Slack for Mac - Release Notes

Slack 4.2.0

December 4, 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. Brilliant.
• Like zooming in and out? Use a numpad? Great news. You can now do these things, on that.

Bug Fixes

• Notifications looked weird if your workspace name was long. Now, no matter your team name, 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

October 18, 2019

Bug Fixes

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

Slack 4.1.0

September 16, 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

August 28, 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

August 7, 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 telling you so.
• A pesky leak involving in-channel videos has been plugged.

Slack 4.0.1

July 25, 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

July 15, 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

• Drag and dropping files into Slack is much more stable now. Phew.
• If you do need, for some reason, to reset the app data, this is now a smoother process than before.
• Those in many workspaces will find that their icons are now more pleasingly aligned in the sidebar. It's a small thing, but very pleasing.
• When DND is enabled, we no longer bounce the icon in the dock. Because DND means DND.
• The process of updating Slack is now more stable — and we now more helpfully explain why we're asking for permissions to do that update.
• Notifications were not making sounds that might notify you 100% of the time. Honestly, they had ONE job. They now perform it.
• Customized Slack shortcuts on macOS that sometimes weren't working now do the thing you intended (and apologies that that wasn't the case for some).
• Hardware acceleration can now be turned off without foregrounding Slack. If you know what that means, you'll know it's a good thing. And if you don't — it still is! And thank you for reading anyway.

Slack 3.4.2

May 23, 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

• Changed things to be smarter 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 kind of fix is one you don't notice at all because nothing is going wrong.

Slack 3.4.0

April 18, 2019

Bug Fixes

• Launch (and Hide) on Login now works better than once it did. Where 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 aesthetically bad. 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 into instead of the icons they were expecting. They will now show correctly.
• Any keyboard and cursor actions you may have experienced behaving badly have been shown the error of their ways.

Slack 3.3.8

March 8, 2019

What’s New

• In a slight change to the way you sign in on desktop, you'll now sign in in the browser rather than directly inside 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 now practically perfect in every way.
• If you have had problems logging in using SSO (single sign-on), you should no longer encounter those problems.
• We fixed a problem wherein the "Open the Slack App" button in the browser did not, in fact, open the app. Honestly: it had *one* job. It now performs that job.

Slack 3.3.7

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 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.)

Bug Fixes

• Users signing in with Single Sign-On would see the same message twice when logging in.
• Users signing in with Single Sign-On would see the same message twice when logging in. This will not happen any more.
• When trying to select a portion of a code-formatted block of text (text formatted with ` or ``` at either end), some characters were proving slippery and hard to select. Please copy and paste to your heart's content.
• Several crashes — occurring rarely, and seemingly randomly, on launch and at other times — have been eliminated. More random and rare crashes inevitably exist, of course, and as soon as we know what they are, we'll eliminate those too.
• When downloading particular audio or video files from Slack, the download window will no longer misbehave or look weird.
• If you were running macOS Mojave, we sometimes wouldn’t ask you for permissions for microphone and video even though we needed to, which meant we couldn’t use them. We now will and can (with your blessing, of course).

Slack 3.3.4 (Mac App Store)

January 14, 2019

Bug Fixes

• Users signing in with Single Sign-On would see the same message twice when logging in.
• Users signing in with Single Sign-On would see the same message twice when logging in. This will not happen any more.
• When trying to select a portion of a code-formatted block of text (text formatted with ` or ``` at either end), some characters were proving slippery and hard to select. Please copy and paste to your heart's content.
• Several crashes — occurring rarely, and seemingly randomly, on launch and at other times — have been eliminated. More random and rare crashes inevitably exist, of course, and as soon as we know what they are, we'll eliminate those too.
• When downloading particular audio or video files from Slack, the download window will no longer misbehave or look weird.
• If you were running macOS Mojave, we sometimes wouldn’t ask you for permissions for microphone and video even though we needed to, which meant we couldn’t use them. We now will and can (with your blessing, of course).

Slack 3.3.3

October 2, 2018

Bug Fixes

• All updates are important, of course. This one contains security updates, and as we know, they’re the most important kind of all.

Slack 3.3.2 (Mac App Store)

September 6, 2018

What’s New

• If you're having graphical issues, you can now use the "Disable Hardware Acceleration” in preferences to make things better.

Bug Fixes

• Overall, stability of the app has been improved, thanks to a bevy of bug fixes.
• We appreciate it when you report issues — so we've improved the diagnostic reporting tools so that we can analyze them, and fix them, faster.
• Having multiple windows open sometimes led to you getting duplicate notifications at once. Whatever the message, it should now just be one ping per tool for y'all, one click to find them.
• Color profiles being slightly different in 3.2.0 may have caused a little flicker, which should now have been extinguished.
• The spellcheck, having had its logic tweaked, to be better at spellchecking, is now a lot bitter at chicken for erroneous spilling ersatz. In Slack.
• When you download something, we're now better at telling you so.
• In fact, notifications in general are noticeably more reliable now, too.
• One particular bug causing the app to crash upon launch has been squished. There may be more. But when we find them, we'll fix those too.
• We’ve tinkered with the internal workings and polished some rough edges. The app is now better than it was.

Slack 3.3.1

August 31, 2018

What’s New

• If you're having graphical issues, you can now use the "Disable Hardware Acceleration” in preferences to make things better.

Bug Fixes

• Overall, stability of the app has been improved, thanks to a bevy of bug fixes.
• We appreciate it when you report issues — so we've improved the diagnostic reporting tools so that we can analyze them, and fix them, faster.
• Having multiple windows open sometimes led to you getting duplicate notifications at once. Whatever the message, it should now just be one ping per tool for y'all, one click to find them.
• Color profiles being slightly different in 3.2.0 may have caused a little flicker, which should now have been extinguished.
• The spellcheck, having had its logic tweaked, to be better at spellchecking, is now a lot bitter at chicken for erroneous spilling ersatz. In Slack.
• When you download something, we're now better at telling you so.
• In fact, notifications in general are noticeably more reliable now, too.
• One particular bug causing the app to crash upon launch has been squished. There may be more. But when we find them, we'll fix those too.
• We’ve tinkered with the internal workings and polished some rough edges. The app is now better than it was.

Slack 3.2.0

June 5, 2018

What’s New

• Myriad improvements for the people of Enterprise Grid, including quicker Quick Switching, better proxy support, and direct message draft syncing across multiple workspaces (meaning that whichever workspace you started typing that message in, you can finish in another.)

Bug Fixes

• Unread badges were occasionally unreliable or inconsistent, so we tweaked a few doohickeys to improve them. It worked.
• Smoothed some wrinkles in the loading of Slack calls and boosted general under-the-hood call performance while we were in there.
• We tinkered with the workspace sign-in flow, updating how we handle errors and improving magic link support.
• Copying email links now does what you’d expect (as long as you were expecting it to copy the email link. If you were expecting it to do something like file your taxes for you, you are still out of luck).
• Slack will no longer interrupt macOS when restarting or shutting down.
• After changing displays, pinch-to-zoom gestures will no longer insist on continuing to zoom the app when you pinch.
• Twelve crashes have been fixed. Yes. 12. If you were unlucky enough to experience the full dozen, please accept a) this imaginary medal and b) our sincere apologies.

Slack 3.1.1

April 6, 2018

Bug Fixes

• We got so excited about your emoji we kept requesting them, particularly at the moment you switched channels. This caused all manner of slowness. We've since bottled our enthusiasm, and now request emoji exactly one (1) time.

Slack 3.1.0

March 9, 2018

What’s New

• We’re using a new font for Japanese. It’s clearer, more legible, and goes well with aubergine. (Which is the default color of your sidebar. As well as a vegetable.)
• Sometimes Slack takes too long to start up. If that happens, a) we’re sorry that it does, but b) you’ll now see a link with some helpful troubleshooting ideas.
• When a file’s done downloading, a new notification will dutifully let you know.
• If you’ve asked Slack to launch right when your computer turns on, Slack now does so much more quietly — with less extraneous loading screen action, and fewer fanfares.

Bug Fixes

• Badges about unread messages would linger on the dock icon, even after said messages had been read. These badges will linger no more.
• Slack would occasionally crash when it wasn’t allowed to put files in the Temp folder. Now, it will simply use the Downloads folder, instead.
• Some users who clicked on a magic link were not taken to their workspace. We have set our cauldrons to a slow simmer and magic links should now work as expected.
• When trying to connect via a proxy, Slack no longer refuses to load.
• Sometimes, during a support conversation, we’d ask you to reset your app data with the click of a button. Clicking this button will now actually reset all the necessary data, rather than some. Which is good for everyone.
• Now you can download a file from Slack, delete it, and then download it again. If that seems like the way the Slack should’ve always worked, well, you aren’t wrong.
• Right clicking “something” and choosing “Search with Google” had a tendency to search for “so”, “me”, or “thing.” It will now search for the entire text. So if you really do want to Google “something” (or something else), we’ll have your back.
• While operating in the background, Slack would sometimes keep notifications to itself. Sharing is caring, and you should now receive notifications as normal.
• If you quit Slack while the app was full screen, then started the app again, sometimes the gray bar that lets you close, minimize, and maximize the window would vanish for good. Now it doesn’t.
• Too many text substitutions in your Mac settings would cause Slack to perform poorly. You can now use text replacement to your heart’s content.
• Interacting with a notification will cause it to disappear, and not hang around indefinitely.
• When replying to a notification from the notification pop-up, the reply will now always be sent. As opposed to before, when it occasionally wasn't.
• A subtle gray border on the right edge of the window has been replaced with a subtler gray border. Subtle, one might say, to the point of invisibility. Ok, fine — we just removed it.
• If you’d previously asked Slack to download files to a folder other than Downloads, that won’t work anymore. We’re very sorry about that. The option to choose a different folder will return shortly.

Slack 3.0.5

January 18, 2018

Bug Fixes

• An important security update. Security updates are always important. This is one of those.

Slack 3.0.2

January 9, 2018

Bug Fixes

• We undid changes that have been causing some people to occasionally miss notifications with 3.0.0. You will now miss nothing. Unless you want to.
• Clicking on and replying to notifications is now also more reliable.
• macOS 10.13 High Sierra has a bug that impacts some 2012-2013 MacBook Pros, causing display problems with Slack. We have a temporary fix for these devices that may make performance slightly worse, but will at least avoid flickering and graphics glitches. Performant AND non-glitchy is the next step.
• Slack will no longer sometimes crash when you ask it to quit. Quitting and crashing may have the same effect, but are not, after all, the same thing.

Slack 3.0.0

December 8, 2017

What’s New

• When you’re in a lot of workspaces, the app now uses much less memory, and starting up is faster, to boot.
• And flipping between those workspaces is now faster. Not super-sonic, but certainly somewhere between a jiffy and lickety-split.
• We shunted the sign-in page out of the app — it's now rerouted to a new window, for reasons of reliability.
• A new-fangled lock badge subtly lets you know which workspaces you're currently signed out of. Or of which you're currently signed out. Either way.
• Our start up screen, spruced-up and slimmed-down, is worth a gander — as is the helpful way that dates now stick to the top of a channel while scrolling through messages. Though if you don't notice them, but quietly feel a little bit happier for reasons you can't put your finger on, that's cool too.

Bug Fixes

• It’s been a long time coming but brings us joy to say: 100% less reloading during drag and drop. How much? 100%. That's all the percents, people. Sorry about the previous frustration.
• For those encountering a screen claiming "Something’s not working", it turns out the main thing not working was this screen: it is no more.
• If you kept the app running for a long time, you might be on the receiving end of two consecutive updates. Now good things come to those who wait, one-at-a-time, as is proper.
• The sidebar now scoots considerately out of the way when viewing full-screen video.
• We fixed exiting full-screen video when pressing the aptly-named “Escape” key.
• The blackout caused by a window being closed while full-screen, with one request confoundingly eclipsing the other, has been sunsetted.
• Found: One missing Ctrl-1 / Cmd-1 hotkey. Please call 1-800-SLACKME to claim. Don't actually call that. It doesn't do anything. Unlike the hotkey (now).
• Should you forget what app you’re using, the About Slack window is all new and loads much faster than before.
• Scrolling through messages is flicker-free.
• There are now no more crashes in High Sierra when starting up the app.
• Composing text in an IME (for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean customers) no longer inserts zero-width spaces; in other words, it’s blank-box-free.
• The diacritics menu – the place where the alphabet goes to try on different hats and accents – no longer adds a duplicate letter to your input once you've chosen the one you want. We've said it before, but this time we really mëean it.
• Pinch-to-zoom gestures could, sometimes, tragically, irreversibly zoom. You can now make things on your screen smaller again without resorting to moving your computer far away.
• The popup that appears when you look up the definition of a word has been realigned to make more sense.
• And finally, sometimes selecting text in the search box would move the window around. You could say… it was a bit of a drag.

Slack 2.9.0

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). Find them under Languages & Region in your preferences menu.

Slack 2.8.2

October 16, 2017

What’s New

• A small release containing nothing but another Electron update, this one better than the last.

Slack 2.8.1

September 29, 2017

What’s New

• Previously in Slack app releases: we fixed the Japanese input in 2.6.3. Then we re-broke it in 2.8.0. And now it’s fixed again. Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment.
• An important Electron update improving security. A precautionary measure, but it’s always good to be up to date.

Slack 2.8.0

September 11, 2017

What’s New

• Slack is now fully available in French, Spanish and German, down to the very last emoji, you’ll find the options in Preferences > Language & Region.
• 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.
• All mentions of “team” have been changed to “workspace” when referring to the app, though not when referring to the people in it. You create a workspace. You invite people from your team. Simple!
• You can now configure the language used by the spellchecker in Preferences to be the language you wish to spell correctly.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed: A few rare crashes when making a call and/or screen sharing on a call are now, we believe, on the brink of extinction - or possibly, we hope, gone forever.
• Fixed: An issue where the app would hang if your OS reported that you were in certain timezones.
• Fixed: You may have been running into a `Something's Not Working` screen when waking your computer from sleep. Turns out the thing not working was that. So we fixed it.

Slack 2.7.1

August 17, 2017

Bug Fixes

• You're nearly finished signing in when suddenly – bonk – you're brought back to the first page. Hey, what gives? Please accept our apologies and, in this version, 100% less bonking
• Entering characters from the accent menu no longer inserts an extra character. Voilà señorita: that souffleé is now an (edible) soufflé.

Slack 2.7.0

August 1, 2017

What’s New

• The app now stores some login information on the keychain. So if a passerby requests permission (a dialog, not a stranger), do try and approve it.
• File downloads are now pausable and – in perhaps a master stroke of matchmaking – resumable too.
• A bevy of changes to make the app more keyboard navigable.
• We’ve adjusted the app icon, but just a skosh. Putting our best foot forward.
• Should the worst happen and the app fail to load, you’ll see a less dreadful error page and perhaps even a code you can share.

Bug Fixes

• Like an electrically-motivated vampire was Slack to your laptop’s battery. Put down the garlic; leave the stakes at home: we’ve done the slaying on our end.
• We spliced some wires we shouldn’t have, causing a loading screen to flash briefly after signing into a team. Now it’s as it should be.
• The team sidebar is no longer touch-challenged. Tap, flick, and drag teams to your heart’s content.
• Canceling a running download is 38% less crashy. For when you decide you didn’t need that third gif after all.
• If you’ve set the app to start hidden in your system login items, it will listen to you.
• In a similar vein, if you send a reply from an alert-style notification, your teammates will hear you.

Slack 2.6.3

June 7, 2017

Bug Fixes

• Sometimes if you changed networks, we used to rouse from sleep in a bit of a daze, greeting you with a blank screen. Now, we awaken bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Or at the very least, with your team displayed.
• Where, in rare cases, some external links didn't end up pointing to the right place when you clicked them, they now do.
• Video playback should now be much smoother, and nicer to your network.
• On certain keyboard layouts, hitting backspace didn't actually delete the last character, which was a surprise, but a surprise of the lesser kind - there is now one fewer lesser surprise.