Automate your Slack Status

Last week, I started a new job at Giving What We Can. The team works remotely, and we communicate through Slack.

It's important for me that my colleagues know when I'm available. While Slack's Status feature is great for this purpose, manually changing it multiple times daily can become tedious. (And it's easy to forget)

Slack Status also serves another important function: muting notifications. For instance, when I want to take a quick walk after a 2-3 hour focus session, I don't want notifications buzzing on my phone or watch during that short break.

I've discovered two useful tools that simplify updating my Slack Status.

Status Scheduler, as you might guess, already lets you specify a time window where a status is automatically applied. For me, this is, for example, the Friday when I’m always OOO.

This handy plugin lets you set up presets for your go-to statuses.

Here are the ones I've set up o far:

Now, whenever I take my lunch break (which can vary each day), I just hit ⌘+space to open Raycast, type “Slack stat..,” select the extension, and my status preset gets applied automatically.

Now I always get a bit of joy from seeing that small little status emoji close to my know at the right time. With little work!