Back in March Slack pushed out a big update for its desktop experience and now Slack for iOS is getting its own major update that offers an all-new UI. The redesign brings a bottom bar navigation with tabs for easy access to some of the most used parts of the app, the new shortcuts button, and more. Follow along for a closer look at all the changes…
The redesigned app for iPhone and iPad landed on the App Store today. The biggest change is the move from Slack’s menus on iOS hiding behind the three-line icon to a bottom bar navigation design that includes “Home,” “DMs,” “Mentions,” and “You.” This makes it easier and faster to navigate Slack on your iPhone or iPad.
Other changes include a new compose button in the bottom right corner of the app to make it easier to start a new DM or channel message, fast access to shortcuts via the Lightning bolt icon (same as Slack on desktop), and swiping left will take you to your last conversation (swiping right still shows all workspaces and settings).
Full Slack 20.05.10 release notes:
TL;DR: We’ve redesigned the layout of the app. Read more about the improvements on our blog at SlackHQ.com or in our help center. Here though, we’ll stick to what’s new, and what has been fixed.
What’s New
- What’s new? Most things. We changed almost all of the things. So many things! Much change.
Bug Fixes
- Previously, it was complicated to get to the four main things people do on mobile. We’ve fixed this with a new nifty navigation bar at the bottom of the app containing: a Home view for your sidebar, DMs, (still listed most recent first), Mentions (for quickly catching up), and You (because you’re great) (and also because setting your status/preferences on mobile needed to be easier).
- The quick switcher on the desktop app is wonderful, but we discovered an issue where people weren’t using it as much on mobile. So we made the Jump To box more prominent (and smarter) to fix this. Fingers crossed!
- It seemed bizarrely hard to create a new message in a channel or DM without finding that precise location first. With an application of logic, software engineering, and a new “Compose” button in the bottom right corner, this has been rectified.
- Our apologies to people who have been wanting to easily set reminders, start workflows or access favourite apps in channels and conversations — it was hard to work out how to do that on the move. A new lightning bolt under the message box now gives quick access to shortcuts, and thereby solves this age-old problem.
- And finally, it came to pass, as time went by, that in the old version of the app, there was a lot of swiping back and forth to get places. We’ve simplified that: Now, swiping right will reveal your workspace and preferences, and swiping left will get you back to the last conversation you were in. With this change in behavior, we hope to give you the powers of both omniscience and time travel. nbd.
- And yes. We know. Change is hard! All our fingers have all built up muscle memory, but after continually adding features and functionality over the years, we needed to step back and make sure things made sense. You can find more about these improvements in our blog post, and as always, we welcome your feedback. Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom. We appreciate it, and you.
Slack for iOS is a free download from the App Store. The same redesign showed up for Android in a beta last week, so that should be following before long.
Author: Michael Potuck.
Source: 9TO5Mac
