slk — a blazingly fast slack tui

/// realtime

Live messages over WebSocket

Reactions, edits, deletes, and typing indicators stream in over WebSocket. Optimistic UI for your own actions, SQLite-backed scrollback for everything else.

/// edit, delete, unread

Own every message you sent

E to edit (your in-progress draft is stashed and restored), D to delete with a centered confirmation, U to roll the read watermark back to any message — threads included, synced live with other Slack clients.

/// markdown compose

Type Markdown, send rich text

Type **bold**, ~~strike~~, [label](url), - bullets, 1. numbered, or fenced ```code blocks```. slk converts on send to Slack's mrkdwn + rich_text — already-mrkdwn syntax (*bold*, _italic_) passes through unchanged.

/// smart paste

Paste images, files, or text

Hit Ctrl+V to paste a clipboard image as an attachment, a copied file path as an attached file, or fall through to text. Multiple attachments + a caption send in one shot via Slack's V2 upload API.

/// threads

A real thread panel

Side-panel threads on Enter, plus a dedicated ⚑ Threads view at the top of the sidebar. Every thread you authored, replied to, or were @-mentioned in, unread first, re-ranking live as replies arrive.

/// images

Inline images, in a terminal

Attachments render where they belong: kitty graphics on capable terminals, sixel on foot/mlterm, half-block (▀) everywhere else. Click the image or hit O for a full-screen preview, Enter to hand off to your OS viewer. Lazy-loaded into a 200 MB LRU cache.

/// notifications

Native desktop notifications

OS-level toasts on DMs, mentions, and any keyword you configure. Auto-suppressed when you're focused on the channel, and silenced entirely while you're in DND or snooze.

/// copy

Drag to copy, OSC 52 to clipboard

Drag the mouse across messages to highlight them; release to copy plain text straight to the system clipboard via OSC 52, even over SSH.

/// sidebar

Your real Slack sidebar, live

slk reads your sidebar sections directly from Slack — names, emoji, order, channel membership — and keeps them in sync over WebSocket. Reorder or rename in the official client; slk catches up in seconds. Falls back to glob-based config sections when you'd rather configure your own.

/// finder

Fuzzy channel finder

Ctrl+t / Ctrl+p to jump to any channel or DM by name. Collapsible sections with aggregate unread counts; the finder auto-expands a collapsed section when you open a channel inside it, and ranks 1:1 DMs above group DMs.

/// reactions

Search-first reaction picker

Hit r to search, R to toggle existing reactions. Pill-style display, optimistic and deduped.

/// workspaces

All workspaces, in parallel

Every workspace stays connected. Press 1–9 to jump between them with live unread badges.

/// status + dnd

Set status without leaving the terminal

Hit Ctrl+S to set Active, Away, or snooze. Standard durations (20m / 1h / 4h / until tomorrow) or a custom minute count. Status bar shows a live countdown, and reflects external changes in real time.

/// themes

35 built-in themes

Live-switch with Ctrl+y. Drop your own TOML in ~/.config/slk/themes/ to add more.

/// keyboard

Vim-modal, all the way

j/k to move, i to insert, Esc to leave. Bracketed paste, OSC 52 clipboard, no mouse required.

Movement

j k

move down / up in lists and messages

h l

switch focus between sidebar, messages, threads

Tab Shift+Tab

cycle focus forward / back

Ctrl+u Ctrl+d

half-page up / down

gg G

jump to top / bottom

Sidebar & channels

Enter

open selected channel, or toggle a section header

Space

collapse / expand the selected section

Ctrl+b

toggle sidebar

Ctrl+]

toggle thread panel

Ctrl+t Ctrl+p

fuzzy channel finder

Ctrl+w

workspace picker

1–9

jump to workspace N

Compose

i

enter insert mode

Esc

return to normal mode

Enter

send message

Shift+Enter

newline

↑ ↓

line nav; on first/last line jumps to start/end

Ctrl+v

smart paste — image / file path / text

Ctrl+u

clear compose (text + pending attachments)

Messages

Enter

open thread

r

open reaction picker (search-first)

R

quick-toggle existing reactions

E

edit your own message

D

delete your own message (with confirmation)

U

mark selected message and everything newer as unread

Y C

copy message permalink

O v

open inline image full-screen

Image preview

Esc q

close preview

Enter

open in OS image viewer

h ←

previous image (multi-image messages)

l →

next image

Click

open full-screen preview from any image in the pane

Status, theme, quit

Ctrl+s

set status / DND / snooze

Ctrl+y

switch theme live

q

quit (with confirmation)

Q

quit immediately

Ctrl+c

quit (with confirmation)