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Whenever I open slack links in my browser, by default, slack redirects the link to open in the native app. I DO NOT WANT THIS.

My use case is:

  • Slack link shared in a thread, or manually copied by clicking on the 3 dots and then "Copy link". enter image description here
  • The link that I now have is something like https://companyname.slack.com/archives/company_cid/p1611111000001111?thread_ts=1633123456.302400&cid=company_cid
  • By default, the browser redirects me to the native app.
  • In most cases, I want to open the link in my browser. Not the app. and that's what I want should happen by default.
  • To actually open the link in my browser, I then have to click on "open this link..." as in the image below. enter image description here

NB:

  • I'm using Firefox on MacOS. Both are up to date with the most recent versions at the time of this post.
  • I've tried setting the default app for slack links in my Firefox preferences to "Firefox". This prevents the link from opening in the native app, but it still requires me to click on "open this link..." as in the image above.
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  • If you open slack in your browser and click your name in the top left, do you see any mention for choosing to open the slack app in the drop-down?
    – harrymc
    Commented Oct 6, 2021 at 10:35
  • Nope. No mention.
    – kapad
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 8:44
  • Try to create a new profile in the browser, and see if this helps. If not, then perhaps finicky will help.
    – harrymc
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 8:54
  • Well, from my test what happens is that finicky prevents opening the native app. But it doesn't prevent the web page from detecting that I have the app installed. (This page may not even be querying my system, but could be checking with a web service that slack runs. Not sure. Would need to see the web console and check what it's doing under the hood). The end result is that I have to specifically click on the open this link in your browser text, and only after I do that does slack open the webapp. I'm looking for a solution that prevents me from having to make this extra click.
    – kapad
    Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 6:37

2 Answers 2

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I'm also on MacOS/Firefox, and I was irritated enough by this today that I figured out a solution - it's as simple as getting your browser to automatically redirect https://(.*).slack.com/archives/(.*) to https://$1.slack.com/messages/$2.

I implemented this using the Redirector Extension and by creating the following rule. (Apologies for having links instead of embeds; I apparently don't have enough SU karma to embed yet.)

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4

Remove the entries mentioning Slack from protocol_handler.allowed_origin_protocol_pairs in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences — that'll make Chrome get back to suggesting you to open Slack every time.

I still haven't found a way to make it stop suggesting the native app forever, and I assume this is not supported: this ticket seems to be saying only 0.2% users select "don't launch and remember": https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=724919

UPD Apr 10, 2023: they introduced a behavior that does not even require that prompt when the native app is open. While I'm investigating how to prevent that, I hope they revert it because it feels totally unusable.

UPD Jan 4, 2024: Slack introduced multiple windows, which is a tolerable experience, so I stopped investigating.

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  • If you tried editing this post as your own, please login first using the account you used to post this answer. As an anonymous user, the edit appears to be trying to speak for you.
    – music2myear
    Commented Jan 4 at 23:12

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