Slack, now on Focals
This week, we’re releasing a new Slack Ability that will allow you to quickly action any Slack direct or group messages right from Focals. Your Slack workspace can be overwhelming: with countless channels and mentions telling you to ‘click here!’, it can be tricky to avoid getting sucked into threads or other discussions.
Keep the noise from those channels out of your line of sight and manage your direct messages on-the-go. Smart Replies, voice to text, and Slackbot reminders make responding to those important messages (or saving them for later) effortless and hands-free.
Reply to direct and group messages
Before you can reply to Slack messages on Focals, you’ll need to sign in to a Slack workspace:
- In the Focals app, select
> Abilities.
- Tap the Slack slider and sign in to the workspace you want to use.
- Click a direct message notification on Focals or navigate to the Notifications view and click a direct message to open the action menu.
- Select any of the Smart Reply options (including emojis!) and click to send your response.

Click a Slack message in your Notifications view to see reply options.

Select a Smart Reply or use voice to text to quickly respond to your direct messages.
Tip
You can also manage messages without replying. Mark a message as read or set a Slackbot reminder for 20 minutes by selecting from the action menu.
Improved Conversation Awareness
In a previous release, we introduced a smarter way for you to filter out your notifications and reduce digital distraction with Focals so you could really focus on your conversations and the people that matter most.
Conversation detection mode is a smarter Do not disturb setting that auto-snoozes notifications while you’re talking or listening to others speak around you.
We fixed a few bugs with this setting in this release. Enable this setting from your Now view and notice better and more accurate conversation detection.
More updates
We're regularly releasing features on Focals.
Find all of our previous software updates here (in case you missed them):