How to Keep Slack Active? (Desktop and Mobile)

Slack is quickly becoming the go-to communication tool for teams and organizations around the world. It provides an easy way to interact with colleagues and keep everyone on the same page, but it can take time to maintain active according to Slack rules. Keeping it active might seem daunting when your boss has eyes on your slack. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to keep your slack status active. Here’s the complete guide on how to keep slack active.

How Does Slack Determine If You Are Active?

Before jumping into how to keep your Slack active, it’s essential to understand how Slack determines whether you are active or not. Slack usually shows you active based on your interactions and engagements on slack.

If you are accessing slack on the browser or desktop app, it shows you are active based on your interaction under a certain time limit. If you have slack running in the background, for instance, while watching Youtube videos or using other apps, it will show you inactive if you haven’t made any engagement in the last 30 minutes.

If you’re running it in the background, for instance, while watching Youtube videos, it will show you inactive to your teammates. This is because slack uses legacy tokens which are becoming obsolete, but slack continues to use them.

However, the mobile app shows you are active as long as the app is opened. The moment you close the app, it immediately shows you as offline. The simple rule of thumb to show active on slack is to run it foreground and make an engagement, for instance, by moving the mouse or by being active on the mobile app.

	You’re Active When	You’re Away if
Desktop	Slack is open and you interact with your computer.	30 minutes of system inactivity.
Web Browser	You’re interacting with Slack via the browser.	30 minutes of browser inactivity.
Mobile App	Slack is open	Switching between apps, locking the phone’s screen, or closing the slack app.

Does Playing a Youtube Video Keep Slack Active?

No, slack will show you inactive if you’re watching a Youtube video or leaving for a lunch break after playing. It shows you as active on slack as long as you interact with slack on the screen. We asked Slack customer support, and the answer was like; even if you are playing a YouTube video or reading a document but don’t interact with Slack, Slack won’t show you active.

How to Update Your Slack Status to Active When It is Away?

In slack, you can set your status manually, as per your needs. Luckily, you can change your slack status anytime. For instance, if you’re going for lunch, you can set your activity status to Away and change it later to active.

If you have set your activity status to away and want to change it so your colleagues can see you online, here’s how to update your slack status to active when it’s set to Away:

Open slack on your browser or desktop app.
Go to your profile picture on the top right corner of the screen, and click on it.

Click on Set yourself as Active from the drop-down menu, and it’ll immediately update your status.

You can also set the timer for how long you want to show yourself active/away. For instance, if you’re going to be busy in a meeting for the next hour, you can set the timer. To do so, click on “Update your Status”, then click on “In meeting” and lastly, select the time frequency.

How to Keep Slack Always Active on Desktop? (Windows or Mac)

There are different methods you can try to keep slack always active on the desktop. However, first, you must understand that slack will show you active if you interact with the screen and move the mouse.

One of the simplest ways to keep your slack active is to put the mouse on the phone’s screen. If you put the optical mouse on the phone’s screen after playing a game, searching for something, or playing a video, the cursor on the screen will start moving. It’s quite a simple trick to keep the mouse moving on the screen but it works perfectly to keep the slack active.

Secondly, you can also use the portable fan if you have one to keep the mouse in motion. For this, you can attach pencils, pens, or 6 to 7-inch sticks on the left sides of the fan, so they act as arms when the fan moves. Then, put the fan closer to the mouse so that when the fan moves, the arms touch the mouse to help it stimulate.

Moreover, if you don’t have a portable fan, you can proceed with the software that helps stimulate mouse movements on the screen. There is much software available online. However, Jiggler offers a seamless solution for it. It has two modes. All you need to do is to install it on your computer and select the modes.

How to Keep Slack Active All The Time On Browser?

In order to keep slack active all the time on the browser, you should interact with your slack in the browser. However, if you’re moving away from your desk, you can use the above tricks to stimulate the mouse movements with slack opened on your browser.

How to Keep Slack Always Active on Mobile? (iPhone or Android)

When it comes to how to keep slack always active on mobile, it gets even easier. If you’re away from your desk, your phone is a good gadget to keep your status active on slack. This idea will work perfectly if you have a spare phone with you, as the phone should have the slack app active as long as you want to stay active on slack.

You must download the slack app on your iPhone or Android and set up your account. Next, go to settings >> display, increase lock screen time to maximum, and leave your phone active with the slack app. Your slack status will become active as long as the phone’s screen is on and the slack app is running on it.

increase lock screen time maximum on iphone

Final Words

Staying active all the time on slack can be a daunting task. However, there are a number of ways and tricks you can use to eliminate this problem. In this article, we shared all the ultimate on how to keep slack active.