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I’ve started working at a company that uses Zulip and it’s by far the best thought out UX I’ve ever worked with in a communications app. Sure there’s some polis

I’ve started working at a company that uses Zulip and it’s by far the best thought out UX I’ve ever worked with in a communications app. Sure there’s some polish needed but the general structure just lets me get to where I want, gives me an overview of everything going on, and generally makes me happy. I wish for more keyboard shortcuts maybe, and the mobile app needs the recent conversations view, but I’m sure they’ll get there.

stockerta 8mo ago
At my work after we were bought we went from Teams to Zullip. All of us hate it. It's a joke compared to Teams. But if it works for you then I guess...
simonmales 8mo ago
Coming from Slack for a number of years, there is an initial shock of missing out of the 'slack way of things'. The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used it. As mentioned, Slack is way more polished.
- trueno 8mo ago
  > The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used I personally can't stand it. _However_ I just learned today that it can actually be disabled, which I would do if I was deploying a zulip instance for my team. We are all very wired towards the crackhead energy of just.. a chronological chat and a competent search.
  - andersa 8mo ago
    You can just not specify a topic and write your messages in "general chat", nothing stops you from doing this.
    - trueno 8mo ago
      we want topics allowed in certain channels only (ie #announcements) so that's probably what we'll use this feature for which certainly was not there when we tested maybe a year ago or so
      - tabbott 8mo ago
        The nice general chat UI and per-channel permissions for it were new in Zulip 11.0 last year: https://blog.zulip.com/2025/08/13/zulip-11-0-released/ https://blog.zulip.com/2025/08/13/zulip-11-0-released/. So probably you tested not long before this got built.
    - dizhn 8mo ago
      That's new.
      - andersa 8mo ago
        True, though even before this we just made a chatting topic with the name "general", that worked just fine while still letting people make other threads for long discussions.
- ssivark 8mo ago
  > Coming from Slack for a number of years, there is an initial shock of missing out of the 'slack way of things' [...] takes some getting used it. I have a theory for why some people love Slack and others love Zulip (Completers -vs- cultivators) which I shared in a sibling thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569 Curious to hear what you think.
ssivark 8mo ago
> recent conversations I wish Zulip (and other apps) provided an inbox instead of just ephemeral notifications that disappear once a message is viewed. Lack of inbox means that I have to use unread messages as a way to manage my inbox -- because the moment I click on a notification / take a quick peek at a message there's no easy way to mark it for coming back to later. ---- +100 for Zulip though; by far the sanest messaging experience for this kind of context.
- terpimost 8mo ago
  There is an Inbox view which you can make a default. You can also turn on setting to not mark messages as read automatically
  - Semaphor 8mo ago
    I just had a look. I can absolutely understand parent. I’d want an option to include read messages in the inbox, not avoid marking as read. I want a history of stuff in my inbox, the same way discord, my RSS reader, and my email client work. All those have a read and unread state, but I can still see the read ones.
    - tabbott 8mo ago
      You may be looking for the recent view (https://zulip.com/help/recent-conversations https://zulip.com/help/recent-conversations) which you can also set to be the default/home view for your account. (And administrators can set it to be the default for new users in their organization, if the way your organization communicates is such that it's a better default than inbox).
- KPGv2 8mo ago
  I heavily use Discord for fan works stuff (I run some major annual fan works projects, like a big bang, charity fundraiser, zine, etc.). That's how I know Discord has this feature! Top right corner has an @ and it's the "mentions", which is a list of every notification. I couldn't do all the managerial/administrative work on these projects without it.
mstipetic 8mo ago
Replying to myself because I'm sure someone from Zulip will read this thread: I also wish for a tiered channel system. Instead of muting some, I'd like to promote some to high priority, so my inbox can toggle between the ones I really care about and a general overview.
- neonshankster 8mo ago
  You can "pin" channels. It puts them at the top of the sidebar as well as the inbox. You can also use a variety of filters in the inbox.
- alya 8mo ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I think feature closest to what you're requesting is followed topics (https://zulip.com/help/follow-a-topic https://zulip.com/help/follow-a-topic), which you can filter to in the inbox. Perhaps we could add an option to auto-follow topics in a specific channel to other ways of auto-following topics.
trueno 8mo ago
was just chattin zulip in another thread. news to me that there is a setting for disabling topics which puts thing in a normal "chat room" style chronological order though it looks like it still retains some sort of topic visual heading which looks kind of noisy. zulip is the most solid of the open self hosted solutions so far imo. last my team tried it sometime a year ago maybe we were super turned off at the threaded topics. my entire team hates them and anyone trying to post important stuff in topics gets ignored lol we can't help it our brains just don't want them in our lives. but now seeing that there's a way to disable that, it's possibly time to revisit zulip
- krapht 8mo ago
  Why not have a megatopic for things that don't need their own topic? Topics are necessary when you start having a huge Zulip server, 100+ people. There's so much noise --- dividing things by channel is too coarse. I participate in several open source Zulip servers and it reminds me of a better IRC. It's a lot more ergonomic that Gitter or Discord.
  - ssivark 8mo ago
    Topics are otherwise incredibly useful even with a small number of people, if you want to carry out parallel & wide-ranging conversations on different timescales. Implicitly designing for a single topic per channel forces chats to be ephemeral and makes it very hard to have long timescale discussions. Eg. If I'm discussing buying a house or a career change (personal) or a new business strategy for my company (work) I don't want all conversations dumped into a single river. Slack's model of threads within a channel feels too schizophrenic; Zulip's model of multiple conversations arranged loosely by theme (and accessible from the sidebar) is much better. Catch-all topics are good for the ephemeral stream of chatter. Some might say that chat should be only for ephemeral stuff, but then that is basically avoiding the essential complexity (of long term conversations) which must live somewhere to enforce some Procrustean simplicity on the chat platform.
  - travisgriggs 8mo ago
    My frustration with the flow, is that you’re forcing me to make a decision at a point where I don’t really know if a thought/idea/comment I want to share will rise to the level of warranting the organizational overhead of making it a “topic” vs just a little toe in the main stream.
tabbott 8mo ago
Bringing the recent conversations view for mobile is one of our main goals for next couple months!

stockerta 8mo ago

At my work after we were bought we went from Teams to Zullip. All of us hate it. It's a joke compared to Teams. But if it works for you then I guess...

simonmales 8mo ago

Coming from Slack for a number of years, there is an initial shock of missing out of the 'slack way of things'. The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used it. As mentioned, Slack is way more polished.

trueno 8mo ago
> The killer feature is everything is a stream/thread. I argue that is a better UX over Slack, but it takes some getting used I personally can't stand it. _However_ I just learned today that it can actually be disabled, which I would do if I was deploying a zulip instance for my team. We are all very wired towards the crackhead energy of just.. a chronological chat and a competent search.
- andersa 8mo ago
  You can just not specify a topic and write your messages in "general chat", nothing stops you from doing this.
  - trueno 8mo ago
    we want topics allowed in certain channels only (ie #announcements) so that's probably what we'll use this feature for which certainly was not there when we tested maybe a year ago or so
    - tabbott 8mo ago
      The nice general chat UI and per-channel permissions for it were new in Zulip 11.0 last year: https://blog.zulip.com/2025/08/13/zulip-11-0-released/ https://blog.zulip.com/2025/08/13/zulip-11-0-released/. So probably you tested not long before this got built.
  - dizhn 8mo ago
    That's new.
    - andersa 8mo ago
      True, though even before this we just made a chatting topic with the name "general", that worked just fine while still letting people make other threads for long discussions.
ssivark 8mo ago
> Coming from Slack for a number of years, there is an initial shock of missing out of the 'slack way of things' [...] takes some getting used it. I have a theory for why some people love Slack and others love Zulip (Completers -vs- cultivators) which I shared in a sibling thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46960569 Curious to hear what you think.

ssivark 8mo ago

> recent conversations I wish Zulip (and other apps) provided an inbox instead of just ephemeral notifications that disappear once a message is viewed. Lack of inbox means that I have to use unread messages as a way to manage my inbox -- because the moment I click on a notification / take a quick peek at a message there's no easy way to mark it for coming back to later. ---- +100 for Zulip though; by far the sanest messaging experience for this kind of context.

terpimost 8mo ago
There is an Inbox view which you can make a default. You can also turn on setting to not mark messages as read automatically
- Semaphor 8mo ago
  I just had a look. I can absolutely understand parent. I’d want an option to include read messages in the inbox, not avoid marking as read. I want a history of stuff in my inbox, the same way discord, my RSS reader, and my email client work. All those have a read and unread state, but I can still see the read ones.
  - tabbott 8mo ago
    You may be looking for the recent view (https://zulip.com/help/recent-conversations https://zulip.com/help/recent-conversations) which you can also set to be the default/home view for your account. (And administrators can set it to be the default for new users in their organization, if the way your organization communicates is such that it's a better default than inbox).
KPGv2 8mo ago
I heavily use Discord for fan works stuff (I run some major annual fan works projects, like a big bang, charity fundraiser, zine, etc.). That's how I know Discord has this feature! Top right corner has an @ and it's the "mentions", which is a list of every notification. I couldn't do all the managerial/administrative work on these projects without it.

mstipetic 8mo ago

Replying to myself because I'm sure someone from Zulip will read this thread: I also wish for a tiered channel system. Instead of muting some, I'd like to promote some to high priority, so my inbox can toggle between the ones I really care about and a general overview.

neonshankster 8mo ago
You can "pin" channels. It puts them at the top of the sidebar as well as the inbox. You can also use a variety of filters in the inbox.
alya 8mo ago
Thanks for the feedback! I think feature closest to what you're requesting is followed topics (https://zulip.com/help/follow-a-topic https://zulip.com/help/follow-a-topic), which you can filter to in the inbox. Perhaps we could add an option to auto-follow topics in a specific channel to other ways of auto-following topics.

trueno 8mo ago

was just chattin zulip in another thread. news to me that there is a setting for disabling topics which puts thing in a normal "chat room" style chronological order though it looks like it still retains some sort of topic visual heading which looks kind of noisy. zulip is the most solid of the open self hosted solutions so far imo. last my team tried it sometime a year ago maybe we were super turned off at the threaded topics. my entire team hates them and anyone trying to post important stuff in topics gets ignored lol we can't help it our brains just don't want them in our lives. but now seeing that there's a way to disable that, it's possibly time to revisit zulip

krapht 8mo ago
Why not have a megatopic for things that don't need their own topic? Topics are necessary when you start having a huge Zulip server, 100+ people. There's so much noise --- dividing things by channel is too coarse. I participate in several open source Zulip servers and it reminds me of a better IRC. It's a lot more ergonomic that Gitter or Discord.
- ssivark 8mo ago
  Topics are otherwise incredibly useful even with a small number of people, if you want to carry out parallel & wide-ranging conversations on different timescales. Implicitly designing for a single topic per channel forces chats to be ephemeral and makes it very hard to have long timescale discussions. Eg. If I'm discussing buying a house or a career change (personal) or a new business strategy for my company (work) I don't want all conversations dumped into a single river. Slack's model of threads within a channel feels too schizophrenic; Zulip's model of multiple conversations arranged loosely by theme (and accessible from the sidebar) is much better. Catch-all topics are good for the ephemeral stream of chatter. Some might say that chat should be only for ephemeral stuff, but then that is basically avoiding the essential complexity (of long term conversations) which must live somewhere to enforce some Procrustean simplicity on the chat platform.
- travisgriggs 8mo ago
  My frustration with the flow, is that you’re forcing me to make a decision at a point where I don’t really know if a thought/idea/comment I want to share will rise to the level of warranting the organizational overhead of making it a “topic” vs just a little toe in the main stream.

tabbott 8mo ago

Bringing the recent conversations view for mobile is one of our main goals for next couple months!