Unlocking Slack’s Full Potential 💫
By: Robert Cooper
Tags: Slack, Communication, Tips And Tricks, Productivity, Keyboard Shortcuts

Search Modifier

in:[#channel] - searches messages in a channel

in:[@name] - searches messages in DM conversations with a particular user

to:me - searches messages sent to you

from:[@name] - searches messages from a particular person

from:me - searches messages you’ve sent

has:link - searches messages that have a URL

has:reaction - searches only messages that have received reaction (maybe not the most practical of features, but a fun one, for sure!)

before:[date] , after:[date] , on:[date/month/year] , during:[month/year] - searches within a specific time frame

Search modifiers can even be combined together to narrow down your results even further!

You can also exclude channels from being indexed in your searches to prevent certain results from appearing. This could be useful for channels you don’t participate in, or channels that consist of an accumulation of data posted by a third party integration.

To exclude channels, add them under Preferences -> Search .

You can exclude certain channels from being searched in Slack’s preferences

You can exclude certain channels from being searched in Slack’s preferences, too. And finally, you can search from within any conversation by starting off your query with /s followed by your modifiers and keywords.

Unread Messages & Channels 📖

To mark a message in a channel or conversation as unread, hold done ⌥ and click on a message’s timestamp. This technique is helpful when you want to revisit a spot on your page at a later date.

Mark messages as unread by holding down ⌥ and clicking

Starring Messages ⭐️

You can “star” messages in any channel and then review those items in the “Starred Items” panel. This can be handy when you want to address a message, but need to come back to it later.

Mark messages with a star

Quick Switching 🏎

Use ⌘ + K to open up the Quick Switcher, which allows you to navigate to any channel, direct message, or team. This is a great way to quickly navigate around Slack, especially when combined with other keyboard shortcuts. The less time you spend switching between your keyboard and mouse/trackpad, the faster you can get things done.

View All Unreads In One Place 📚

Read up on all your unread messages in one place by activating All Unreads in Preferences -> Sidebar -> Show All Unreads . This prevents you from having to navigate between a bunch of different channels or direct message conversations when you want to get caught up on things in Slack.

All the unread messages can be viewed in one location

Uncluttered Channels ⛏

If you’re someone who likes to keep things uncluttered, you can use the /collapse command to hide all inline image previews. This keeps things nice and compact, especially when people are posting lots of links to articles that are accompanied by thumbnail images. If you want to see the pretty pictures again, you can use /expand to reveal them.

Reference Past Messages 🔗

Slack lets you reference another message by copying the message’s link and using it as the basis for a new message. This proves useful when you want to provide more context to your message.

Copy the link of a message to be able to reference it in another message

Conduct Polls With Emoji Reactions 🙋‍

There is no official polling system in Slack, but you can easily leverage the use of reactions to create a poll. Just ask a question and add a reaction for each of the options, which will allow people to click on a reaction to cast their votes. We use this all the time when we’re ordering food to the office. Each employee simply reacts with an emoji to indicate which lunch option he or she prefers.

You can number your options in a message and have people vote with reactions. The graphic above shows you how many people have reacted to each option.

Minimize Distractions 💤

Need some quiet time? Why not set up Slack’s automatic Do Not Disturb mode to disable notifications between certain hours of the day? Users can override this if they want, but they’ll have to press an additional confirmation button for their message to trigger a notification on your end.

You can also enable Do Not Disturb mode in any Slack message box by typing /dnd followed by an amount of time. For example, you could use /dnd until 12 PM , /dnd for one hour , /dnd until tomorrow , or a similar variation to enable Do Not Disturb.

To turn your notifications back on, simply type the command /dnd off .

Reminders ⏰

Have Slack remind you about things using the /remind command. You can use reminders to remind other users, channels, or even yourself. For example, you could set up /remind @justin.trudeau Buy bread on the way home at 5 PM or /remind me Send weekly client update Friday at 10 AM .

I often use reminders to prompt a channel to carry out a recurring task, or to remind me to tell someone something during working hours if I think of it after work (I don’t like messaging people on Slack after work if I can avoid it).

Third Party App Integrations

There are many 3rd party applications that integrate well with Slack. For example, there’s a way to manage Trello cards using Slack. You can view a list of all available Slack integrations on their website.

There are also tools provided by IFTTT and Zapier that allow you automate some actions. A popular integration we use is GIPHY which allows users to add GIFs to their messages in Slack!

Not sure what the context would be for this GIF, but it’s a good one IMO

Keyboard Shortcuts ⌨️

Slack offers quite a few keyboard shortcuts, all of which are listed when you press ⌘ + / . Some useful shortcuts include ⇧ + Esc to mark all messages in Slack as read and ⌘ + ⇧ + \ to add a reaction to the last message in a channel.