Fake Slack Active Status: What Works and What Gets Noticed

Most people who search for this aren't trying to con anyone. They read specs, sit in Zoom calls, or stare at a query plan for 25 minutes, and Slack marks them away after ten because none of that happens inside Slack. Then somebody asks "you there?" and it stings a bit. I'd call that correcting the dot, and I don't think it deserves the word fake.

Some people do want cover for a long lunch, and the methods are the same either way.

The rule every method has to get around

Slack's help page says you're active when Slack is open on your desktop or phone, and away after 10 minutes of desktop inactivity or when you leave the mobile app.

There is a Set yourself as active option in the profile menu. All it does is undo a manual away while the timer keeps running. Slack's developer docs say there's "no way to force a user status to active," and the users.setPresence API method accepts exactly two values, auto and away.

That leaves one route for all seven methods below, which is getting Slack to believe someone is using a Slack app.

Seven ways people do it

Slack window in front

Put Slack on a second monitor and click into it now and then. It costs nothing and breaks no policy, so it's what I'd try first, although it tends to fail for people doing long stretches of focused work because they stop looking at the second monitor.

Phone app open

Unlock the phone, open Slack, set the screen to never lock, leave it on a charger. Slack counts an open mobile app as active. Slack counts it, and it keeps counting for as long as the screen stays on. The phone gets warm, the battery wears faster than it otherwise would, and unless you have a spare in a drawer you can't use yours for anything else. Details in keeping Slack active on mobile.

Keep-awake apps

Caffeine, Amphetamine, PowerToys Awake. They stop the computer from sleeping and nothing more. Slack's timer watches for activity in Slack, so an awake computer with nobody touching it still goes away at minute ten. We tested this claim for Caffeine specifically. Pair one with another method on this list if sleep is part of your problem.

Mouse jigglers

A jiggler nudges the cursor a few pixels. If the cursor is parked over the Slack window, that can register as activity. Over your email client, it does nothing for Slack.

Hardware ones (a USB dongle, roughly $10 to $20) look like an ordinary mouse to the computer. Software ones are a process running on a machine your employer may monitor, and endpoint tools flag them by name. I wouldn't run one on a managed work laptop. On your own machine it doesn't matter. There's a longer jiggler comparison if you want the details.

Solo huddle

Start a huddle with yourself and Slack treats you as active for as long as it runs. It also puts a headphones icon on your profile that the whole workspace can see. An hour of that is fine. Sit in one from 9 a.m. to mid-afternoon and somebody will eventually ask who you're talking to, which is a worse conversation than the one about a hollow dot.

Your own script

Because the API can't set active, a script has to act like a real client: hold a WebSocket connection open using your browser session token and cookie, and keep it alive. It's maybe 80 lines of Python, plus somewhere to run it once your laptop is shut. I think this is the best option for engineers who don't want to trust anyone else, and we wrote up a script to keep Slack active with the gotchas. Tokens expire without warning, so expect to babysit it.

Hosted presence tools

Same mechanism as the script, run by someone else, with schedules on top so the dot goes hollow at 6 p.m. Nothing is installed on your computer, so there's nothing for device monitoring to find. The catch is that you're giving a company a token that can act as you in Slack, and you should read what they say they do with it before you paste anything. That includes ours.

How people get noticed

Slack has no "this presence looks automated" alert that I've ever seen, and admins don't get a report of who was green when.

What gives people away is everything around it:

• Green and silent. Active for three hours, no reply to a direct question. People expect an answer from a green dot, and this is by far the most common way it goes wrong.
• Green at 3 a.m. Always-on with no schedule looks odd fast.
• Software on a managed laptop. Jigglers and unapproved browser extensions show up in IT inventories.
• The huddle icon, for the reason in the huddle section.

That order is my guess. I don't have data for it, and I'd be surprised if anyone outside Slack does. I just can't think of a way the dot alone would be the evidence.

Is it against the rules?

Slack's own terms don't mention presence tools by name, as far as I've read them. Using a browser session token outside the browser isn't something Slack supports, though, and they could close that door whenever they like.

Your employer's policy is the one that matters more. Some companies ban unapproved software on work devices outright, and a few treat status tricks as a conduct issue. If your handbook says something about it, believe the handbook over a blog post.

Which one I'd pick

• • At your desk and just reading a lot: Slack on a second screen.
• • Away from the desk for an hour: phone app open, on a charger.
• • Technical and private: your own script.
• • You want it on a schedule and don't want to think about it: a hosted tool. We make one called Slack Green, so weigh my opinion accordingly.

I'd skip the solo huddle entirely, and software jigglers on any laptop you don't own.

One thing I'd try before any of it is telling your team, in a channel, that a hollow dot for 20 minutes usually means you're working in another window. On a small team that conversation can be two messages long. In a 300-person org with a manager who watches dots, I doubt it goes that smoothly, and then the list above is what you have.