Leave a Review Slack
Lots of little frustrations
The Slack service is great but the ios app needs either a better thoughtout navigation system or more customizations. There’s so many little things that could be slightly tweaked to make this a better experience.
For instance, all unread channels and 1:1 conversations are automatically moved to the top of the list, which means the list is constantly shifting around, making it very difficult to find the channel I need or go back to the previous channel after switching briefly to see a new message. And when I look for a particular conversation or channel, I have to check two places. The desktop slack app (thankfully) offers an option to turn this off, but not the mobile app.
Settings for the whole app are buried inside channels/conversations. Settings for channels, at least to some degree, are only available on the desktop app. It’s a mess.
And editing a message requires a long press and then a quick tap on a menu that’s partially covered by the home indicator on the iPhone X/11.
Sometimes my workflow is interrupted by a not-so-helpful on-screen tip, like the one showing me how to swipe horizontally. (I already knew that, and I have work to do.) There’s no way to turn these off or quickly dismiss them, so I must complete each exercise before I’m allowed to use the app.
The list goes on. The updates to the app are frequent but sadly its shortcomings get less priority than silly things like an entire screen to choose the app icon.Show lessTheDelayFish
Developer Response
Hi there, We’d be interested in hearing more about these issues that you have highlighted. When you have a moment, please navigate to your app’s "You" tab - "Preferences" - "Send Feedback" to flag this with our support team. We’ll be happy to help!So far, so good, some issues though
So far, this app hasn’t done anything bad per se. It gets the job done, just a basic app for work. However, I wish you could choose what kind of messages will send you a notification. If you just downloaded this app, be wary about notifications. From what I know, Slack only notifies you if you/the channel is tagged/mentioned, so anything else sent in the channels you will not receive a notification for, which is kind of annoying. For example, when I or someone else has a question, that does not need the whole channels attention, but is not directed at a specific person, no one will be notified of the message. Which means that it can take a while for someone to get back to you.Show lessLoose_eel
Just ok
Still very difficult to use and know where to find things, and which section I need to look at, maybe because I’m technically a year older than the range of a millennial? It would be lovely if it integrated with the company email, intranet, shared drive, one drive on the search but that would probably take some negotiating on intellectual property rights between other companies etc. Way too many groups or projects getting encouraged to open a slack group, and a suggestion on this I have is don’t make the default that someone gets pinged on every single message by anyone in that group unless they get directly mentioned. Slack becomes way too overwhelming like email and Facebook and other social platforms that people will quickly ignore.Show lessMandybethd
Can’t open Saved Items from iPad Pro
I AM able to open links on the Desktop site from my Saved Items. But not in the mobile app or from my iPad. In fact, I had to open Slack in a mobile browser in order to even open a Saved Item. How does that make sense????????
If I try on my ipad- I have to go to my profile, whereas on the dekstop “Saved Items” are found on the lefthand column with everything else- makes sense. On a mobile device, there’s these additional steps. Doesn’t make sense. Anyway, once in my Profile, I click on the dots in the upper right hand corner. I click on Saved Items. My Saved Items populate. Okay, great. Finally. I click on the link in the Saved Item I want. Nothing. The Saved Items menu disappears and I’m just looking at my Profile. I try again. Same thing. Try again. Same thing. I long press the link. The app completely closes out altogether. 😒
As a UX designer, if you guys can’t see or understand the frustration I have with this simple feature that should be easy...lol. And yes my app is up to date. Please fix. Apparently I can do this from my laptop and my phone, but I use my iPad for school and Zoom meetings since everything is virtual. And the Zoom meeting is saved on Slack for the classroom.
I shouldn’t have to go into a mobile browser because the link won’t work in the app itself.Show lessrain2cry
Good except for notifications
Overall the app works quite well. Some things are big misses for me though, especially notifications. Putting a lot of detail in hopes it is read by developers as I do want to love the app.
Searching for users when trying to start a DM doesn’t prioritize users you’ve talked to before. I work at a company with thousands of employees, so if I search for someone with a common first name and I don’t know their last name, I have to go through a list of 30 people when I’ve talked to them before and I’d expect them to just come up first.
Messages you read on web or on the app don’t dismiss notifications. I have to go dismiss them all one at a time even though the app should know I’ve read them. Big failing for me compared to something like FB messenger which will know to clear them.
There are no different snooze settings for different days of the week. I don’t work 7 days a week. Why would I want the same snooze settings?
There is no granularity on getting alerts for channels besides give me everything all the time, and give me nothing. If a conversation is happening I want to know about it, but I also don’t want my phone to completely blow up with 50 notifications beeping at me in 10 minutes. It would be much less distracting / annoying to group the messages and notify on configurable intervals
Lastly, if I get a message while snoozed I am not told about it once the snooze ends. This can lead to me not noticing a message for daysShow lessAyrton117
Far and away the best group messenger
I (like many) have recently added many group messaging apps to my phone for work and school groups during quarantine. Slack was a later addition to the collection but it is so much better than all the others! The ability to create channels within a group, the self DM feature (where you can set reminders, write notes, etc.), and the intuitive design make this app superior to other group messaging apps. Joining multiple very large groups and keeping files, conversations, and sub-groups so well organized within those groups is nothing short of amazing.Show lessnragu
Like the platform, UIs are getting worse
I like the platform, but the UIs on the various platforms - and especially iOS / iPadOS - are getting worse, not better, with every update.
They are ultimately following the “cram every feature into it” model. The current iOS UI is far less useable because now I have groups which has reorganized everything making the UI require a smaller font on an already tiny screen (and my eyesight is not getting any better with age). I also have (horribly crappy) Facebook menu UI buttons at the bottom for Home, DMs, Mentions, and You. In the previous UI I didn’t need these because everything was already there.
Things which were easy like setting status are now buried multiple screens deep and searching for previous conversations is much harder.
Facebook is not the UI you want to model. It’s not intuitive, clunky, and archaic. Remember, people didn’t flock to Slack because it looked and worked like Facebook. They flocked to Slack because it was easy to use and intuitive and made sense and didn’t require a “here’s what is new and how to use it” every time something new came out (all stuff Facebook does).
Please fire those UI devs and PMs which you hired from Facebook and go back to what you had before. It was better and it worked.Show lessSquidlyMan
Wonderful App! So much better than email or something like GroupMe for workplace communication!
This app is seriously incredible. There is a slight learning curve for using this app, but once you get the hang of it, it is so helpful and effective in communicating with the largest of groups down to personal messages. It’s almost social-media-like format makes it easy to use and pick up after just a little practice. The more apps you link to it the more useful it can be. My one suggestion would be a “Do Not Disturb” option for a certain days of the week(ie having notifications off on the weekends without having to turn it on do not disturb every Friday and back on, on Monday).Show lessscratwurst
Poor Interfacing and Issues Galore
The amount of issues I have had to try and solve with Slack is quite astounding. My main complaint is the organization of the profile. When I log into slack I can’t just use my email and password like most other apps. I have to have the name of a slack workspace??? What is the point of that? I don’t have URLs memorized by heart so logging in is always a challenge on a new device.
The mobile app is so limited compared to other apps. Never before have I felt so crutches by which version I am using. All the features I am searching for only seem to exist on the web browser. Sadly that doesn’t help my phone blowing up with all the notifications. There needs to be better support for the phone.
All-in-all, I would never recommend Slack to anyone. Not until they fix their phone support and user interface.Show lessTrebu Trey
Great platform with a minor issue
I’ve been using slack for a year now with work, classes, and organizations. It has a really nice setup and I enjoy the fast communication. But something that I think could be changed is the do not disturb - I think there should not be a default automatically turned on and people should instead receive a suggestion to change this themselves in settings, many people don’t pay attention to this and I have a lot of messages that end up not being seen. The big thing is that after the do not disturb period ends, you don’t get notified of the messages that you received within that time period. So many people end up not seeing those messages until much later, or not at all. I think slack should notify you immediately after the do not disturb period ends so you can respond to those messages in a timely fashion. This seems like a big thing to overlook.Show lessKierra689
