometimes sticking around, even if you’d read it. Now what’s read remains read, until there’s something new to read.
Fixed: When a workspace admin has restricted who can use @-here and @-channel, we no longer let people use @-here in messages or file comments. As you might have expected to begin with.

Slack 2.44

September 28, 2017

What’s New

When adding channel topics or purpose, you can now use any standard message formatting, be it bold, italic, links or usernames.

Bug Fixes

We’ve added support that means you can disable the ability to comment on files in Shared Channels - for quick diffusion of multi-workspace confusion.
When you got two messages, you weren’t receiving a notification sound for the second one. You now will.
Somehow, we had stopped showing Today / Yesterday / Tomorrow in attachments that contained a date. Now you’ll always know what day it is (or rather, what day it was, when the attachment was uploaded).

Slack 2.43

September 11, 2017

What’s New

Slack is now fully available in French, Spanish and German, down to the very last emoji.
Also, we added support for a brand new way of working with external companies from within Slack.
AND a whole new way of handling name tagging in order to handle the exciting world of challenges brought by the two things above. Phew.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: Newly-created group conversations mysteriously missing from the Drawer will now appear there once again.
Fixed: User Groups (like @engineers, @designers, or whatever groups you’ve created) which were not showing up in the message input autocomplete, now are.
Fixed: Some people running Android O were experiencing a crash on start-up. No more.
Fixed: When returning to a thread from the archive view, we now remember your scroll position, and return you to it accordingly.
Fixed: In an unwanted buy-one-get-one-free feature, people using Android O were getting notifications twice.
Fixed: In an unwanted buy-one-get-one-free feature, people using Android O were getting notifications twice. We just wanted to do it one final time in case you were, for some reason, enjoying it. The number of notifications has been reduced to a more desirable 100%.

Slack 2.42

August 31, 2017

What’s New

We removed support for Twitter and EmojiOne emoji styles on Android, we know some people used them, and we salute you with the emoji of your choice - but they were very large. Fewer emoji styles = a smaller app for everyone.

Bug Fixes

Previously, you couldn’t see your own email when viewing your profile. You now can. If, for some reason, that is something you want to do.
“Oh no I pinned that by mistake!” Good news: You can now unpin a message by long-pressing and selecting that function from the list.

Slack 2.41

August 17, 2017

What’s New

New: In side channel details, you’ll find a natty new Edit button allowing you to easily change the topic or purpose of the channel, or, if you have the ability to change the Channel name itself.

Bug Fixes

Fixed: If you wanted to set a reminder on a message that had been broadcast back to channel from a thread, you were foiled. Success is now yours.
Fixed: Tapping on a magic link no longer runs the risk of causing a crash - if nothing else, it wasn’t the kind of magic we intended.

Slack 2.40

August 3, 2017

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where animated custom status emoji, which should be paused, were animating. Moving forward there will be zero tolerance for the undead, at least in this context.
Handful of crash fixes. More than a spoonful, less than a bucket full, all good.

Slack 2.39

July 20, 2017

Bug Fixes

Fixed: We were not respecting the 'plain text only' emoji style. Henceforth, we promise to always respect your right to an emoji-free experience. :pinky_swear:
Fixed: Sometimes, when sharing a Snippet in Channel, we displayed a blank profile avatar. No more. Snippet where snippet is due.
Fixed: The ginormous emoji displayed on some devices when setting status was, remarkably, unintentional, and has been rectified.