Nowadays, your personal information is treated as a commodity by many IT corporations. Luckily, Slack facilitates safe-zones where your privacy is secure. You can make a Slack channel private whenever you need.

Changing your Slack channel to private means that nobody else will be able to enter unless they are approved by existing members.

These channels are ideal for when you want to keep the inner workings of your team between you and the other admins. Or when you are planning a surprise party for a colleague.

What does changing a Slack channel to private mean?

The thing with shared channels is that anyone can join them if they have the URL, so it might do you well to consider changing the more organization-specific ones to private.

For example, if you're having a discussion about accounting or even organizing a Secret Santa, the last thing you're going to want is just anyone hopping in. Don't you agree?

If you are managing multiple Slack workplaces in Shift, make sure you are in the correct one to access the private channel!

Make a new private Slack channel

Making a private channel from scratch is just as simple as making a public one.

1. Launch Slack in Shift, then open your Slack workplace
2. In the sidebar, click the plus icon beside "Channels"
3. Toggle the "Public" button to "Private"
4. Enter a channel name (eg. squashsquad)
5. Under "Purpose" you can add an optional description of the channel
6. Choose which members to invite by typing their names—although, you can add more later
7. Hit "Create channel"

Congratulations - now your channel is private.

Convert an existing Slack channel to private

1. Using Slack in Shift, open the Slack channel you want to make private
2. Click the gears icon in the top right-hand corner
3. Choose "Additional options" from the "Channel Settings" menu
4. Select "Change to a private channel"
5. Hit "Convert to private" to confirm

Note: You should also be aware that once you've made a channel private, you can't make it public again. So choose wisely.

Since you've mastered channel management now, save even more time by switching between your Slack workplaces seamlessly with Shift.