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glajchs / slack-customizations

Some customizations to slack, such as some keybindings, dark theme, etc
MIT License
21 stars 1 forks source link

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Retired

Note: this repo is retired. Ever since a major slack update in 2019, none of the variables required to do these (and any other) customizations are exposed anymore. You can thank the awful black hole that is react and webpack for that.

slack-customizations

Some customizations to slack, such as some keybindings, dark theme, etc

Installation Instructions

  1. Sync this repo locally

    git clone https://github.com/glajchs/slack-customizations.git

  2. Run the patch-slack.sh from within the slack-customizations folder (NOTE: You need to run this step every time slack does a desktop app update for new versions, or if you re-install slack)

    Linux/Mac

    cd slack-customizations; ./patch-slack.sh

    Windows

    cd slack-customizations; patch-slack.bat

  3. Within the Slack UI, go to File->Preferences (Ctrl+,), and on the left select the "Plugins" section at the bottom. Enable plugins as a whole, and then individually any set of plugins that you want.

    Image of Slack Plugins

Example screenshot of plugins

Random Emoji (I'm Feeling Lucky)

Image of Random Emoji Popup

Simple Find

Image of Simple Find

Current list of Plugins

See the image at the top to enable different specific plugins. The current list, in rough order of usefulness for the general public, includes:

How to create your own plugins:

You just need a <something>.js plugin file that you put in your $HOME/.slack directory. This will get picked up, and you can ingest other files (such as .css files) that you also put into your $HOME/.slack directory.

See https://github.com/glajchs/slack-customizations/blob/master/.slack/plugin-darktheme.js for a simple example of loading a CSS file via a new plugin.

Just make sure to generate a unique pluginId, give it a unique pluginName, and some description sections (so that your plugin will render nicely on the plugin list page). Also consider using the prereqsReady function if your plugin needs to wait for something in Slack to finish loading before it initializes.

Uninstallation Instructions

To disable all functionality, first you should go and disable all the plugins by unchecking "Settings -> Plugins -> Enable Slack Plugins".

Also the plugin files are all stored as a symlinked directory at "${HOME}/.slack" for Linux/Mac, or "%APPLOCALDATA%.slack" for Windows. If you delete the symlinked directory the plugins won't load.

I don't have a "uninstallation" instructions to unpatch the ssb-interop.js and index.js files.

Treat this as a last resort though, since plugins as a whole, or individual plugins, can be disabled in the Slack settings UI (Ctrl+,).

Also The patched ssb-interop.js and index.js files only have a small number of lines appended to the end of them. If you want you can manually edit these files to remove the ending sections. Look for the /** Start Slack Plugins Section **/ line.

How to run slack in devtools mode

To run slack in a mode that gives you access to the webkit devtool (Inspect Element), go to a terminal, and set the variable SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU

Linux/Mac:

export SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true

Windows:

set SLACK_DEVELOPER_MENU=true

Then launch slack from that terminal

Linux:

slack &

Mac:

open -a Slack

Windows:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\slack\slack.exe

Now after you've launched, you can right-click anywhere and hit "Inspect Element". Customize away!

Caveats

Tested first on Linux. Windows support generated recently. Mac support supposedly works, but I can't test that since macs don't do VMs.

Wishlist for the future