Slack Adds Support for iOS Document Providers, New Emoji Picker

Slack’s new file uploads.

I’ve been using Slack every day for a couple of years, and especially after we upgraded to a paid team account last August, we’ve completely cut email from our internal communications (in addition to other features). One missing functionality that always annoyed me was the inability to natively attach files to conversations on iOS – Slack could either upload photos and videos from your library or preview links to files, but it couldn’t upload documents from other iOS apps.

With an update released today, Slack can now take advantage of iOS document providers to import files from any app. This means that I can now upload documents as actual files – not as links – from apps I use to collaborate on a daily basis such as Working Copy, Quip, or Box. File uploads work as you’d expect from Slack with options to insert a title and add a comment. Document providers are one of the best features of iOS and they’re often overlooked by developers, so it’s good to see Slack revamping their document sharing support to include them. Fraser and I devoted an episode of Canvas just to this topic.

Also new in Slack today, the emoji picker to add reactions to messages has been redesigned to be bigger and easier to use. Frequently used emoji are conveniently listed at the top and there are categories at the bottom to switch between different types of emoji – including custom ones. When they launched last year, I dismissed emoji reactions as a gimmick, but as it turns out, we’ve been using them as a simple way to keep track of member emails we’re going to address in MacStories Weekly. Plus, they’re fun to use and they add a bit of color to each conversation.

I use Slack so much, even the smallest tweaks have an impact. You can grab the latest version (which also contains a bunch of welcome improvements and fixes) from the App Store.