How to keep your Slack status active

When using Slack, others in your workspace can see if you’re active or away. They can also see if you’ve paused notifications or not. These indicators are all important for how others interact and communicate with you. Now, according to Slack, if you are inactive for ten minutes or longer (desktop) or if you navigate away from or close the app (mobile), your status will automatically go from active to away. Let’s review how to keep Slack active.

How to keep Slack active on desktop

As previously mentioned, Slack cleverly adjusts your availability status in accordance with your interaction on the platform. If you are using the service normally, without manually setting your status, if no activity is detected on your desktop for ten minutes, your status will switch to “away.” Now, there is a way to manually set yourself to active or away.

If you’ve set yourself to away, you can return to active by clicking your profile picture in the top right.

From the dropdown menu, select Set yourself as active.

How to keep Slack active on mobile

You will remain active as long as the Slack mobile app is open and running on your phone. Go into your phone’s settings and set your screen time-out to never. From there, all you need to do is keep the app open and don’t turn your phone screen off.

This, of course, is an extreme. You don’t typically want to keep your phone screen on all day to preserve battery health and, if your display is AMOLED, to avoid screen burn-in. However, if you wish to take a bathroom break and will be away from your workspace for a little while, keeping your phone on and running Slack is one way to maintain that online presence.

Alternatively, you can manually switch activity statuses within the app.

1. Launch the Slack mobile app and, from the options along the bottom, go to the You tab.
2. If you are away, you will see an empty circle. Tap the Set yourself as active button to switch availabilities.