There are a bunch of great slack customization articles here on Medium and all over the internet but everyone has their own idea of what is most important. See below for a couple of my favorites that aren’t often included in the standard rundown.
Update Display Name Colors (Compact View)
I find the compact view setting in slack superior. More content, less scrolling.
However, with more information on the screen, there are two problems I was having: (1) The colors that Slack auto-assigns can be similar enough that it is hard to tell them apart at a glance. (2) The colors are ugly.
Good news it is simple to change colors used for each user on your Slack client (web or desktop). I saw this in a slack Twitter message from a while back but it isn’t easy to find in their official help documentation.
To change my username to green I enter the following command in a new message window:
/color @Eric #2a9d8f
The above command works for you own user name and also for any other username in your Slack workspace.
If you want suggestions for color pallets that look nice, just hit google. There are a ton of options out there; for example: https://coolors.co/palettes/trending .
Disable “Hot” Enter
This one drives me crazy in many messaging apps. I like my enter key to create a new line, not send the message.
I find that this setting lets me format my messages in a way that works better for me and also reduces the likelihood that I’ll accidentally send the message before I intend to.
It is an easy tweak to make. Just head to Preferences -> Advanced -> “When writing a message, press Enter to…”
