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Slack have blocked using the website on mobile

492 points by Marazan 7y ago

agluszak 7y ago
Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason (FB Messenger, Instagram, Reddit), yet another reason to stop using it
- diggan 7y ago
  > Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason For sure there is a reason behind. It's just not a user-focused reason but a business one instead. One guess would be that the browser is a environment the user can kind of control, so they can block tracking and so on. When you're using the app, you don't have the same control anymore, so the business can receive more metrics from people that they wouldn't before. Not saying this is good/bad, just that there is most probably a reason behind the choices they make.
  - bachmeier 7y ago
    > Not saying this is good/bad, just that there is most probably a reason behind the choices they make. How could it not be bad to impose these restrictions for anyone other than the company? You can use the app if you want.
  - bitexploder 7y ago
    Not trying to be too glib here, but we get it. That’s the problem. HN is pretty tuned in to the trend of walled gardens and creeping control popular apps and platforms exert on their users. It’s kind of the point of this article. Of course it’s helpful for the business for many reasons.
    - cronix 7y ago
      It also depends on what company is doing it, apparently. Some are all for the walled garden approach when it suits their business model or they are a "fanboi" of the company/product, but despicable and evil when others do it. They're probably releasing their ire about Slack to post here on one of these companies devices right now.
    - kordlessagain 7y ago
      This is the result of the VC market models and the near universal buy-in to the idea limited partner's money (and "advice" that comes with it) is required for starting software companies. Nothing more. Bootstrapping is pain, but at least you and your customers retain control long term.
  - gruez 7y ago
    > One guess would be that the browser is a environment the user can kind of control, so they can block tracking and so on. Someone in the twitter thread says it still works on firefox for android, which means it's really only broken on chrome. Chrome doesn't have adblock, so it's not like this move results in less of their telemetry getting blocked.
- eptcyka 7y ago
  Unfortunately, I'm paid to use Slack.
- sixhobbits 7y ago
  mbasic.facebook.com is a nice interface to use messenger from mobile if you have to
  - wildduck 7y ago
    or use their onion site: https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion
  - AntiqueFig 7y ago
    x.facebook.com is also nice (although not as light as mbasic), also it can auto-refresh messenger conversations (unlike mbasic).
- AgentOrange1234 7y ago
  So annoying. It’s hard to know what they gain by being an app on my phone, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to give it to them.
- sjburt 7y ago
  I use Reddit and instagram on mobile browsers, they seem fine for a few missing features and nagging you to use the app.
  - azhenley 7y ago
    The nagging on Reddit is extreme. And now that I have the Reddit app, if I'm viewing a Reddit thread in the browser then certain actions (but not all) will open it in the app without a prompt.
    - kibwen 7y ago
      Last I checked, on the mobile web interface there is an option to always give you the desktop site, and it remembers your preference. I never see the Reddit mobile site and never need to tell the browser to request the desktop mode. It's completely usable if you don't mind zooming and panning, which I'm fine with.
      - CriticalCathed 7y ago
        >I never see the Reddit mobile site and never need to tell the browser to request the desktop mode. There is a seemingly persistent bug where reddit fails to remember preferences surrounding mobile/desktop and old/redesign. Sometimes you will click a link and the page it delivers you to will be on the mobile site, sometimes it will take you to the redesign. It's been going on for at least a year. I use reddit a lot and I run into it at least every week. Sometimes it sticks and I have to relog to get my preferences back.
        anoncake 7y ago
        A "bug" that pushes you towards the interface they want you to use. Curious.
    - pritambaral 7y ago
      > then certain actions (but not all) will open it in the app without a prompt. Firefox for Android prevents such attempts by default. That, plus uBlock Origin with its integrated element picker to permanently block elements make reddit bearable.
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  Apps have been turned into a disease. So many different services keep obnoxiously pushing their app. Delivery services are extra annoying. I tried searching for a service that delivers alcohol, and found a few, but some are app-only and I couldn't type in my address to see if I was within their delivery area. Why would I download an app, and probably create an account, only to find that they won't even deliver to me?
- bootlooped 7y ago
  Venmo used to have the ability to do stuff like send payments on their website, at some point they just shut it off. Only the app is supported now.
ashton314 7y ago
Nit pick on the title: shouldn't this be "Slack has blocked…" rather than "Slack have blocked"? Is Slack plural?
- sixhobbits 7y ago
  Both are acceptable as you can think of a company as a singular entity or as a group or many parts. There is a nice analysis at [0] [0] https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle-grammatical-debates/ https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle-gram...
  - Angostura 7y ago
    Typically, in formal English, companies are singular.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - chadlavi 7y ago
      Only in US. In the rest of the Anglophone world, it's always plural.
- helipad 7y ago
  Depends in which country you speak English :) Looks like original Tweeter is Scottish
  - not2b 7y ago
    American: has UK: have. Collective nouns (teams, companies, groups) are grammatically singular in the US and plural in the UK.
    - ashton314 7y ago
      Woah. Mind blown. Thanks for explaining this!
frankttr 7y ago
I never use the slack app even on desktop. Always use web.
wdb 7y ago
Yet another service not to use on a mobile then. I don’t mind not looking at work Slack channels on my personal phone
- agluszak 7y ago
  But they are taking away the choice you could have
  - eddieroger 7y ago
    The choice is to use Slack or not. It's their service to offer how they wish, and your choice to use it or not. Tesla doesn't have to make a manual transmission (equivalent) car just because I'd rather drive stick, but I just won't drive a Tesla then.
jbindel 7y ago
This and the WYSIWYG debacle indicate that Slack [or their product managers] have stopped caring about a significant portion of their users.
- orf 7y ago
  Yeah... the people who use the web app on their mobile over the app are in no way a significant portion but a very small minority.
  - lukeschlather 7y ago
    Recently I found a bug in Slack, and I was communicating with their support over it. They asked me to check on the web in addition to the electron app. Now, the number of people who actually care enough to do this are a very small minority, but they are also very significant because they're happy to give Slack free QA. And as a member of this small minority that will reproduce a bug on multiple platforms and communicate back, I can say this seems pretty hostile to me and anyone else willing to pay money to do free QA for them.
    - mikeklaas 7y ago
      The reason they did that is to see if something in the local state of your client was causing the problem, not to get you to QA the bug.
      - lukeschlather 7y ago
        Sounds like QA work to me.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Par for the course in modern software dev I'm afraid.
- peterlk 7y ago
  Warning: pure speculation ahead. Look at their stock price. I bet there are a lot of tense board meetings happening right now. Culture flows from the top down, and if executives are panicking about the stock price, it makes sense that they'd lose focus. I mean, if you had stock at slack, it would be easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs and following the money instead of shipping an excellent product.
cosmojg 7y ago
There exist plenty of equivalent-or-better alternatives that don't pull shady shit like this. Your tools should serve you, not the other way around. Zulip: https://zulipchat.com/ https://zulipchat.com/ Rocket: https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ Riot: https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ Mattermost: https://mattermost.org/ https://mattermost.org/
- KMnO4 7y ago
  Sadly none of those are alternatives if you don’t have a say in what your workplace uses.
  - gruez 7y ago
    If that's the case: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ (native slack client) https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ (cloud irc client, they have slack integration if you pay for premium)
    - SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago
      I tried to use ripcord for about a month. There were several features that I really liked (for example - tabs are amazing imo). The deal breaker ultimately was that I didn't receive all of my notifications which was a problem for work. But I would love to try it again if they solve that problem. Edit: The hotkeys and the lightweight feel to it was also amazing BTW.
      - tumult 7y ago
        Do you have a way to reproduce it, even unreliably? Or any other info? If so, could you email me cancel@cancel.fm ? The Slack server determines most notifications that the client is supposed to display -- the logic all runs on the server, and is sent as explicit events to the client. So, the only way that Ripcord would be losing notifications for standard chat messages is if the server did not send the notification events, or the connection went down for several minutes and had to be restarted without an event replay. But if you have any lead on a way to show that notifications aren't being displayed, that would be really useful information. I've heard of some people using Ripcord on Windows 10 having some kind of automatic suppression of notifications occur at the the OS level. Probably some automated anti-user-spam thing. In which case, the notifications would only be listed internally within Ripcord, but not in the OS notifications list. Is that the case, or were they also not visible within Ripcord's own notifications list? (This one isn't relevant if you're using Mac or Linux.)
mcraiha 7y ago
How does this work when Slack wants to open long code samples in your browser?
gboss 7y ago
This is a shame for mobile developers as well. Deep linking from one app to another can be tricky to get right. Loading slack from the Android emulator browser was an easy way to test various deep links. Not sure why they would care.
chirau 7y ago
This is a bad move, especially given the constraints of their mobile app. For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack. These may be deemed 'older devices' by the tech forward folks like those on here but you would be shocked how many are out there still today. It only presents more resistance to adopt the app at team scale, as they will probably realize soon.
- gruez 7y ago
  >For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack. AFAIK App Store allows you to download an older version if the current one isn't supported by your OS.
  - chirau 7y ago
    Only if you have downloaded it before, but given that a person is using the browser version, there are good chances they haven't downloaded it before.
  - bonzini 7y ago
    Sometimes old APIs are dropped server-side and thus older versions of the apps stop working. I have an old iPad at home where I can watch YouTube from the browser but not from the app (though Safari is so old that I don't really trust that device for anything that requires any kind of security).
ydnaclementine 7y ago
I understand why people don't like this change (limiting options, etc), but I can see slack's POV from a business perspective. The mobile web usage might be so low that maintaining it costs more than forcing people to switch to the app. And mobile web might be a bad experience anyway (because slack is focused on standalone desktop app, mobile app, desktop browser instead), so it turns new users off with the crappy experience. But I don't have the numbers or any other insight, so it could be more simple: "we want more app usage". And even if you decide to just leave it alone, is anything truly maintenance free? (possibly) This won't be the last thing to turn off mobile web to force-guide users to the app. And luckily for actual mobile web users, there seem to be alternatives.
- jasonjayr 7y ago
  The OP had a browser on the mobile device capable of rendering a "Desktop experience" and requested it. Slack went out of their way do discover that and block that user intent, rather than serve the Desktop UI that they test already in a desktop browser. The user knows they will be getting a desktop UI crammed into a mobile device, they asked for it.
  - cddotdotslash 7y ago
    And the OP is probably the exact profile of person who will request the desktop page and then open support tickets with Slack when some features break, causing them to spend hours debugging the issue. The unfortunate reality is that it costs businesses money to support platforms. Blocking unsupported platforms probably results in an extremely small number of irritated users in exchange for saving thousands in support costs.
    - jasonjayr 7y ago
      At which point the support folks can close the ticket and say "We don't support that platform, please use the mobile app, or ask your browser developer to better support Desktop-on-Mobile". Not supporting the platform, and actively preventing it are two different things. Especially with all the invasive power mobile apps have on your device vs being contained in a browser. Too many apps stick their fingers into parts of the device that they don't belong. The well has been poisoned with so many apps abusing their privlege, so privacy conscious folks have to assume the worst when being pushed in that direction especially when the browser app worked without an issue (According to OP).
lightedman 7y ago
Stupidest move ever by Slack, so much so that one of my bosses is making the decision to close all Slack-related stuff for the business. We have a strict no phones policy, so those of us needing to use slack utilize our desktops. Well, no longer, I guess. Sorry, Slack. You fucked up bigtime, and now I can't wait to watch you hemorrhage out that user base of yours.
- progman32 7y ago
  Desktop slack will keep working on desktop OSes. This is just them blocking desktop mode access from phone browsers.
  - lightedman 7y ago
    Does not work with our Chromebooks, which is what comprises the majority of our work systems.
    - progman32 7y ago
      Oh they count Chromebooks too... Wonder if that's intentional.
      - lightedman 7y ago
        Chromebooks are essentially running a mobile-focused OS, based in the browser. Makes sense they'd count that as a mobile platform.
    - Marazan 7y ago
      Wow
  - mark-r 7y ago
    Sometimes you just need to act on principle. If they're pulling this on their mobile users today, what will they do to their desktop users tomorrow?
akerro 7y ago
Facebook on mobile is only usable from Chrome
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  I use it via Firefox on Android. No major issues.
ape4 7y ago
Browsers are getting more powerful. Eg use local storage for scrolling back in old comments. So even less need for apps now.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Does anyone know why Slack would have done this? I can certainly understand Slack not providing a specific mobile-web experience, but that is not what is going on here. The user specifically switched their mobile browser to "Desktop Site" (one of my favorite features of Android Chrome by the way for sites that mysteriously provide dumbed down versions for mobile that are missing all the content I actually need - looking at you, Square), so the server should just serve them desktop-optimized content. Slack has to go out of their way to prevent this. Why would they care? It has to be a very small portion of their users in any case.
- uberman 7y ago
  It would potentially allow them to forgo the need to limit their UI to phone based with desktop upscaling. Make an app for the "best" small screen experience and the web site for the "best" large screen experience. This strategy probably mitigates what might be a much more common complaint in the future that their "UI" sucks on mobile if they were to design for only larger screens.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    This is the argument that I don't think is valid, though. When folks switch on "Desktop Site" in an Android browser, they expect that things will be squished, and that the site isn't optimized for the screen size. They just do it (or rather I just do it) because I want the full set of features, even if I need to do a bunch of zooming and scrolling around. That is, Slack should still focus on making the website for the best large screen experience, but they shouldn't go out of their way to do somewhat sneaky stuff to detect my "Desktop" browser is really coming from my phone.
    - SilasX 7y ago
      Yep. And it annoys me that desktop sites are usually more usable on mobile, even with that extra burden.
- freeqaz 7y ago
znpy 7y ago
"Slack continues the war against its own users" somebody will say.
- hnarn 7y ago
  And they will be right. The arrogance of market leaders is more or less a universal constant.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Remember the Prime Directive.
diminish 7y ago
In 2019 I got sick of mobile websites offering me their apps again and again. Facebook, LinkedIn and endless others. Stop it.
- securityfreak 7y ago
  They won’t, at least not for now, I assume. They can put far more intrusive tracking inside an app compared to a web browser. There is also no way to do content blocking or ad blocking inside apps, at least not on iOS. I use Facebook in Safari - can’t be happier (well, I mean it’s Facebook, but I am not able to pursue all my friends to cancel it).
  - cprecioso 7y ago
    You can use a adblocking DNS server. Either a pi-hole in a VPS you control, or something like NextDNS (which I am really happy with). It doesn't block everything, but almost nothing is getting through for me.
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      With the shift towards DNS implemented at the application-level as DoH gets rolled out, apps will ignore your adblocking DNS servers.
      - panpanna 7y ago
        I am starting to believe this is why Google is pushing aggressively for DoH...
- xtracto 7y ago
  This makes me think something intereating: Back in the late 1990s I used to have all sorts of software in my computer which I downloaded and installed. Some of it was purchased and other free or open source. As the time passed, more and more services became "web based" including mail, music, calendar, note taking, etc. I was part of a small group that did not like that. My reasoning was that there was no need to hack all that functionality in the web browser as it was highly inefficient. That it was better to code the network features into the desktop clients. Web caught on and nowadays seldomly you get a client program in the desktop. But now in mobile, we are returning to the clinet software first approach. And for some reason we resist the installation of client software and prefer browser based functionality.
mellosouls 7y ago
Presumably all the commenters here have tested the claim? Otherwise it appears to be premature or unresearched, or Slack have quickly backpedalled or fixed a bug. There are reports in the Twitter thread of mobile browser access (using show desktop site), and I'm having no problems on mine.
- Hnrobert42 7y ago
  Thread may have been updated since you viewed. Slack confirmed this new “feature.”
  - mellosouls 7y ago
    yeah - I read their response at the time, but it occurred to me it may have been a response in haste or a misreading (it's the desktop option on mobile browsers; mobile browsing per se isn't supported for a long time I think), or a pragmatic implied "until we've investigated" as it worked for me on testing, and others, and its probably a skeleton support crew over Xmas.
- webo 7y ago
  Works fine for me on iOS safari.
- Marazan 7y ago
  100% does not work for me. Tried the various things suggested in the twitter thread and I always end back at the "get the app" page.
  - mellosouls 7y ago
    Thanks for confirming. I was more responding to the title claim, which seems incorrect - the desktop site option clearly still works for others. It may be a bug, or a new policy but time will tell.
- maple3142 7y ago
  I found that you have to enable desktop mode before entering slack on mobile. If you have visited slack with a mobile user agent, it will force you to download the app even if you enable desktop mode.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Slack is absolutely _unusable_ on a slow connection. It's not even just a matter of being patient, it flat out breaks with everything timing out. I used to use the IRC gateway to maintain contact with some friends, and basically lost access to that social group when they closed down the IRC gateway. IRC is far more inclusive, plus it's open and federated if you're into that.
- zzo38computer 7y ago
  Yes, IRC is much better, and is something I use. (IRC even works without specialized software, although it works better if you do have it (which isn't too complicated to write).)
rileytg 7y ago
To be fair to the devs at slack, it does actually cost them something to re-enable this. every change to the code base has to be checked on mobile web or things will eventually break. at that point will we see an angry tweet about not fixing that? i develop on a web based system and we don’t support mobile on most of our site because we don’t have the resources to. if we started getting bug reports about this more frequently than we do, we may do the same. It makes our product look bad when we let someone do something we don’t QA for. We pride ourselves on rapid response to our clients requests, with this we build goodwill. we explicitly state we do not support mobile except for specific modules. even with that prior information, users sometimes try anyway and run into bugs. this experience + being told we won’t fix the bug because it’s not a supported platform causes us to lose the goodwill we’ve worked hard to build. in my local neighborhood there are a ton of wholesale shops that even though there are maybe one or two customers a day (ie the shops are dead most of the time) they refuse to sell non wholesale. it’s not packaging, most things are easily sellable one-off. there are no regulations or laws. they choose not to sell to one class of buyers. if they allowed one-off sales, they would then have to start running their business to support doing that correctly- this means having small change, more personnel, probably introduce some security to watch the now increased traffic in their shops etc. if slack does mobile web, they’ll have to do it like they do everything else, the “slack” way.
- egdod 7y ago
  >”mobile web browsers do not provide the best experience; you really should download our app!” Put a message like that up instead of disabling it altogether.
  - rileytg 7y ago
    we do this. we still have users get mad when we explain we don’t support it :(
- the_gipsy 7y ago
  The problem is these products lure you in with false promises, in this case "it works fine in the browser, no need to install, just try". Once they have enough users, this changes.
Jestar342 7y ago
There's a small irony that this complaint is on twitter, whom don't permit desktop site on mobile either and haven't for a long time.
- Shog9 7y ago
  Maybe, but... Twitter actually has a mobile website. You can argue - and I would agree - that "request desktop site" should give you what you asked for, but there's still a difference between "here is the mobile web UI" and "here is a link to download an app": namely, one still allows you to use the site if you can't or won't install a native app. Slack is actively locking folks out of their site here, a service that folks have paid for even... That is a significant departure from what folks might've seen in the recent past with mobile device detection.
amursft 7y ago
Slack continue to make product changes that speak loudly. Listen to what they are saying.
ravenstine 7y ago
I just don't have faith anymore. Every piece of software I find myself liking ends up becoming hostile after 5 years of success.
- barbs 7y ago
  Even open source programs?
- chapium 7y ago
  This is why I try to use old software. It has much less feature creep and will stay relevant for the long run. If you can compile it yourself, even better.
ravenstine 7y ago
This is why I believe that the user-agent header was a bad idea.
- swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
  Is there an easy way of altering the user-agent header for my phone? I would rather take the desktop site every time instead of being pidgeonholed into stupid m.-.com that forcefeeds me popups of how their mobile experience is so much better.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    If you have Android and have Firefox, there are extensions that can do it. Otherwise, you would need something to intercept requests because Chrome and Safari on mobile don't have extensions.
itronitron 7y ago
I wonder for enterprise licenses if there is specific mention of which clients on which form factors are covered in the license. I expect and hope that customers will get a lot more specific about what they are paying for so that companies can't just turn off functionality that has been paid for.
ProAm 7y ago
Slack is IRC for millennials. This is purely about gather device specific metrics that are gathered via granted 'permissions' vs providing a service users pay for.
- namewasmypw 7y ago
  IRC is IRC for millenials, Slack came much much later
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Marazan 7y ago
Ah ha! Visited in an incognito tab and was finally able to get access to desktop site on mobile it again.
- Marazan 7y ago
  So I wonder if I clear cookies if it would work on a regular tab.
panpanna 7y ago
Serious question: how is slack doing now that Microsoft is using all is muscles to push Teams? Maybe the slack board is in panic mode because of that?
stryk 7y ago
What's wrong with IRC? It still works a treat, and has ever since the early-mid 90's.
- Angostura 7y ago
  The main problem for me is - if you're not logged in, you've missed that part of the conversation.
  - stryk 7y ago
    There are options for persistent connections, with logs and detachment, etc. ZNC/PsyBNC/Quassel come to mind. ZNC, in particular, is extendable via Perl or Python (or TCL if you're a masochist). I hear good things about Quassel as well, but it's still early in development. I get Android notifications if I'm detached from irssi in tmux and someone PMs, says my handle, or any number of custom triggers I set. All free & open source (other than the android phone).
mars 7y ago
bitchX please
tempsy 7y ago
The sentiment around Slack has changed so much so fast. It was only a few years ago when all anyone could do was rave about it. Maybe it was because on the surface it was the rare decently designed piece of enterprise software.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Few years ago they had an IRC gateway, so they seemed like a user-friendly startup, and not another exploitative walled garden.
userbinator 7y ago
It is not possible to access your workspace from your mobile browser, we're afraid. This isn't the first time I've seen a thinly-veiled-fuck-you attitude from them, and it's something that definitely won't make me want to start using Slack. "Afraid of what? You broke it!"
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  "I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I can't let you do that."
- a_e_k 7y ago
  I'm still waiting for Slack video calls to work in Firefox.
wilg 7y ago
I still find it interesting how much people despise native apps. Surely that is a big problem for, say, Apple.
notatoad 7y ago
There seems to be a lot of angry nerds in here, and that basically describes me too. Hoping I can get a response from somebody with a broader perspective: I'm in a position to switch my company over to one of the many alternatives mentioned in this thread. Has anybody here actually done that, and if I do it how angry is that likely to make my non-technical staff? If I don't want my marketing guy and my customer support team to hate me, can I still switch my company over to riot.im or mattermost?
- sillysaurusx 7y ago
  Probably just stick with slack. Discord would be the other viable alternative (which I actually prefer). Remember, you lose the ecosystem when you switch away, too. There are lots of plugins for slack that won’t be there on the alternatives. Even little things like seeing GitHub commits is nice. Most of this is just transient outrage.
- it33 7y ago
  Mattermost CEO here, to the extent it's helpful, here's a demo video of how it looks and feels importing a Slack team into Mattermost from 2017: https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249 https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249 This is when we were largely just an open source project and before raising $70M in venture capital, which has been accelerating development: https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/ https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/
dreamcompiler 7y ago
Every growth-oriented startup with a popular product eventually ruins that product in the name of growth, which eventually kills the company and encourages somebody to start a new startup to build a product half as good as the original. The Silicon Valley circle of life.

492 points by Marazan 7y ago

Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason (FB Messenger, Instagram, Reddit), yet another reason to stop using it

diggan 7y ago
> Yet another service that forces you to use the app for no reason For sure there is a reason behind. It's just not a user-focused reason but a business one instead. One guess would be that the browser is a environment the user can kind of control, so they can block tracking and so on. When you're using the app, you don't have the same control anymore, so the business can receive more metrics from people that they wouldn't before. Not saying this is good/bad, just that there is most probably a reason behind the choices they make.
- bachmeier 7y ago
  > Not saying this is good/bad, just that there is most probably a reason behind the choices they make. How could it not be bad to impose these restrictions for anyone other than the company? You can use the app if you want.
- bitexploder 7y ago
  Not trying to be too glib here, but we get it. That’s the problem. HN is pretty tuned in to the trend of walled gardens and creeping control popular apps and platforms exert on their users. It’s kind of the point of this article. Of course it’s helpful for the business for many reasons.
  - cronix 7y ago
    It also depends on what company is doing it, apparently. Some are all for the walled garden approach when it suits their business model or they are a "fanboi" of the company/product, but despicable and evil when others do it. They're probably releasing their ire about Slack to post here on one of these companies devices right now.
  - kordlessagain 7y ago
    This is the result of the VC market models and the near universal buy-in to the idea limited partner's money (and "advice" that comes with it) is required for starting software companies. Nothing more. Bootstrapping is pain, but at least you and your customers retain control long term.
- gruez 7y ago
  > One guess would be that the browser is a environment the user can kind of control, so they can block tracking and so on. Someone in the twitter thread says it still works on firefox for android, which means it's really only broken on chrome. Chrome doesn't have adblock, so it's not like this move results in less of their telemetry getting blocked.
eptcyka 7y ago
Unfortunately, I'm paid to use Slack.
sixhobbits 7y ago
mbasic.facebook.com is a nice interface to use messenger from mobile if you have to
- wildduck 7y ago
  or use their onion site: https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion https://m.facebookcorewwwi.onion
- AntiqueFig 7y ago
  x.facebook.com is also nice (although not as light as mbasic), also it can auto-refresh messenger conversations (unlike mbasic).
AgentOrange1234 7y ago
So annoying. It’s hard to know what they gain by being an app on my phone, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to give it to them.
sjburt 7y ago
I use Reddit and instagram on mobile browsers, they seem fine for a few missing features and nagging you to use the app.
- azhenley 7y ago
  The nagging on Reddit is extreme. And now that I have the Reddit app, if I'm viewing a Reddit thread in the browser then certain actions (but not all) will open it in the app without a prompt.
  - kibwen 7y ago
    Last I checked, on the mobile web interface there is an option to always give you the desktop site, and it remembers your preference. I never see the Reddit mobile site and never need to tell the browser to request the desktop mode. It's completely usable if you don't mind zooming and panning, which I'm fine with.
    - CriticalCathed 7y ago
      >I never see the Reddit mobile site and never need to tell the browser to request the desktop mode. There is a seemingly persistent bug where reddit fails to remember preferences surrounding mobile/desktop and old/redesign. Sometimes you will click a link and the page it delivers you to will be on the mobile site, sometimes it will take you to the redesign. It's been going on for at least a year. I use reddit a lot and I run into it at least every week. Sometimes it sticks and I have to relog to get my preferences back.
      - anoncake 7y ago
        A "bug" that pushes you towards the interface they want you to use. Curious.
  - pritambaral 7y ago
    > then certain actions (but not all) will open it in the app without a prompt. Firefox for Android prevents such attempts by default. That, plus uBlock Origin with its integrated element picker to permanently block elements make reddit bearable.
lovehashbrowns 7y ago
Apps have been turned into a disease. So many different services keep obnoxiously pushing their app. Delivery services are extra annoying. I tried searching for a service that delivers alcohol, and found a few, but some are app-only and I couldn't type in my address to see if I was within their delivery area. Why would I download an app, and probably create an account, only to find that they won't even deliver to me?
bootlooped 7y ago
Venmo used to have the ability to do stuff like send payments on their website, at some point they just shut it off. Only the app is supported now.

ashton314 7y ago

Nit pick on the title: shouldn't this be "Slack has blocked…" rather than "Slack have blocked"? Is Slack plural?

sixhobbits 7y ago
Both are acceptable as you can think of a company as a singular entity or as a group or many parts. There is a nice analysis at [0] [0] https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle-grammatical-debates/ https://www.hallaminternet.com/google-trends-can-settle-gram...
- Angostura 7y ago
  Typically, in formal English, companies are singular.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - chadlavi 7y ago
    Only in US. In the rest of the Anglophone world, it's always plural.
helipad 7y ago
Depends in which country you speak English :) Looks like original Tweeter is Scottish
- not2b 7y ago
  American: has UK: have. Collective nouns (teams, companies, groups) are grammatically singular in the US and plural in the UK.
  - ashton314 7y ago
    Woah. Mind blown. Thanks for explaining this!

frankttr 7y ago

I never use the slack app even on desktop. Always use web.

wdb 7y ago

Yet another service not to use on a mobile then. I don’t mind not looking at work Slack channels on my personal phone

agluszak 7y ago
But they are taking away the choice you could have
- eddieroger 7y ago
  The choice is to use Slack or not. It's their service to offer how they wish, and your choice to use it or not. Tesla doesn't have to make a manual transmission (equivalent) car just because I'd rather drive stick, but I just won't drive a Tesla then.

jbindel 7y ago

This and the WYSIWYG debacle indicate that Slack [or their product managers] have stopped caring about a significant portion of their users.

orf 7y ago
Yeah... the people who use the web app on their mobile over the app are in no way a significant portion but a very small minority.
- lukeschlather 7y ago
  Recently I found a bug in Slack, and I was communicating with their support over it. They asked me to check on the web in addition to the electron app. Now, the number of people who actually care enough to do this are a very small minority, but they are also very significant because they're happy to give Slack free QA. And as a member of this small minority that will reproduce a bug on multiple platforms and communicate back, I can say this seems pretty hostile to me and anyone else willing to pay money to do free QA for them.
  - mikeklaas 7y ago
    The reason they did that is to see if something in the local state of your client was causing the problem, not to get you to QA the bug.
    - lukeschlather 7y ago
      Sounds like QA work to me.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Par for the course in modern software dev I'm afraid.
peterlk 7y ago
Warning: pure speculation ahead. Look at their stock price. I bet there are a lot of tense board meetings happening right now. Culture flows from the top down, and if executives are panicking about the stock price, it makes sense that they'd lose focus. I mean, if you had stock at slack, it would be easy to fall into the trap of cutting costs and following the money instead of shipping an excellent product.

cosmojg 7y ago

There exist plenty of equivalent-or-better alternatives that don't pull shady shit like this. Your tools should serve you, not the other way around. Zulip: https://zulipchat.com/ https://zulipchat.com/ Rocket: https://rocket.chat/ https://rocket.chat/ Riot: https://about.riot.im/ https://about.riot.im/ Mattermost: https://mattermost.org/ https://mattermost.org/

KMnO4 7y ago
Sadly none of those are alternatives if you don’t have a say in what your workplace uses.
- gruez 7y ago
  If that's the case: https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ (native slack client) https://www.irccloud.com/ https://www.irccloud.com/ (cloud irc client, they have slack integration if you pay for premium)
  - SaltyBackendGuy 7y ago
    I tried to use ripcord for about a month. There were several features that I really liked (for example - tabs are amazing imo). The deal breaker ultimately was that I didn't receive all of my notifications which was a problem for work. But I would love to try it again if they solve that problem. Edit: The hotkeys and the lightweight feel to it was also amazing BTW.
    - tumult 7y ago
      Do you have a way to reproduce it, even unreliably? Or any other info? If so, could you email me cancel@cancel.fm ? The Slack server determines most notifications that the client is supposed to display -- the logic all runs on the server, and is sent as explicit events to the client. So, the only way that Ripcord would be losing notifications for standard chat messages is if the server did not send the notification events, or the connection went down for several minutes and had to be restarted without an event replay. But if you have any lead on a way to show that notifications aren't being displayed, that would be really useful information. I've heard of some people using Ripcord on Windows 10 having some kind of automatic suppression of notifications occur at the the OS level. Probably some automated anti-user-spam thing. In which case, the notifications would only be listed internally within Ripcord, but not in the OS notifications list. Is that the case, or were they also not visible within Ripcord's own notifications list? (This one isn't relevant if you're using Mac or Linux.)

mcraiha 7y ago

How does this work when Slack wants to open long code samples in your browser?

gboss 7y ago

This is a shame for mobile developers as well. Deep linking from one app to another can be tricky to get right. Loading slack from the Android emulator browser was an easy way to test various deep links. Not sure why they would care.

chirau 7y ago

This is a bad move, especially given the constraints of their mobile app. For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack. These may be deemed 'older devices' by the tech forward folks like those on here but you would be shocked how many are out there still today. It only presents more resistance to adopt the app at team scale, as they will probably realize soon.

gruez 7y ago
>For example, their iOS app requires iOS 11 or later which means people with a 5c, 5, 4s and iPad 4th gen will not be able to use Slack. AFAIK App Store allows you to download an older version if the current one isn't supported by your OS.
- chirau 7y ago
  Only if you have downloaded it before, but given that a person is using the browser version, there are good chances they haven't downloaded it before.
- bonzini 7y ago
  Sometimes old APIs are dropped server-side and thus older versions of the apps stop working. I have an old iPad at home where I can watch YouTube from the browser but not from the app (though Safari is so old that I don't really trust that device for anything that requires any kind of security).

ydnaclementine 7y ago

I understand why people don't like this change (limiting options, etc), but I can see slack's POV from a business perspective. The mobile web usage might be so low that maintaining it costs more than forcing people to switch to the app. And mobile web might be a bad experience anyway (because slack is focused on standalone desktop app, mobile app, desktop browser instead), so it turns new users off with the crappy experience. But I don't have the numbers or any other insight, so it could be more simple: "we want more app usage". And even if you decide to just leave it alone, is anything truly maintenance free? (possibly) This won't be the last thing to turn off mobile web to force-guide users to the app. And luckily for actual mobile web users, there seem to be alternatives.

jasonjayr 7y ago
The OP had a browser on the mobile device capable of rendering a "Desktop experience" and requested it. Slack went out of their way do discover that and block that user intent, rather than serve the Desktop UI that they test already in a desktop browser. The user knows they will be getting a desktop UI crammed into a mobile device, they asked for it.
- cddotdotslash 7y ago
  And the OP is probably the exact profile of person who will request the desktop page and then open support tickets with Slack when some features break, causing them to spend hours debugging the issue. The unfortunate reality is that it costs businesses money to support platforms. Blocking unsupported platforms probably results in an extremely small number of irritated users in exchange for saving thousands in support costs.
  - jasonjayr 7y ago
    At which point the support folks can close the ticket and say "We don't support that platform, please use the mobile app, or ask your browser developer to better support Desktop-on-Mobile". Not supporting the platform, and actively preventing it are two different things. Especially with all the invasive power mobile apps have on your device vs being contained in a browser. Too many apps stick their fingers into parts of the device that they don't belong. The well has been poisoned with so many apps abusing their privlege, so privacy conscious folks have to assume the worst when being pushed in that direction especially when the browser app worked without an issue (According to OP).

lightedman 7y ago

Stupidest move ever by Slack, so much so that one of my bosses is making the decision to close all Slack-related stuff for the business. We have a strict no phones policy, so those of us needing to use slack utilize our desktops. Well, no longer, I guess. Sorry, Slack. You fucked up bigtime, and now I can't wait to watch you hemorrhage out that user base of yours.

progman32 7y ago
Desktop slack will keep working on desktop OSes. This is just them blocking desktop mode access from phone browsers.
- lightedman 7y ago
  Does not work with our Chromebooks, which is what comprises the majority of our work systems.
  - progman32 7y ago
    Oh they count Chromebooks too... Wonder if that's intentional.
    - lightedman 7y ago
      Chromebooks are essentially running a mobile-focused OS, based in the browser. Makes sense they'd count that as a mobile platform.
  - Marazan 7y ago
    Wow
- mark-r 7y ago
  Sometimes you just need to act on principle. If they're pulling this on their mobile users today, what will they do to their desktop users tomorrow?

akerro 7y ago

Facebook on mobile is only usable from Chrome

chiefalchemist 7y ago
I use it via Firefox on Android. No major issues.

ape4 7y ago

Browsers are getting more powerful. Eg use local storage for scrolling back in old comments. So even less need for apps now.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

Does anyone know why Slack would have done this? I can certainly understand Slack not providing a specific mobile-web experience, but that is not what is going on here. The user specifically switched their mobile browser to "Desktop Site" (one of my favorite features of Android Chrome by the way for sites that mysteriously provide dumbed down versions for mobile that are missing all the content I actually need - looking at you, Square), so the server should just serve them desktop-optimized content. Slack has to go out of their way to prevent this. Why would they care? It has to be a very small portion of their users in any case.

uberman 7y ago
It would potentially allow them to forgo the need to limit their UI to phone based with desktop upscaling. Make an app for the "best" small screen experience and the web site for the "best" large screen experience. This strategy probably mitigates what might be a much more common complaint in the future that their "UI" sucks on mobile if they were to design for only larger screens.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  This is the argument that I don't think is valid, though. When folks switch on "Desktop Site" in an Android browser, they expect that things will be squished, and that the site isn't optimized for the screen size. They just do it (or rather I just do it) because I want the full set of features, even if I need to do a bunch of zooming and scrolling around. That is, Slack should still focus on making the website for the best large screen experience, but they shouldn't go out of their way to do somewhat sneaky stuff to detect my "Desktop" browser is really coming from my phone.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    Yep. And it annoys me that desktop sites are usually more usable on mobile, even with that extra burden.
freeqaz 7y ago

znpy 7y ago

"Slack continues the war against its own users" somebody will say.

hnarn 7y ago
And they will be right. The arrogance of market leaders is more or less a universal constant.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Remember the Prime Directive.

diminish 7y ago

In 2019 I got sick of mobile websites offering me their apps again and again. Facebook, LinkedIn and endless others. Stop it.

securityfreak 7y ago
They won’t, at least not for now, I assume. They can put far more intrusive tracking inside an app compared to a web browser. There is also no way to do content blocking or ad blocking inside apps, at least not on iOS. I use Facebook in Safari - can’t be happier (well, I mean it’s Facebook, but I am not able to pursue all my friends to cancel it).
- cprecioso 7y ago
  You can use a adblocking DNS server. Either a pi-hole in a VPS you control, or something like NextDNS (which I am really happy with). It doesn't block everything, but almost nothing is getting through for me.
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    With the shift towards DNS implemented at the application-level as DoH gets rolled out, apps will ignore your adblocking DNS servers.
    - panpanna 7y ago
      I am starting to believe this is why Google is pushing aggressively for DoH...
xtracto 7y ago
This makes me think something intereating: Back in the late 1990s I used to have all sorts of software in my computer which I downloaded and installed. Some of it was purchased and other free or open source. As the time passed, more and more services became "web based" including mail, music, calendar, note taking, etc. I was part of a small group that did not like that. My reasoning was that there was no need to hack all that functionality in the web browser as it was highly inefficient. That it was better to code the network features into the desktop clients. Web caught on and nowadays seldomly you get a client program in the desktop. But now in mobile, we are returning to the clinet software first approach. And for some reason we resist the installation of client software and prefer browser based functionality.

mellosouls 7y ago

Presumably all the commenters here have tested the claim? Otherwise it appears to be premature or unresearched, or Slack have quickly backpedalled or fixed a bug. There are reports in the Twitter thread of mobile browser access (using show desktop site), and I'm having no problems on mine.

Hnrobert42 7y ago
Thread may have been updated since you viewed. Slack confirmed this new “feature.”
- mellosouls 7y ago
  yeah - I read their response at the time, but it occurred to me it may have been a response in haste or a misreading (it's the desktop option on mobile browsers; mobile browsing per se isn't supported for a long time I think), or a pragmatic implied "until we've investigated" as it worked for me on testing, and others, and its probably a skeleton support crew over Xmas.
webo 7y ago
Works fine for me on iOS safari.
Marazan 7y ago
100% does not work for me. Tried the various things suggested in the twitter thread and I always end back at the "get the app" page.
- mellosouls 7y ago
  Thanks for confirming. I was more responding to the title claim, which seems incorrect - the desktop site option clearly still works for others. It may be a bug, or a new policy but time will tell.
maple3142 7y ago
I found that you have to enable desktop mode before entering slack on mobile. If you have visited slack with a mobile user agent, it will force you to download the app even if you enable desktop mode.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Slack is absolutely _unusable_ on a slow connection. It's not even just a matter of being patient, it flat out breaks with everything timing out. I used to use the IRC gateway to maintain contact with some friends, and basically lost access to that social group when they closed down the IRC gateway. IRC is far more inclusive, plus it's open and federated if you're into that.

zzo38computer 7y ago
Yes, IRC is much better, and is something I use. (IRC even works without specialized software, although it works better if you do have it (which isn't too complicated to write).)

rileytg 7y ago

To be fair to the devs at slack, it does actually cost them something to re-enable this. every change to the code base has to be checked on mobile web or things will eventually break. at that point will we see an angry tweet about not fixing that? i develop on a web based system and we don’t support mobile on most of our site because we don’t have the resources to. if we started getting bug reports about this more frequently than we do, we may do the same. It makes our product look bad when we let someone do something we don’t QA for. We pride ourselves on rapid response to our clients requests, with this we build goodwill. we explicitly state we do not support mobile except for specific modules. even with that prior information, users sometimes try anyway and run into bugs. this experience + being told we won’t fix the bug because it’s not a supported platform causes us to lose the goodwill we’ve worked hard to build. in my local neighborhood there are a ton of wholesale shops that even though there are maybe one or two customers a day (ie the shops are dead most of the time) they refuse to sell non wholesale. it’s not packaging, most things are easily sellable one-off. there are no regulations or laws. they choose not to sell to one class of buyers. if they allowed one-off sales, they would then have to start running their business to support doing that correctly- this means having small change, more personnel, probably introduce some security to watch the now increased traffic in their shops etc. if slack does mobile web, they’ll have to do it like they do everything else, the “slack” way.

egdod 7y ago
>”mobile web browsers do not provide the best experience; you really should download our app!” Put a message like that up instead of disabling it altogether.
- rileytg 7y ago
  we do this. we still have users get mad when we explain we don’t support it :(
the_gipsy 7y ago
The problem is these products lure you in with false promises, in this case "it works fine in the browser, no need to install, just try". Once they have enough users, this changes.

Jestar342 7y ago

There's a small irony that this complaint is on twitter, whom don't permit desktop site on mobile either and haven't for a long time.

Shog9 7y ago
Maybe, but... Twitter actually has a mobile website. You can argue - and I would agree - that "request desktop site" should give you what you asked for, but there's still a difference between "here is the mobile web UI" and "here is a link to download an app": namely, one still allows you to use the site if you can't or won't install a native app. Slack is actively locking folks out of their site here, a service that folks have paid for even... That is a significant departure from what folks might've seen in the recent past with mobile device detection.

amursft 7y ago

Slack continue to make product changes that speak loudly. Listen to what they are saying.

ravenstine 7y ago

I just don't have faith anymore. Every piece of software I find myself liking ends up becoming hostile after 5 years of success.

barbs 7y ago
Even open source programs?
chapium 7y ago
This is why I try to use old software. It has much less feature creep and will stay relevant for the long run. If you can compile it yourself, even better.

ravenstine 7y ago

This is why I believe that the user-agent header was a bad idea.

swagasaurus-rex 7y ago
Is there an easy way of altering the user-agent header for my phone? I would rather take the desktop site every time instead of being pidgeonholed into stupid m.-.com that forcefeeds me popups of how their mobile experience is so much better.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  If you have Android and have Firefox, there are extensions that can do it. Otherwise, you would need something to intercept requests because Chrome and Safari on mobile don't have extensions.

itronitron 7y ago

I wonder for enterprise licenses if there is specific mention of which clients on which form factors are covered in the license. I expect and hope that customers will get a lot more specific about what they are paying for so that companies can't just turn off functionality that has been paid for.

ProAm 7y ago

Slack is IRC for millennials. This is purely about gather device specific metrics that are gathered via granted 'permissions' vs providing a service users pay for.

namewasmypw 7y ago
IRC is IRC for millenials, Slack came much much later

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Marazan 7y ago

Ah ha! Visited in an incognito tab and was finally able to get access to desktop site on mobile it again.

Marazan 7y ago
So I wonder if I clear cookies if it would work on a regular tab.

panpanna 7y ago

Serious question: how is slack doing now that Microsoft is using all is muscles to push Teams? Maybe the slack board is in panic mode because of that?

stryk 7y ago

What's wrong with IRC? It still works a treat, and has ever since the early-mid 90's.

Angostura 7y ago
The main problem for me is - if you're not logged in, you've missed that part of the conversation.
- stryk 7y ago
  There are options for persistent connections, with logs and detachment, etc. ZNC/PsyBNC/Quassel come to mind. ZNC, in particular, is extendable via Perl or Python (or TCL if you're a masochist). I hear good things about Quassel as well, but it's still early in development. I get Android notifications if I'm detached from irssi in tmux and someone PMs, says my handle, or any number of custom triggers I set. All free & open source (other than the android phone).

mars 7y ago

bitchX please

tempsy 7y ago

The sentiment around Slack has changed so much so fast. It was only a few years ago when all anyone could do was rave about it. Maybe it was because on the surface it was the rare decently designed piece of enterprise software.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Few years ago they had an IRC gateway, so they seemed like a user-friendly startup, and not another exploitative walled garden.

userbinator 7y ago

It is not possible to access your workspace from your mobile browser, we're afraid. This isn't the first time I've seen a thinly-veiled-fuck-you attitude from them, and it's something that definitely won't make me want to start using Slack. "Afraid of what? You broke it!"

marcosdumay 7y ago
"I am sorry, Dave. I am afraid I can't let you do that."
a_e_k 7y ago
I'm still waiting for Slack video calls to work in Firefox.

wilg 7y ago

I still find it interesting how much people despise native apps. Surely that is a big problem for, say, Apple.

notatoad 7y ago

There seems to be a lot of angry nerds in here, and that basically describes me too. Hoping I can get a response from somebody with a broader perspective: I'm in a position to switch my company over to one of the many alternatives mentioned in this thread. Has anybody here actually done that, and if I do it how angry is that likely to make my non-technical staff? If I don't want my marketing guy and my customer support team to hate me, can I still switch my company over to riot.im or mattermost?

sillysaurusx 7y ago
Probably just stick with slack. Discord would be the other viable alternative (which I actually prefer). Remember, you lose the ecosystem when you switch away, too. There are lots of plugins for slack that won’t be there on the alternatives. Even little things like seeing GitHub commits is nice. Most of this is just transient outrage.
it33 7y ago
Mattermost CEO here, to the extent it's helpful, here's a demo video of how it looks and feels importing a Slack team into Mattermost from 2017: https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249 https://youtu.be/AKqHWqrAgpk?t=249 This is when we were largely just an open source project and before raising $70M in venture capital, which has been accelerating development: https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/ https://mattermost.com/blog/category/releases/

dreamcompiler 7y ago

Every growth-oriented startup with a popular product eventually ruins that product in the name of growth, which eventually kills the company and encourages somebody to start a new startup to build a product half as good as the original. The Silicon Valley circle of life.