One sticking point for people might be the way push-to-talk works for the in-browser version; the shortcut to trigger it will only work when you have the browser window focused (I think due to limitations in how browsers can capture inputs when not focused, which is a pretty reasonable policy in general). Not only does this mean you'd need to alt-tab over whenever you want to push to talk (which isn't super easy for a lot of potential use cases, like gaming), but if I remember correctly from trying this out once, you can have even more jarring bugs like "alt-tab over to the browser to hit push-to-talk shortcut, hit the shortcut, alt-tab back before releasing so you can keep talking, and then having the push to talk never deactivate because the browser didn't detect the key-up event due to a different window having focus when it happened".
On Linux, I just tested that if you have a Mozilla Firefox window running on X (I tested on XWayland but it should work just as well on X11) with the Discord tab in view, you can use your desktop's/compositor global keyboard shortcut functionality to call xdotool to send a keyup/keydown event without focusing the window, like this:
xdotool search --name 'Discord.*— Mozilla Firefox' keydown F9
xdotool search --name 'Discord.*— Mozilla Firefox' keyup F9
I configured web Discord to use F9 as the push to talk button since it seemingly doesn't conflict with anything in Firefox, but you can then bind it to any key or mouse button on your global keyboard shortcut settings.
According to some people on StackExchange (I didn't test myself) this doesn't work if you're using Discord on Chromium-based browsers, which seem to reject xdotool events unless the window is focused (which xdotool can do for you, but doesn't work for the PTT usecase). Of course, this doesn't work on Firefox when running native Wayland windows because xdotool is X-only, and ydotool doesn't work either because it emulates a virtual device which would mean you still need to focus the window.
> It seems like a WebExtension using dispatchEvent could solve both these issues.
Great idea! Couldn't find anything any pre-existing project like that from a quick web search and tbh I have enough side projects as it is, but that would indeed solve the issue for both.
Oh wow, that's super interesting! In retrospect it's super clear that muting and unmuting the microphone system-wide will pretty much always work, since it's incredibly unlikely someone would need to have input on between push-to-talk activations, but for whatever reason, it never occurred to me. I use a cheap USB foot pedal to avoid needing to manage holding down the button while trying to do stuff in-game, and I'm realizing now how obvious it is that making it just toggle mute/unmute on each press rather than needing to hold down my foot would be _way_ more convenient!
I keep trying to use ripcord, but the reality is a workplace expects you to be able to jump on board everynewfeature that Slack adds within moments of it's release. Whether that be huddles, threads, recordings, etc.
If we could pare our use of Slack down to just text, it would be a great alternative - but until them I'm stuck using the official client.
1st party support is (sadly) usually the best experience you're going to get.
I'd love to see some real focus on open standards and enforcement for those standards at a legislative level (the first to go should be any limits on 3rd parties acting on behalf a user... it's essentially the same as the court case that allowed consumers to install 3rd party equipment at telephone jacks)
But until then (and I'm not holding my breath because the US congress is utterly, woefully, frankly perhaps intentionally, useless for both antitrust and tech regulation at the moment) I'll continue to use the first party software.
This is a real question: what are Slack huddles supposed to do? I run the native client. While anyone can start a huddle with me, I never see any UI for a huddle. All I get is the audio coming across. To end the huddle I have to force stop Slack and relaunch it.
What should be happening is a small window opens at the bottom of the left sidebar (under your channels/direct messages/apps)
The tiny window is sorta useless except for mute/hangup, but you can undock it from the sidebar and make it much larger for video chat or screensharing.
I really like them. No need to invite people to a meeting; just jump in. E.g. if you have an issue to diagnose as a group you can just stay on the line, and dip in and out where necessary.
In Teams you can just call the first person up and then add more people into the call. "Jane Doe is calling you from a group chat" or whatever it says. I'm surprised this is a new-ish feature in Slack?
It's hard to explain. You're in a channel already, e.g. your team's channel, and you hit a toggle and it creates a voice chat and others are notified to join. I think it's really slick.
Teams has that too, you can call groups, or teams, people can pop in and out at will.
Two years ago the multinational company I was working at had a global ransomware attack and we had a teams call for like 7 days straight with check-ins every two hours for everyone but there were on call people in there always if you had specific questions.
It worked really well and made it easy for people to get stuff done and have clear chain of command when everything else was down.
I know what you mean - we had Teams at my past place. Difference is Teams UI is intrusive, which might suit command and control style orgs. Huddles are much less intrusive. You can do regular calls with Slack as well, Teams-style, but huddles are much slicker IMO.
> All 3rd party apps or client modifiers are against our ToS, and the use of them can result in your account being disabled. I don't recommend using them.
That's not the TOS. That's a 3 year old tweet with multiple people in the replies asking to cite where in the TOS it says that, and no further reply from the official account.
Ah, I didn't really read the ToS, but contemplated a third party client a while ago, and was told I best avoid them due to ToS violations. I guess it must've spread through that tweet.
Reddit is one of the most difficult sites online to use as a new user. Virtually no subreddits allow new account to post. There are often waiting periods of a month for new accounts and large karma requirements that are difficult to get, because once again subs won’t let you post.
I would love to use Ripcord but I can't find any information on noise suppression/voice focus and that's a requirement for me as I play without push to talk and on mouse and keyboard so all those key presses get sent through to those in my channel. With the 1st party app, despite other issues, none of my key presses come through for people in my channel.
If you have an Nvida card you could use Nvidia broadcast. It runs as a virtual microphone that other apps can target as the voice input. So Nvidia broadcast will receive the raw input from your real microphone, process it, and feed it to any applications that are targeting the Nvidia broadcast mic as their voice input. It also doesn't appear to add any noticeable latency.
Ripcord will temporarily remember deleted messages for channels in which you're a moderator. You can view the contents by right-clicking on the message. It won't do this if you aren't a moderator in that channel.
This is to help avoid having to use a bot to log all message edits+deletes, usually done to mitigate bad actors saying something bad, getting someone else to report the message or take a screenshot of it, then delete it afterwards.
