Chat: channels and direct messages

Chat has two main kinds of conversation. Channels are named, lasting places for a topic, a project or a group of people, like #sales or #launch-2027. Direct messages are for talking to one person or a few people without a channel. Both live in the Chat sidebar; see Chat: getting started for the tour. A third kind, the meeting chat, belongs to a meeting on your calendar; see Meeting chats.

Public and private channels

	Public channel `#`	Private channel 🔒
Who can find it	Everyone in the organization, in Browse channels	Only its members
Who can read it	Everyone in the organization, even before joining	Only its members
How you get in	Join it yourself	A member adds you
Who can add people	Any member	Any member
Who can remove people	Channel managers and admins	Channel managers and admins
Rename and archive	Channel managers and admins	Channel managers and admins
Who can post	Everyone, unless a channel manager limits it	Everyone, unless a channel manager limits it
Change the topic and description	Any member	Any member
Show up in search	For everyone in the organization	Only for its members

To post, react, reply, pin or save a message in a public channel, join it first. Admins are the organization's Owners and Admins; see Admin roles and permissions. Channel managers are the person who created the channel and anyone they make a manager; see Channel managers.

Creating a channel

Click + (Add channels) next to Channels in the sidebar and choose Create channel. The dialog asks for:

Name: lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens (-) and underscores (_), up to 80 characters, starting with a letter or number. Capital letters are lowered and spaces become hyphens as you type, so "Q3 Planning" becomes q3-planning. The name must be unique in your organization.
Private: turn this on to make a private channel. Leave it off for a public one.
Description: what the channel is for, up to 250 characters.
Add people: anyone in your organization. You can add more later.

You're a member of every channel you create, and you can manage it: rename it, archive it and remove people.

Browsing and joining channels

Browse channels in the sidebar lists every public channel in your organization with its description and member count. Search by name, open a channel to read it before joining, and click Join channel to take part. Turn on the archived toggle to include archived channels.

Private channels never appear in Browse channels. To join one, ask a member to add you.

Topic and description

Every channel has a topic, the short line under its name in the header, and a description saying what the channel is for. Both are up to 250 characters, and any member can change them: click the topic in the header, or open ⓘ ▸ About. The change is noted in the channel for everyone to see.

Adding and removing people

Add people: open ⓘ ▸ Members and choose Add people. Any member of a public or private channel can add anyone in the organization. The channel notes who was added.
Remove people: in Members, channel managers and admins can remove someone. Nobody can be removed from #general.

Leaving a channel

Open ⓘ ▸ Settings and choose Leave. You can rejoin a public channel at any time from Browse channels; to get back into a private channel, someone in it has to add you again.

Nobody can leave #general. If the last member leaves a private channel, the channel is archived.

Renaming, archiving and deleting

Rename: channel managers and admins can rename it, following the same naming rules. The channel notes the old and new names.
Archive: channel managers and admins can archive it when it's finished. An archived channel is read-only: nobody can post, react or pin, but members can still read it, and it leaves the sidebar. Find it again in Browse channels with the archived toggle on.
Unarchive: admins can bring an archived channel back.
Delete: admins can delete a channel for good. Every message and file in it is erased immediately and can't be recovered. Archive the channel instead if you might ever need its history.

#general can't be renamed, archived, deleted or made private.

Making a channel private

Admins can convert a public channel to private from ⓘ ▸ Settings. Its current members stay in it, and from then on it's invite-only and hidden from everyone else. This can't be undone: a private channel can't be made public again. #general can't be made private.

Channel managers

Every channel has channel managers: the person who created it, plus anyone a manager or an admin makes one. Admins can do everything a manager can in every channel. To make someone a manager, open ⓘ ▸ Members, open the person's menu and choose Make channel manager; Remove as channel manager takes it back. Managers are labelled in the member list.

Channel managers can remove people, rename and archive the channel, and decide who can post.

Who can post

In ⓘ ▸ Settings, channel managers and admins choose:

Setting	Choices
Who can post	Everyone, or Only channel managers
Who can reply in threads	Everyone, or Only channel managers
Who can use @here, @channel, @everyone and group mentions	Everyone, Only channel managers, or Nobody

Everyone can still read and react. When you can't post, the composer says so, for example "Only channel managers can post in #news." Messages from integrations and notes Chat posts itself aren't affected.

Announcement channels

Make it an announcement channel sets the most common combination in one click: only channel managers can post, and everyone can reply in threads. It suits company news, releases and anything where replies shouldn't bury the announcement. An admin can make #general an announcement channel too.

Bookmarks and channel docs

Pin the links a channel needs to its bookmarks bar, under the header, so nobody has to search for them.

Add a bookmark: click + in the bookmarks bar and choose Add a link. Give it a title (up to 120 characters), an optional emoji and the address of a web page or of a document in SingleSign.
Create a channel doc or Create a channel spreadsheet makes a new Writer document or spreadsheet for the channel, shares it with every member as an editor, and bookmarks it.
Writer documents and spreadsheets open in a tab inside the conversation, next to the messages, so you can read and chat at the same time.
Any member can add, edit, reorder and remove bookmarks. A conversation can have up to 100.

User groups

A user group lets you mention a set of people with one handle, such as @designers or @on-call, and bring new people into the right channels in one step.

Mentioning a group: type @ and the handle. Everyone in the group who can read the conversation is notified, as if you'd mentioned each of them. Nobody outside the conversation is told about it.
Default channels: a group can have public channels of its own. Adding someone to the group adds them to those channels too.
Who can create and edit groups: admins, from User groups in the menu under your organization's name. An admin can let everyone manage groups instead.
Handles use lowercase letters, numbers, ., _ and -, start with a letter or number, and are unique in your organization. A group can be disabled without deleting it.

Channel managers can stop group mentions in a channel with Who can post.

Default channels

Admins can make any public channel a default channel from ⓘ ▸ Settings. Everyone in the organization is added to default channels automatically the next time they open Chat, including people who join the organization later. #general is always a default channel.

Direct messages

A direct message is a private conversation between you and one other person. Click the New message pencil at the top of the sidebar, or + next to Direct messages, pick the person and start typing.

There's only ever one direct message between the same two people. Starting a "new" one with someone you've already talked to opens the existing conversation, history and all.

Group DMs

Pick two or more people in New message to start a group DM, a direct message with several people. A group holds up to 9 people, including you. As with direct messages, the same set of people always lands in the same conversation.

You can't add people to an existing group DM. Start a new message with everyone you want instead; the new conversation doesn't include the old one's history. When a conversation has grown into something lasting, a private channel is usually the better home.

Notes to self

Pick nobody but yourself in New message, and you get a private conversation with just you, shown as You. Use it for drafts, links and reminders. Everything in Chat works there, including files and search.

Closing a direct message

Close a direct message or group DM you're finished with to take it off your sidebar. Nothing is deleted: it comes back as soon as someone sends a new message, or when you start a new message with the same people.

If someone leaves the organization, your direct messages with them stay readable, with their messages still under their name.

Meeting chats

Every meeting on your calendar with other people from your organization can have a meeting chat, listed under Meetings in the sidebar and titled after the event. Its members are the organizer and the attendees from your organization, it follows the event when attendees change, and a recurring meeting keeps one chat for the whole series. Meeting chats are private: they never appear in Browse channels or in anyone else's search. See Chat with Mail, Calendar and Meetings.

Starring

Click the star in a conversation's header to add it to Starred, the section at the top of your sidebar. Stars are personal: nobody else sees what you've starred. Click the star again to remove it.

Group your conversations the way you think about them, with sections of your own, such as "Clients" or "This sprint", alongside Starred, Channels and Direct messages.

Create a section from + next to Channels, or from the menu under your organization's name. Give it a name and, if you like, an emoji.
Move a conversation into a section by choosing Move to… in its menu in the sidebar. Remove from section puts it back where it was.
Each section's menu can sort it by recent activity or A–Z, Show unreads only, rename it, move it up or down, or delete it. Deleting a section never deletes its conversations; they go back to Channels and Direct messages.
Collapse a section by clicking its name.

Sections are personal: nobody else sees how you've organized your sidebar, and your sections follow you to every device.

Unreads

Unreads, at the top of the sidebar, shows every conversation with unread messages on one page, newest first, with the messages you haven't read. Catch up there and mark each conversation as read as you go, or press Shift+Esc to mark everything read.