Slack Introduces Status, Catch Up and Slack Launcher Widgets for iPhone

Slack – the cloud-based team communication platform – is bringing three new widgets to the iPhone, the company announced via a social media post on Monday. The new widgets add catch-up, status view and other functionalities to the iPhone’s home and lock screens, enabling users to leap directly into the different tabs of the Slack app. This development comes a month after the platform introduced developer-focused features, a new portal and enterprise tools at the TrailblazerDX developer conference.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Slack introduced three new iPhone widgets: Catch Up, Status and Slack Launcher. As per the company, these widgets can make the “workday easier”. The new Catch Up and Status widgets can be placed on the iPhone’s home screen. Catch Up takes users directly to the Catch Up tab on Slack, enabling them to keep up with unread channels, latest DMs and mentions.

Meanwhile, the Status widget is available in single and multi-views. While tapping the single-view window opens up the status window within the Slack app in the selected workspace, users can change their status or clear it from the widget itself using the multi-view window.

In addition to home screen widgets, Slack also introduced Slack Launcher for the iPhone’s lock screen. As per the company, it takes users directly to their last workspace to catch up on the latest conversations.

Slack Status Widget on iPhone

Gadgets 360 staff members were able to verify the availability of the new Slack widgets on iPhone following the latest app update. The widgets work as advertised.

Slack AI Globally Available

In April, Slack rolled out its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, Slack AI, to all users globally. It is available as an add-on purchase to users with a paid subscription to the platform. Slack AI offers features such as recaps, search, and conversation summaries. Using search, users can type a question in the search bar and the AI assistant will browse through their personal conversations and organisational communication to look up the answer.

With the recaps feature, users can generate highlights for any channel they are a part of with a click. These features are part of Slack’s broader strategy to save users’ time and improve their productivity using AI.