How to Make a Private Slack Channel Public, and Who Can

To make a private Slack channel public, open the channel on desktop or in a browser, click the channel name in the header, select the Settings tab, scroll down and click Change to a public channel, then confirm with Change to Public. By default only Workspace Owners, Org Owners and Org Admins can do this. Workspace Admins and regular members cannot, so if you do not see the option, ask an Owner. Once the channel is public, anyone in the workspace can find it and read its full history, and files shared in it become public for good.

We converted a test channel from private to public and back on 3 October 2026, as the Workspace Owner of our own Slack workspace, then deleted it. The screenshots and messages below are from that test.

Convert a private channel to public, step by step

• Open the private channel. The steps work on the desktop app and in a browser.
• Click the channel name in the conversation header.
• Select the Settings tab.
• Scroll to the bottom and click Change to a public channel.
• Click Change to Public to confirm.

The button sits at the bottom of the Settings tab, above Archive channel for everyone and Delete this channel (the difference is in our archive vs delete test):



The confirmation spells out the effect: anyone in the workspace except guests can read the message history and join, and if you make the channel private again, everyone who joined in the meantime keeps seeing it.



After we confirmed, Slack posted "made this channel public. Any member in this workspace can see and join it." in the channel, under the message we had posted while it was private. The lock icon in the sidebar turned into a #. The channel kept its ID, its name and its history; through the API, the notice is a message with the subtype channel_convert_to_public.



Who can make a private channel public?

Action	Who can do it by default
Private to public	Workspace Owners, Org Owners and Org Admins
Public to private	Workspace Owners and Admins, Org Owners and Admins, and Channel Managers

Owners can restrict both actions further. That is why a Workspace Admin can make a channel private but not public: making something private narrows access, making it public opens it. The full split between the roles is in Slack workspace Owner vs Admin. The feature is available on all plans.

What changes when a private channel goes public

• • History. Everything posted in the channel since it was created becomes readable by anyone who joins. Check old messages before you convert.
• • Files. Files shared in the channel become public. Slack repeats this when you go back: the Change to a private channel? dialog in our test said "All files shared in this channel up until this point will be publicly accessible to everyone", while history and members stay as they are.
• • Search. Public channel messages appear in search for every member who can see the channel.
• • Slack Connect channels. A Slack Connect channel cannot be made public if it is private in the organization that owns it. Otherwise a conversion applies only to the organization that made the change. See Slack Connect vs guest accounts.

If some of the history should stay private, a cleaner path is to create a new public channel and move only the discussion that belongs there.

How to make a public channel private

Owners, Admins and Channel Managers can do this by default. The #general or #all-company channel cannot be made private. On Business+ and Enterprise, Owners and Admins can also convert channels to private from the channel management tools.

Private channel visibility: who can see what

If a channel you expect has vanished from your sidebar rather than changed type, see Slack channels disappeared from the sidebar.

FAQ

Why can't I make a Slack channel public?

By default only Owners can, so Admins and members do not see Change to a public channel at all. Owners can also restrict it further. A Slack Connect channel that is private in the organization that owns it cannot be made public.