Slack Green Blog

Discord's AFK timeout is a server setting. If a server has an Inactive (AFK) channel, members who stay inactive in voice for 1, 5, 15 or 30 minutes or 1 hour get moved there and muted. Server admins can change the timeout or turn it off; members cannot.

Don't Sleep is a free, portable 267 KB Windows app from SoftwareOK that blocks standby, hibernate, the screen saver, log off and shutdown while it runs, with a timer and CPU or network rules. Where to get the real one, what each option does, the command line for a batch file, and what it does not do for Slack or Teams.

14 Chrome extensions for remote work, grouped by the job: async video, meetings, focus, writing, passwords, tabs, screenshots, time tracking and keeping the screen on. Each checked on the Chrome Web Store, with user counts, cost, and the extensions to avoid on a work laptop.

No. A Zoom meeting host cannot read private messages between two other participants, even in a saved chat. Zoom Team Chat on a work account is different: the company owns it, and admins can archive and search it. What hosts, admins and your manager can each see, with the chat permission labels from Zoom's own web client.

Slack has no alert for when a coworker becomes active. No preference, Workflow Builder trigger or profile button does it. You can watch their green dot, send a message they will see when they return, or run a short script that checks users.getPresence every minute and DMs you.

Yes. Every Teams chat on a work account, private one-to-one chats included, is stored in company mailboxes, and admins with the right Microsoft Purview roles can search, export and scan it. Your manager cannot open your chats from Teams itself. Who can read what, how they do it, and what stays private.

Tentative in a meeting means maybe: you might attend. Where Tentative shows up in Outlook and Teams, why unanswered invites land on your calendar as Tentative, how it differs from Busy, and what Microsoft's own calendar code says it is.

Outlook shows your Microsoft Teams status, so it turns to Away, a yellow clock, after about 5 minutes without keyboard or mouse input, or at once when you lock the computer. Outlook has no idle timer of its own. Why it can show Away while you work, and what changes it.

Run pmset -g in Terminal. The sleep line names every app that is keeping your Mac awake right now, such as a browser tab playing audio, a Zoom call or Amphetamine. How to read it, the settings that keep a Mac awake on purpose, and how to find what wakes a sleeping Mac at night.

A white circle with a green outline and a green check on Microsoft Teams means the person is Available but has Out of office on. They are using Teams while their automatic replies or an out-of-office calendar event is active. A solid green circle with a white check is plain Available.

Cisco Jabber sets you to Away after 15 minutes without input and when you lock Windows. Where to raise the timer, how to turn off away-on-lock, the jabber-config.xml parameters IT controls, and why Jabber still shows In a meeting or Offline.

Teams keeps showing you Offline when Appear offline is still on, when no device is signed in, or when the app has no presence value yet: the Teams code draws that missing value with the same grey Offline badge. A fix for each cause, and why other people may see you Offline.

By default, yes. Microsoft says anyone in any organization using Teams can see your presence, and Last seen is part of the Away status. Your admin decides who outside the company sees it: all organizations, only some, or none with privacy mode. What guests, federated contacts and personal Teams accounts see, and how to check your company's setting.

In Microsoft Teams, Away means you are signed in but idle, locked, on a backgrounded phone, or set it by hand. Offline means no device is signed in, the computer is asleep, or you chose Appear offline. What each tells coworkers, and how messages and calls behave.

Windows and Mac jiggler apps do not run on a Chromebook, and a Chrome extension cannot move the real pointer. What works: a USB mouse jiggler, a turntable mouse mover, or no jiggler at all, because ChromeOS can keep the display on by itself. Setup for each, and what they do for Teams and Slack.

Microsoft Teams sends no alert when you take a screenshot of a chat, channel or meeting, on any device. What can happen instead: Teams Premium can black out meetings in captures, Intune can block screenshots on Android, and the Record button tells everyone.

Mattermost sets you Away after 5 minutes without activity and Offline when you close the app, lock or sleep the computer. The desktop app counts mouse and keyboard activity anywhere on the computer. Admins can change the timer with UserStatusAwayTimeout.

No. Microsoft Teams keeps no status history you can open: people see your current status and a Last seen time, and that is all. Admins get a last activity date per day from usage reports, and a history only exists if someone logs presence through Microsoft Graph. Where each of those lives and how to read it.

Mouse jigglers are safe for your computer: a USB jiggler is a plain mouse and a platform jiggler is not connected at all. The risks are fake downloads, antivirus alerts that reach IT, unknown USB gadgets that can type, an unlocked screen, and your job.

Remote Desktop sessions end for four reasons: an idle time limit set by policy, a network device that drops quiet connections, a lock screen on the remote PC, and a minimized window that stops drawing. The setting, registry value and PowerShell line for each.

The best PowerToys Awake alternatives are Caffeine and Don't Sleep, both free, portable and a few hundred kilobytes. Windows also has three built-in options that need no download. Which ones also keep Teams green, which ones only block sleep, and what to use on a Mac.

A mouse jiggler is a USB device, app or small platform that moves your pointer a few pixels on a timer, so the computer never counts you as idle. How it works, the three types, what people use one for, and why it keeps Teams and the Slack desktop app green only while the computer is unlocked.

No. A mouse jiggler cannot unlock a computer or keep you active behind the lock screen, and Teams shows you Away the moment you lock. It works only if it runs before the lock kicks in, because the movement stops the idle timer that would lock the screen. What still works, what does not, and the locks a jiggler never stops.

How IT teams and monitoring tools detect mouse jigglers: apps, injected input on Windows, a Mac idle-counter test we ran, the USB device log and the movement pattern, with a tested script.

Set up a software jiggler, a USB jiggler or a turntable mouse mover in a few minutes, pick an interval shorter than your shortest idle timer, and test it before you walk away. Why a working jiggler still lets Slack go away, and the five reasons one stops working.

A phone jiggler rocks your phone back and forth. That adds steps in a pedometer app, but it does not keep the screen awake or Teams and Slack green, because phones count touches, not motion. Here is what each kind of phone jiggler does and what works instead.

Mouse mover and mouse jiggler are mostly two names for one thing. When they differ, a mover moves your real mouse and a jiggler fakes input. Plus a Mac test of what a software jiggler resets and what it does not.

Upwork does not publish a jiggler detector, but it does not need one. The Upwork time tracker takes a screenshot in every 10-minute segment and counts keyboard and mouse activity, and your client sees both in the Work Diary. What a jiggler looks like there, and what Upwork does about fake hours.

A keyboard jiggler presses an unused key such as F15 every minute so the computer never counts you as idle. You can buy a USB device or run a free script. It keeps Windows awake, Teams green and the Slack desktop app active while the PC is unlocked.

Microsoft Teams shows you Away when your computer is idle or locked, and Offline once it goes to sleep. Closing the lid usually means sleep. What coworkers see in each state, and what keeps you Available when the laptop is closed.