It's sunny where I live ☀️ A perfect day for a rollup of Slack pro-tips. I've worked on @SlackHQ since the first prototypes, and always forget that most people don't know about all the "secret menu" items
These are randomly organized based on the order in which I remembered them
Type a comma in the quickswitcher to see all your most common/recent Group DMs
Open the quickswitcher to the "mode" you want:
• cmd+f for find in current channel
• cmd+g for archive search
• cmd+k for conversation switching ("Jump to")
Add a reaction to the last message with this syntax:
+:emoji_name:
And of course you can remove your reaction with:
-:emoji_name:
cmd+click on a channel or page to open it in "split view" and keep it handy:
Even better, cmd+click the Compose button to open a new draft in split view:
cmd+shift+d to show/hide the sidebar:
Make Slack pretty with your fave theme (Preferences > Themes). My go-to is Ultraviolet by @cbujnowicz
Set your Sidebar to only show unread conversations (Preferences > Sidebar > Show...) and hide all the noise (then use the quickswitcher to get around!)
Set your emoji skintone (Preferences > Messages & Media) or in the Emoji Picker
Keep your sidebar organized with Sections. Right-click a channel to get started (under Move channel)
Type /shrug to send this little friend:
Set a custom notification sound for fun (Preferences > Notifications > Sound & appearance)
Press the up arrow to edit your last message. Also handy for quick deletion: up – cmd+a – delete – enter
Click the date pill in a channel to jump to a different date:
Underused way to link to messages: right-click on any timestamp to copy the link, then paste it somewhere and it will "unfurl" without having to use the Share flow. You can also do this from the message menu:
Press opt+up or opt+down to traverse the channels in the order they're presented in your sidebar
Resize the sidebar and right column by clicking + dragging on the dividers. Double-click on a divider to reset it.
Hold shift while selecting emoji to keep the emoji picker open:
There are many more but that's all I've got for today. Also haven't even touched mobile! Another time.
What did I miss?
Just realized I forgot the best one!
shift+esc to mark everything read
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Today's the 10 year anniversary since we launched @SlackHQ to the world.
Seems as good a time as any to look back and try to make sense of it all. Not every day a failed game company turns into a massively successful enterprise software company, after all.
@alirayl and I have been trading notes and drafts about this for the last few years.
We'd like to share the story as best we can, from our own perspective as well as from the many wonderful people who made Slack unique.
The story starts with eight people making software to solve their own problems.
It ends, mostly, with a $28B acquisition. Between those two bookends are countless stories we could tell, but the ones that are unique to Slack are the ones we would like to tell.
The term still grosses me out, but alternatives have failed to catch on 😅
When prototyping new features or feature changes, dogfooding gives us a vocal internal audience to learn from.
This usually starts as a small set of opt-in users. If an idea has legs, we proceed to a "Friends Of" release – dozens of high-context colleagues for feedback
We started the day with a connected users record of 9.8K. Almost ten thousand humans! Using the little thing we made! We made about $5K from paid seats.
It was a good day.
They say the cells in the human body replace themselves every 7 years (this isn't true but it's poetic). It feels like that at Slack: the ongoing evolution and reinvention of the code, the company, and the product has replaced much of what we started with, though the DNA remains.
The dent we set out to make in how people spend their time at work is apparent. Slack and similar products have largely replaced email for a huge number of people. People's expectations of the quality and care that goes into work software have risen.