Show HN: Debloat Slack – Get rid of Slackbot, AI upsells and other annoyances

A developer released slack-debloat, an open-source tool that removes Slackbot, AI upsells, and other annoyances from the Slack macOS desktop app by injecting custom CSS and JavaScript via Chrome DevTools Protocol. The tool allows users to hide sidebar elements, tabs, and banners without modifying Slack's code-signed app, and updates take effect within a second on file save.

De-bloat the native Slack app on macOS with your own CSS and JS — like uBlock Origin + Tampermonkey, but for the desktop app. Slack's macOS app is Electron, i.e. a Chromium rendering the same web app as your browser — you just normally can't put extensions in it. slack-debloat launches Slack with its Chrome DevTools Protocol port open localhost-only and runs a tiny zero-dependency injector that pushes your custom.css / custom.js into every Slack window, keeps them across reloads, and live-reapplies within a second whenever you save . Hide the Activity tab, the huddle button, Slackbot, upsell banners — whatever annoys you. | Before | After | |---|---| Hidden rows collapse for real no blank slots — see auto-reflow below , and you can restyle what stays: here Threads got promoted to 18px semibold. Slack Debloat.app Dock icon LaunchAgent login │ │ └─ launches Slack with └─ inject.mjs polls localhost:9222, --remote-debugging-port=9222 attaches to every Slack window via CDP, localhost only injects custom.css + custom.js, re-injects on every file save No patching of Slack.app it's code-signed; modifying it breaks Gatekeeper and Keychain . Slack updates itself normally. - macOS, Slack desktop app in /Applications - Node.js ≥ 22 uses the built-in WebSocket client — no npm dependencies git clone https://github.com/benri-ai/slack-debloat.git cd slack-debloat ./install.sh Then launch Slack via the new Slack Debloat app it wears Slack's own icon and put it in your Dock in place of Slack. That's it. The installer: - seeds config.json / custom.css / custom.js from the .example files your copies are gitignored , - installs a LaunchAgent that keeps the injector running from login, - builds /Applications/Slack Debloat.app . Try it without installing anything: ./slack-debloat.sh relaunches Slack with the debug port and runs the injector in your terminal Ctrl-C to stop; Slack keeps running . A thin green line at the very top of the Slack window confirms injection is working remove it in custom.css once you trust the setup . config.json seeded from config.json.example on install is a flat map of option keys to booleans. Flip a key to true , save, and the running Slack updates within a second — no restart, no rebuild. It's plain JSON on purpose: edit it by hand, or point your LLM at this README and let it do the flipping. { "hide-slackbot-dm": true, "hide-upsell-banners": true, "bigger-threads-row": true } Keys you omit default to off; unknown keys are ignored with a warning in injector.log . | key | what it does | |---|---| hide-slackbot-dm | Slackbot DM row in the sidebar | hide-threads-row | Threads row in the sidebar | hide-huddles-row | Huddles row in the sidebar | hide-drafts-row | Drafts & sent row in the sidebar | hide-directory-row | Directory row in the sidebar | hide-slack-connect-row | External connections Slack Connect header in the sidebar | hide-activity-tab | Activity tab in the left rail hides its badge too | hide-later-tab | Later tab in the left rail | hide-files-tab | Files tab in the left rail | hide-tools-tab | Tools tab in the left rail | hide-huddle-button | Huddle button in the channel header | hide-slackbot-ai-button | Slackbot AI button next to the search bar | hide-upsell-banners | In-channel "megaphone" promo banners Business+ trials etc. | bigger-threads-row | Make the Threads sidebar row larger 18px semibold, bigger icon | The selectors behind these keys live in catalog.mjs , verified on Slack 4.50. Slack updates occasionally rename them; fixes are usually a two-minute DevTools job see below — PRs welcome. Hide things by hand: for anything not in the catalog, edit custom.css , save — same ~1s live apply. The .example file ships with commented-out rules showing the patterns. Find selectors: while Slack runs debloated, open http://localhost:9222 in Chrome and you get full DevTools against the native app. Prefer Slack's data-qa=... attributes — they're much more stable than the generated class names. Sidebar rows are virtualized, so hide the whole row wrapper: data-qa="virtual-list-item" :has data-qa^="channel sidebar pslackbot" { display: none important; } Rows hidden this way don't leave blank slots: the injector ships an auto-reflow shim that detects hidden virtual-list rows and shifts the remaining rows up, re-applying whenever Slack re-renders. The sidebar collapses cleanly, as if the items never existed. Run scripts: custom.js runs in every Slack window on load and on every save write idempotent code . Poke at the DOM from a terminal: node eval.mjs 'document.title' node screenshot.mjs slack.png full window node screenshot.mjs sidebar.png '.p-channel sidebar' clipped to a selector What if I open the regular Slack app? You get stock Slack no debug port , and the injector just idles. Clicking Slack Debloat quits and relaunches it with the port. Note that if Slack's own "Launch app on login" setting is on, it starts stock at every boot — turn it off and click the wrapper instead. Does this survive Slack updates? The mechanism, yes. Individual CSS selectors may need a tweak when Slack renames things — that's the DevTools-at-localhost:9222 workflow. Do huddles / calls / notifications still work? Yes — it's the unmodified Slack app; nothing is patched or proxied. Security note: the DevTools port is bound to localhost only, but while Slack runs this way, any local process could attach to it and read your Slack session. Fine on a personal machine; know the trade-off. Uninstall: ./uninstall.sh , then quit and reopen Slack normally. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Slack/Salesforce. Cosmetic use at your own risk. MIT