Reverting to the old Slack UI

A lot of people really hate the new Slack UI, including myself. It wastes a lot of screen estate and it makes workspaces way more difficult to use. As of today, even after a petition on change.org, Slack still does not show any sign of considering rolling back the change (or at least fixing the awful new workspace UX).

Well, if you are a Linux (or Mac) developer and you want to revert to the old #slack #ui, even for just a session, you can. Well, it probably works also on Windows but, uh, I do not have any :)

Please follow this guide at your own risks, no liabilities accepted.

Using the desktop application:

• kill slack (or the equivalent on Mac)

killall slack        

• open a shell and digit

export SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true        

• start slack from the same shell (or the equivalent on Mac)

slack >/dev/null 2>&1 &        

• you are in developer mode: now you can open the JS console with CTRL+ALT+I (CMD on Mac)
• run this script in the JS console to cause Slack to use the old UI

localStorage.setItem("localConfig_v2", localStorage.getItem("localConfig_v2").replace(/\"is_unified_user_client_enabled\":true/g, '\"is_unified_user_client_enabled\":false'))        

• restart the slack UI with CTRL + R (CMD on Mac)

Using the browser

If you are using a browser, you can just open the JS console of the browser and run the command that changes the localStorage entity

A word of caution

Please note that:

1. this enables the developer mode: be aware of that
2. this is temporary, so you will have to do it everytime you open Slack
3. Slack may at some point in time remove this ability
4. Most importantly: do this at your own risks, no liabilities accepted