Slack is making its big mobile redesign official today by pushing the changes live on the public versions of both its Android and iOS apps. The redesign’s standout feature is a new navigation bar at the bottom that lets you more easily get to critical parts of the app, such as your direct messages and your mentions, without having to use swipes or tapping through tiny, hard-to-see menus.
The result is a unified mobile Slack that’s virtually the same on both Android and iOS and is much more pleasant to use. The swipe gestures do still exist, and they now consistently open up your workspaces with a swipe right, while a swipe left brings you back to your last conversation. Slack also added a compose button that floats in the button of the screen in most parts of the app, letting you easily start a new DM if you like.
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The company has been previewing these changes for a little while now. Earlier this month, Slack pushed the new Android version out through its beta channel on the Play Store. But it remained a test at the time, even though it seemed fairly well baked and ready for prime time. Earlier this week, it then did the same for the iOS beta channel through TestFlight. It also confusingly updated its official Slack iOS app with the corresponding update notes indicating the redesign had arrived for the iPhone when it actually hadn’t.
Slack confirmed to The Verge that the update was not actually live yet and is instead rolling out starting Wednesday. In a blog post penned by product manager Preet Mangat, user interface designer Johnny Rodgers, and senior product designer Cory Bujnowicz, the trio say the mobile redesign efforts were born out of its broader desktop ones that went live earlier this year. “In parallel with our efforts on desktop, we have been rethinking our mobile apps to make them easier to navigate and optimized for using Slack on the go: quickly catching up, responding to DMs and mentions, sending messages, and getting work done with the shortcuts feature,” the post reads.
