Adjust your sidebar preferences

In Slack, your sidebar is the access point for different parts of your workspace. You can tailor how it’s organised to suit your needs.

Customise the navigation bar

You’ll find the navigation bar on the outer edge of your sidebar. By default, it holds the different tabs that you use to navigate Slack. If you’d like, you can customise the navigation bar to include the tools and tabs that you use most often.

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click on   Navigation.
4. Under Show these items in the sidebar, tick or untick the boxes next to the items that you’d like to show or hide. Items that you leave unticked will appear when you hover over   More in the sidebar.

Customise the top of your sidebar

You can customise the top of your sidebar to always show or hide   Unread messages,   Threads,   Drafts & sent and   Recap.

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Under Always show in the sidebar, tick or untick the boxes next to the sidebar items that you’d like to show or hide.

Tip: You can also customise your Slack mobile app by re-ordering the items at the top of your screen.

Reorder sidebar sections

By default, your sidebar will be divided into the following sections:

• Channels
• Starred
• Direct messages
• Apps
• External connections

To rearrange these sections, click the section header and drag it to your desired location in the sidebar.

Choose which conversations to show

If you’re in fewer than 30 channels, you’ll see All your conversations in your sidebar by default. Once you belong to 30 or more channels, the conversations shown in your sidebar will switch to Unread messages only. You can always choose from the following options to adjust how conversations appear in your sidebar:

• Unread messages only
  Conversations with unread messages will appear in bold in the sidebar. Muted and read messages will be automatically collapsed into a section header. To see the read messages in a section, click on the section header.
• Mentions only
  Conversations where you’ve been mentioned will show a badge and appear in bold in the sidebar. All other conversations will be collapsed into a section header.
• All your conversations
  Every conversation that you belong to will appear in its section in the sidebar.

Here’s how to adjust your sidebar preferences:

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Under Show, choose which conversations to show.

Sort your conversations

Desktop

Mobile

Sort conversations in your sidebar alphabetically or by recent activity. On paid subscriptions, you can also sort your conversations by priority to list the ones that you use most at the top.

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Under Sort, select an option.
   
   

Tip: On paid subscriptions, you can create custom sections and decide which conversations are shown and how they’re sorted.

The  Home tab contains a list of your conversations, similar to the sidebar on your desktop. By default, these will be sorted alphabetically or by section if you use customised sections. You can choose to sort these conversations by recent activity instead:

1. From the  Home tab, tap the list icon in the top right.
2. Select a sorting option from the list.  

Show or hide profile photos

By default, peoples’ profile photos will appear next to direct messages (DMs) in your sidebar. If you like, you can adjust this preference:

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Tick or untick the box next to Show profile photos next to DMs.

List private channels separately

By default, all channels will be listed together in your sidebar. You can choose to list private channels separately from public channels:

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Tick or untick the box next to Separate private channels from public ones in sidebar.

List direct messages and apps separately

When channels, DMs and apps all belong to the same section, you can choose to list DMs and apps below the channels:

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Tick or untick the box next to Separate direct messages and apps from channels in sidebar.

List mentions at the top of sections

If you'd like, you can move messages with unread mentions to the top of the sections that they belong to: 

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Tick or untick the box next to Move items with unread mentions 1 to top of sections.

Organise external conversations

If you work with external people in Slack Connect, you can organise the conversations in a separate section: 

1. Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
   
2. Select Preferences from the menu.
3. Click  Home.
4. Tick or untick the box next to Organise external conversations into the External Connections section.

Adjust your sidebar width

You can adjust the width of your sidebar, or collapse it:

• Click and drag the edge of your sidebar to adjust it to your preferred width.
• Press ⌘ShiftD (Mac) or CtrlShiftD (Windows/Linux) in the Slack desktop app to collapse or reopen the sidebar.

Who can use this feature?

• All members
• Available on all subscriptions