If you’ve got Slack running on your computer and receive a message, you’ll get a notification about it. If you are away from your computer when you receive a message, however, you may miss the notification as you aren’t there to see it. Helpfully, Slack places a notification badge next to channels that have unread messages in them so you can see them when you get back to your computer.
If you’ve signed into Slack with the same account on your smartphone, you can configure Slack to send your notifications to your phone when your computer is idle. You can also configure Slack to send you regular emails for missed mentions and direct messages when you’re away from your computer. These options allow your notifications to be sent to a device you may well have on your while you’re away from your computer, allowing you to see potentially urgent messages earlier than whenever you happen to get back to your computer.
If you want to configure how your notifications are handled when you’re away from your computer, you need to configure your preferences. To do so, click on your profile picture in the top-right corner, then click on “Preferences”.
Once in your preferences, scroll down to the bottom of the default “Notifications” tab to the “When I’m not active on desktop” section. In the dropdown box labelled “Send notifications to my mobile devices” select how long you need to be inactive before Slack starts sending notifications to your phone. You can also choose “immediately, even if I’m active”, which will always send every notification to both your phone and desktop client.
If you want to receive regular email notifications for mentions and direct messages tick the checkbox labelled, “Send me email notifications for mentions and direct messages”, then click the relevant radio buttons to select if you want an email every fifteen minutes or every hour.
