More than ever at the time of COVID, Slack is a valuable tool for communication at work. As with any work tool, small changes often go unnoticed when users get comfortable with the things they’re used to. That’s why some of Slack’s most recent updates, at least on Android, have been an absolute torture, as subtle adjustments to fonts, spacing and notifications leave us scratching our heads.
Launched in late January, Slack for Android has made a very irritating change in its font and, more specifically, in the spacing between lines and words. In older versions of the application, Slack left the spacing between the different messages almost uniform, keeping the information quite dense. After sending a later update, the spacing changed, making the size of the sender’s name larger and pushing the message itself a little closer to that. After that first message, subsequent messages left an unusually large gap between them.
It’s a small adjustment for sure, but it didn’t go unnoticed. On a Twitter topic, some users asked for the change to be reversed or at least optional, but Slack confirmed it was not an optional change. They accepted feedback, but it seems that nothing is changing. After a few weeks, it still pisses me off daily and, looking at the comparison below, our own Abner Li aptly called it “density hell”, as it literally cuts two messages in my Fold 2.
Slack v20 compared to Slack v21
Unfortunately, however, it doesn’t look like Slack’s journey to ruin his own Android app ends there. Today, another update is being released to users, which changes the layout of notifications. Previously, notifications of incoming messages showed the room first and the messages below, with the sender’s profile photo on the right.
Now, Slack shows notifications on Android with generic icons for room types on the left, grouping profile pictures for DMs, with message content on the right with totally different layouts for usernames and messages as well. It is quite a shocking change.
It is important to note that the change in notification design is currently limited to the beta channel, but there is no reason to believe that it will not reach the general release in the near future. It’s not like they seem to hear feedback anyway.
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