Slack Shortcuts and Sidebar Tricks Most People Never Use

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Slack Shortcuts and Sidebar Tricks Most People Never Use

Most people use Slack by clicking channels with the mouse. But the people who move through it fast lean on the keyboard and on how the sidebar is structured. This is a rundown of the features in Slack's own docs: ⌘K to jump between channels, shortcuts to skim only what's unread, custom sections to split the sidebar yourself, and Workflow Builder to automate the repetitive stuff.

Slack feels slow because your hand keeps reaching for the mouse

Once you've got dozens of channels plus a pile of direct messages, the time you spend scrolling the sidebar up and down to find the right conversation adds up faster than you'd think. Slack lets you replace most of that with the keyboard. Swap the mouse clicks for key combos and the flow of checking a message and replying just keeps going, without your eyes jumping around the screen.

Below is the same set of tasks done with the mouse versus done with a shortcut. The shortcut side cuts out the step where your eyes have to scan the screen.

What you want to do	Mouse way	Shortcut way
Jump to a specific channel	Find the channel in the sidebar and click it	⌘K, then type part of the channel name
Check unread messages	Click each bolded channel one by one	Option+Shift+↓ to move to the next unread
Search a conversation	Click the search bar up top, then type	⌘G to start searching right away
Edit the message you just sent	Hover over the message and click the menu	Press ↑ in the message box

The key combos in the table are for macOS. On Windows and Linux, you can mostly just swap ⌘ for Ctrl and Option for Alt.

⌘K is all you need to move between channels

The first shortcut worth burning into muscle memory is the Quick Switcher, ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux). Press it and a small input box pops up; type even part of a channel name or a person's name and the candidates narrow down. You don't have to remember the exact channel name, and you don't have to scroll the sidebar.

For example, to get to the #backend-deploy channel, hit ⌘K, type just deploy, and press Enter. You can jump into direct messages from the same box by typing a person's name, so channels and DMs share a single entry point.

There are also shortcuts for moving through your conversation history. Like a browser's back button, use **⌘ (Alt+← on Windows)** to go back to the conversation you were just looking at, and ⌘ to go forward again. It's handy when you've been hopping between channels and want to get back to where you just were.

You can skim unread messages with the keyboard alone

When you're working through unread messages, instead of clicking each channel one at a time, you can jump between unread conversations with the keyboard. Here's a grouped list of ones that get used a lot but aren't well known.

Next unread channel              Option + Shift + ↓   (Win: Alt + Shift + ↓)
Previous unread channel          Option + Shift + ↑   (Win: Alt + Shift + ↑)
Open All Unreads view            ⌘ + Shift + A        (Win: Ctrl + Shift + A)
Mark current conversation read   Esc
Mark all conversations read      Shift + Esc
Mark a single message unread     Option + click       (Win: Alt + click)

Clear everything from one place with the All Unreads view

The 'All Unreads' view that opens with ⌘Shift+A gathers every unread message into one screen, with no channel boundaries. You can go top to bottom without entering each channel one by one, so skimming the backlog in the morning takes a much shorter path.

Mark messages unread to come back to them later

For a message you can't answer right now, hold Option (Alt) and click it to flip it back to unread. The channel stays bolded, so you won't lose track of what you meant to handle later. It's a lightweight way to do this without turning on a separate 'save for later' feature.

Split the sidebar into your own sections

As channels pile up, the sidebar turns into one long blob. With Slack's Custom Sections feature, you can split channels, DMs, and apps into your own topic-based groups. This grouping only applies to your own view and isn't visible to your teammates. In other words, it organizes your sidebar without touching the team's overall structure.

Here's how to make one on desktop.

Hover over the 'Channels' area in the sidebar and click the three-dots (⋯) icon.
Choose 'Create channel section.'
Type a section name, or pick one of the suggested names.
Use the smiley icon to choose an emoji for the section.
Click 'Create' to make the section.

Once a section exists, you can drag and drop channels into it, move several conversations at once, or sort within the section by name, recency, or priority. Splitting out conversations with different roles — say 'Active projects,' 'Notification-only channels,' and '1:1 DMs' — makes the sidebar easy to read at a glance. On the mobile app you can build the same thing by tapping the channel header name and choosing 'New Section.'

Automate repetitive tasks with Workflow Builder

Workflow Builder is a feature for automating repeated procedures inside Slack without code. Per the official description, it's a tool to 'automate routine tasks and processes,' and you can start from a pre-built template or build one from scratch.

A workflow is made up of what kicks off the run (a trigger) and which steps follow from there (the steps). The triggers listed in the docs include:

Runs automatically at a set time (schedule)
When a specific emoji reaction is added to a message
When a new channel is created
When someone joins or leaves a channel

For steps, you can add a form to collect input from users, send a message, branch based on conditions, and connector steps that hook into outside services. For example, you can build a flow that automatically sends a welcome message when a new member joins a channel, or that collects messages tagged with a certain emoji into a designated channel. You can check run history in the activity log, with statuses like in-progress and completed.

That said, Workflow Builder and the Custom Sections covered earlier are both available only on paid plans. On a free workspace, the shortcut sets and the Quick Switcher are about the range of what you can use right away.

Worth knowing up front

Shortcut key combos differ by operating system. On macOS it's ⌘ and Option; on Windows and Linux, swap them for Ctrl and Alt.
In the browser version, some shortcuts collide with the browser's own shortcuts and may behave differently. The desktop app is more consistent.
Custom Sections and Workflow Builder are paid-plan only. On the free plan the menus don't even show up.
Admins can limit how Workflow Builder is used, so depending on your org some features may be disabled.
You can see the full shortcut list right inside the app by pressing ⌘/ (Ctrl+/ on Windows).

Who it's for

If you keep Slack open all day and bounce between channels often, learning just a few shortcuts noticeably cuts down how far your cursor has to travel. I'd start with two — ⌘K (channel jump) and Option+Shift+↓ (next unread) — for a few days, and once they're second nature, move on to splitting the sidebar into sections. If you're on a paid-plan team with repetitive announcement or collection procedures, opening up the Workflow Builder templates is a good place to start automating.

Note: Slack changes shortcut key combos and what's offered per plan fairly often. The key combos and paid-only labels in this post are based on the official docs at the time of writing; before you rely on them, it's safest to check the current shortcut list in-app with ⌘/ (Ctrl+/).

Sources

This post isn't a hands-on review — it's an objective summary based on Slack's official help docs. Features and shortcuts may vary by version and plan.

Original with full infographics and visual structure: https://jessinvestment.com/slack-shortcuts-and-sidebar-tricks-most-people-never-use/