Slack unveils a new design with an updated navigation bar, collapsible sections within the sidebar, improved ways to respond to threads and mentions, and more
Yet Phil Wainewright / diginomica : Risky! As millions start working from home, Slack changes its UX. Here's why Tim Hardwick / MacRumors : Slack Desktop App Update Introduces Major Platform Redesign Pradeep / MSPoweruser : Microsoft Teams now has 44 million daily active users David Pierce / Protocol : Slack's bid to out-Slack the competition Julia Schmidt / DEVCLASS : Slack cleans up for newly remote hordes Brittany A. Roston / SlashGear : Slack is rolling out a simpler redesigned UI with new features Mike Moore / TechRadar.com : Slack unveils major design overhaul Jazmin Goodwin / Input : Slack's redesigned its user interface as remote work spikes due to COVID-19 Tweets: Alisa Calvillo / @alisacalvillo : As a former remote worker at @InVisionApp, I was an avid user before working at @SlackHQ. So I geek out a bit over getting to use and test product updates before they GTM. I know this new IA will drastically improve the way you work because it's already done so for me. Enjoy! 🎉 https://twitter.com/... Scott Hanselman / @shanselman : This single Slack blog post about a “simpler...Slack” is literally *70 megabytes.* Mostly animated GIFs rather than MP4. https://slackhq.com/... https://twitter.com/... @kris : Drag & drop slack channels into folders (sections) and use the nav bar to return to previous work! 👏🏼 I love love love this redesign - coming to you very soon! https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : Seeing some pushback on Slack's decision to release a new version at this particular time. It's serious enough about the new version that it's deploying it to new users on an accelerated schedule. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Cal Henderson / @iamcal : Meet ‘A simpler, more organized Slack’ — our user experience update that aims to make it easier for anyone to use Slack. Under challenging circumstances, we hope this helps teams to navigate a new way of working. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... George Zamfir / @georgezamfir : Excited to finally see this go out to the world. Doubly-excited that basic accessibility (like keyboard focus / navigation) made it even in the promo screenshots / GIFs 👏 https://twitter.com/... Stewart Butterfield / @stewart : This was a very ambitious project which pays off years of technical, product and design debt while introducing major new features. Everyone always loves it when software they use every day introduces big changes and I'm certain this will be no different! https://twitter.com/... Kathryn VanArendonk / @kvanaren : can't think of a better time in society for a massive redesign of a ubiquitous remote work tool! https://twitter.com/... M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : Many of these changes to the @SlackHQ product sound great. Actually, all of them do. https://www.fastcompany.com/ ... @slackhq : We've created a simpler, tidier Slack. It's pretty neat and, starting today, it will be rolling out to Slack users over the next few weeks. https://slackhq.com/... Stephen Shankland / @stshank : I'm neither a @SlackHQ hater nor fan, but I use it a ton, so if this redesign improves the interface, I'll be happy. (I'm not sure there's a way to fix my biggest complaint, which is that I waste lots of time marking low-priority channels as read.) https://slackhq.com/... Artem Russakovskii / @artemr : As a heavy daily user of @SlackHQ, I'm cautiously optimistic about their biggest redesign yet. The ability to group and collapse channels sounds awesome. https://twitter.com/... @mkarolian : Maybe don't do this when literally everyone is WFH and using Slack https://twitter.com/... Joanna Stern / @joannastern : Hasn't there been enough change this week... https://twitter.com/... Chris Branch / @cbranch89 : I cannot imagine worse timing for this https://twitter.com/... Josh Stermberb / @joshsternberg : Really reading the room here, Slack. https://twitter.com/... Alex Fitzpatrick / @alexjamesfitz : Hey maybe now isn't the time to radically change the thing we're all depending on! https://twitter.com/... Brandon Wall / @walldo : Oh thank GOD Slack added grouping for channels + DMs in the left rail 🙏🙏🙏 https://www.theverge.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : As untold millions have to work from home and really actually use Slack ...Slack moves all your stuff around. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Slack is rolling out a redesigned desktop app — new navigation bar, collapsible sidebar sections, better thread and mention handling — to users over the next few weeks, timed to the moment millions of new users are being forced onto the product by the shift to working from home. Diginomica's take frames the timing as risky: changing the UX precisely when a wave of first-time users is learning the old one.
The competitive backdrop is Microsoft Teams' reported 44 million daily active users, and the redesign continues an arc Slack has been building for years: threaded messages arrived in 2017, and a 2019 feature preview promised email replies, calendar integrations, and universal search. This redesign is the interface catching up to that feature accumulation.
First-order effects
- Slack users get a reorganized navigation bar and collapsible sidebar sections, changing daily muscle memory for both existing power users and the influx of newly remote workers onboarding right now.
- Teams' 44 million daily-active-user figure puts direct pressure on Slack, and this redesign is Slack's visible response to a competitor scaling faster.
Second-order effects
- Converging UX pressure shows up later in the corpus: Slack's 2023 redesign adds a DMs section explicitly similar to the one in Teams, evidence that the 2020 interface reset pushed the two products toward shared organizational patterns.
- The redesign's emphasis on threads and mentions targets the notification and attention-management pain points that surface when whole companies move to chat-first remote work, raising the bar for what buyers expect from any collaboration tool.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, workplace chat platforms converge on the same structural answer — unified inboxes, sidebar hierarchies, threaded conversations — so differentiation shifts from information layout to integrations and workflow features, the territory Slack staked out in its 2019 roadmap.
- Redesigns timed to demand spikes become a competitive weapon: whoever reshapes the interface fastest while new habits are forming sets the defaults an entire remote-work generation learns first.
The trend: Workplace chat apps are iterating their core interfaces in response to the remote-work demand spike and the Slack–Teams feature race, with each redesign narrowing the UX gap between the two platforms.