Brace yourself for Slack’s biggest ever redesign

Here’s what to expect and when you might see it.

Written by Artie Beaty, Contributing Writer on

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Your workday might look a little different soon, as the popular workplace collaboration platform Slack has unveiled it’s rolling out a redesign. The company hopes the changes help you stay organized, focused, and productive.

For starters, Slack assured users of what is staying the same. There’s still going to be a “home” section and “you’ll still be able to see all your channels, direct messages and apps from a single view.” Clicking any of those opens them in a column to the right.

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But what’s new? The interface might not seem drastically different, but here’s what you can look for.

The left column will now have separate tabs for your channels, direct messages, and notifications. A “later” tab is available for posts you’ve indicated you don’t want to deal with right now, and you can even set a reminder to make sure you deal with them. A search button sits at the bottom of that column, along with a button to start a new DM, canvas, or huddle (replacing the current “draft message” option). Hovering over any of those tabs, like DMs or activity, gives an overview without having to fully click and move away from what you’re working on.

In addition to a new location, search is a little deeper. With the update, users can click into a search result to see the full message rather than jumping back and forth.

Direct messages also have a new hub, with the “inbox ” showing the latest message in each conversation, plus the option to only see unread messages.

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And if you’re in multiple Slack workspaces, you’ll notice that you now have the ability to see all of those channels in the home section without toggling back and forth.

The goal behind the changes, according to Slack, is to help users not only navigate channels and conversations more easily, but find and focus on what’s important to work distraction-free.

The redesigned Slack will “begin rolling out to new teams,” starting today “and will reach our existing users over the coming months.”