Every Slack workspace starts with two channels: #general and #random. Adding more channels helps you have more specific and focused conversations — that’s good! But as your workspace grows, you’ll want to keep your most important conversations just where you need them.

General tips

Here are a few simple ways to filter the busy hum of productivity in your sidebar:

Sidebar preferences

Slack also provides some powerful preferences to help you make the most of your sidebar. Below are two ways to move things around and tidy them up.

Combine or separate your public and private channels

You can easily rearrange your desktop sidebar to keep your public and private channels separate: 

Sort your channels

Your channel list is sorted alphabetically by default, but if you're on a paid plan, you can also set a preference to sort it scientifically based on how you use Slack. Here's how to do this from your desktop:

Hide conversations with no unread activity

To tidy up your desktop sidebar, you can set a preference to only see conversations with messages you haven’t read. This way, channels and direct messages will only pop up when someone speaks.

If you have and use starred channels, and often want to get to those even when there’s no new activity, choosing to show My unreads, along with everything I've starred will make everything feel a lot more manageable. Like this:

Note: This is a power move, and can get disorienting fast if you’re used to navigating channels with your mouse. The Quick Switcher is the fastest way to get around when channels are hidden. Press ⌘+K, (Ctrl+K on Windows, or ⌘+T as an alternative in the Mac desktop app) to reach new channels or conversations.

Note: It's not possible to create sub-channels or folders to organize conversations in Slack, but since channels are listed alphabetically, channel pre-fixes can help organize your list.