Deploy Slack for macOS

As an IT administrator, you can gain more control over Slack desktop app installations and updates by installing Slack automatically for your users. When deploying the Slack desktop app, the app will install to the /Applications folder and update automatically whenever a new version is released.

Distribute Slack 

There are three possible builds for the Slack desktop app: the Intel build (x64), the Apple Silicon build (arm64), and the Universal build (x64 or arm64). When distributing Slack, ensure you’re using the correct version of the Slack app for your employees’ machines.

 Download Intel (x64) Slack PKG
 Download Apple Silicon (arm64) Slack PKG
 Download Universal (x64 or arm64) Slack PKG

Note: The Universal build works on Intel and Apple Silicon machines. Keep in mind the installation file is much larger than the other builds.

Tip: We have an RSS feed to notify you of Slack desktop app updates for Mac. Learn how to add RSS feeds to Slack.

Troubleshooting

Why can't my users update their Slack app?

Users who are unable to update the Slack app themselves may have Slack installed with a DMG file, and don't have the appropriate permissions to update.

If Slack is installed to ~/Applications, users can update the app without special permissions. If Slack is installed to /Applications, users must be administrators of their Mac machines and have write access to /Applications, slack.app, and all files beneath it in order to update the app.

On a shared machine, we recommend creating a permissions group for all Slack users and installing Slack to a subfolder of /Applications. You can then grant ownership and write access to that permissions group using the following terminal command. Replace group with the name of your permissions group and subfolder with the name of your subfolder: chown -R :group /Applications/subfolder && chmod -R 775 /Applications/subfolder

Alternately, you can install Slack to your users' machines using the PKG file.