Customize your Channels experience

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You can customize your Channels experience in the following ways in Settings:

Tip

How you access settings depends on the version of Mattermost you’re using. See the what’s changed in Mattermost v6.0 documentation for details.

Notifications

Settings to configure desktop notifications, desktop notification sounds, email notifications, mobile push notifications, and words that trigger mentions.

Desktop notifications

Desktop notifications appear in the top corner of your main monitor when there is activity in Mattermost.

Send desktop notifications

Choose what activity triggers a desktop notification. This setting applies globally, but this preference is customizable for each channel from the channel name drop-down menu. Desktop notifications are available on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

When desktop app notifications are set to “Only for mentions and direct messages”:

  • An empty red circle is displayed over the upper right corner of the Mattermost dock icon when any message without an at-mention is received.

  • A solid red circle with a post count is displayed when a message with an at-mention is received.

  • And when Collapsed Reply Threads is enabled, you can choose to receive desktop notifications about threads you’re following.

Notification sound

Notification sounds fire for any activity that would trigger a desktop notification. Notification sounds are available on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari in addition to the Mattermost Desktop App.

Email notifications

Email notifications are sent for mentions and direct messages after you’ve been offline for more than 60 seconds or away from Mattermost for more than five minutes. Change the email where notifications are sent by selecting Profile > Profile Settings > Email.

If your System Admin has enabled email batching, you’ll have additional options under this settings to select how often email notifications will be sent. All notifications received over this time period are combined and sent in a single email.

Mobile push notifications

Push notifications can be sent to your mobile device if you have the Android or iOS app installed. You can choose the type of activity that will send a notification.

By default, push notifications are sent For mentions and direct messages. If push notifications are sent Never, the Mattermost setting to trigger push notifications depending on your Mattermost availability is hidden. If your System Admin hasn’t set up push notifications, this setting will be disabled.

If you’re actively viewing a channel (public or private), direct message, or group message using the Desktop App or a browser, no push notifications will be sent for that channel. If a notification is viewed using the Desktop App or a browser, the lockscreen notification will clear on Android, and on iOS the badge on the Mattermost app icon will count down accordingly.

Browser tab notifications

If Mattermost is open in a browser tab, the favicon updates to notify you of unread messages (*) and a count of mentions or direct messages. Browser tab notifications are available on Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

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Trigger mobile push notifications when

You can also choose when to send push notifications depending on your Mattermost availability. By default, push notifications are sent if your availability is Away or Offline. If Send Mobile Push Notifications is set as Never, this setting is hidden. If your System Admin has not set up push notifications, this setting will be disabled.

Words that trigger mentions

By default, you receive notifications when someone posts a message that contains your non-case sensitive username or @username. You also receive notifications when someone uses the @channel, @all, and @here mentions. You can customize the words that trigger mentions by typing them into the input box. This is useful if you want to be notified of all posts on a certain topic, for example, “marketing”.

Reply notifications

When Collapsed Reply Threads is disabled, you can choose to receive mention notifications when someone replies to a thread you have started or have participated in.

  • You’re considered to start a thread when you post a message to which other members of your team reply.

  • You’re considered to be a participant in a thread when you post a message using the reply button in an pre-existing thread.

Note

This setting is hidden when Collapsed Reply Threads is enabled.

Automatic direct message replies

Set an automated custom message that will be sent once per day in response to direct messages. Mentions in public and private channels won’t trigger the automated reply. Enabling Automatic Replies sets your availability to Out of Office and disables desktop, email, and push notifications. This setting is experimental and must be enabled by your System Admin.

Display

Settings to configure clock and teammate name display preferences.

Theme

Select Theme Colors to select from four standard themes designed by the Mattermost team. To make custom adjustments on the four standard theme colours, select a standard theme and then select Custom Theme to load the standard theme into the custom theme color selectors.

Select Custom Theme to customize your theme colors and share them with others by copying and pasting theme vectors into the input box. Observe a live preview as you customize theme colors, then select Save to confirm your changes. Discard your changes by selecting Cancel, or by exiting the settings modal and selecting Yes, Discard.

In Enterprise edition, if you belong to multiple teams, you can optionally select the checkbox Apply new theme to all my teams to have the theme show up across teams. Otherwise, the changes will only apply to the current team.

Learn more about the custom theme color selectors here.

Select Import theme colors from Slack to import a Slack theme. In Slack, go to Preferences > Sidebar Theme and open the custom theme option. From there, copy the theme color vector and then paste it into the Input Slack Theme input box in Mattermost. Any theme settings that are not customizable in Slack will default to the “Sapphire” standard theme settings.

Clock display

Choose a 12-hour or 24-hour time preference that appears on the time stamp for all posts.

Teammate name display

Configure how names are displayed in the user interface: nickname, username, or full name. The default for this setting is dependent on the configuration set by the System Admin.

Show online availability on profile images

Online availability icons display as part of your user profile picture in the center channel by default. Disable this setting to hide online availability icons within the center channel.

Share last active time

Controls whether other users can see when you were last active on Mattermost while your status is Away, Offline, or DND (do not disturb). Enabled by default. Disable this setting to hide your last active information from your profile and from direct message channel headers. Your system admin can also hide last active details for all users in the System Console.

Timezone

Select the timezone used for timestamps in the user interface and for email notifications.

Note

Timezone is enabled by default from Mattermost v6.0. In Mattermost v5.38 or earlier, timezone functionality must first be enabled by the System Admin.

Default appearance of image previews

When messages in Mattermost include images, an image preview can display directly below the message for image attachments, image link previews, and in-line images over 100px in height. You can set this preference to Expanded or Collapsed.

Tip

This setting can also be controlled using the slash commands /expand and /collapse.

Message display

Specify how messages in a channel are displayed. Compact mode fits more messages on the screen by decreasing the spacing around posts, collapsing link previews, and hiding thumbnails so that only file names are shown. Some formatting types, such as block quotes and headings, are also reduced in size.

When you select Compact, usernames are colorized by default, and username colors are consistent for all users. Disable the Colorize usernames option to display all usernames in a single color instead.

Collapsed Reply Threads

Collapsed Reply Threads offers an enhanced experience for users communicating in threads and replying to messages. Collapsed Reply Threads are generally available in Mattermost Cloud and from self-hosted Mattermost v7.0, and are enabled by default for all new Mattermost deployments.

Depending on how your System Admin has enabled Collapsed Reply Threads for your workspace, it may already be enabled for you, or you may be able to enable this feature for your account. See our organize conversations using Collapsed Reply Threads documentation to learn more about working with Collapsed Reply Threads.

Click to open threads

By default, selecting any part of a message opens the reply thread in the right hand sidebar. Disable this option to reply to messages by selecting the replies count to open the reply thread.

Channel display

Choose whether the text in the center channel is fixed width and centered, or full width.

Quick reactions to messages

By default, you can react to messages quickly with your most recently-used emojis by hovering over a message. Disable this option to hide your recently-used emoji reactions.

Language

Select which language Mattermost displays in the user interface. Options include:

  • Deutsch - German

  • English (U.S.)

  • English Australian

  • Español - Spanish

  • Français - French

  • Italiano - Italian

  • Magyar - Hungarian

  • Nederlands - Dutch

  • Polski - Polish

  • Português (Brasil) - Portuguese

  • Română - Romanian

  • Svenska - Swedish

  • Türkçe - Turkish

  • български - Bulgarian

  • Pусский - Russian

  • Yкраїнська - Ukrainian

  • فارسی - Persian

  • 한국어 - Korean

  • 中文 (简体) - Simplified Chinese

  • 中文 (繁體) - Traditional Chinese

  • 日本語 - Japanese

Advanced

Settings to configure when messages are sent.

Send messages on CTRL+ENTER

If On for all messages is enabled, pressing Enter on Windows or Linux, or pressing on Mac inserts a new line, and pressing Ctrl Enter on Windows or Linux, or on Mac, posts a message.

If On only for code blacks starting with ``` is enabled, pressing Enter on Windows or Linux, or pressing on Mac inserts a new line inside an open code block, and pressing Ctrl Enter on Windows or Linux, or pressing on Mac automatically closes the code block and posts the message.

If disabled, pressing Shift Enter on Windows or Linux, or pressing on Mac inserts a new line, and pressing Enter on Windows or Linux, or pressing on Mac posts the message.

Enable post formatting

This setting controls whether post formatting is rendered. When On, posts will be rendered with Markdown formatting, emoji, autolinked URLs, and line breaks. When Off, the raw text will be shown. See the formatting messages documentation for details.

Enable join/leave messages

This setting controls whether system messages about users joining or leaving a channel are visible. When On these messages will appear. When Off, these messages will be hidden. If any users are added to or removed from a channel, a system message will still be shown even if this setting is Off.

Preview pre-release features

Turn on preview features to view them early, ahead of their official release.

Show markdown preview option in message input box Turning this on will show a Preview option when typing in the text input box. Select Preview to see what the Markdown formatting in the message looks like before the message is sent.

Note

From Mattermost v7.0, this setting has been deprecated in favor of the message formatting toolbar.

Scroll position when viewing unread channels

Configure where to start when viewing channels with unread messages. You can start where you left off at the oldest unread message, or start at the newest message. Your preference applies to all channels.

Client debugging

Turn on settings intended to help isolate issues while debugging. We don’t recommend leaving these settings enabled for an extended period of time as they can negatively impact your user experience. Available only when client debugging is enabled.

Deactivate account

Use this setting to deactivate your account. Deactivating your account removes your ability to log in to the Mattermost server and disables all email and mobile notifications. After deactivating, an email notification is sent confirming the deactivation was successful.

To reactivate your account, contact your System Admin. This is only available for accounts with email login, and when user deactivation is enabled.

For accounts with other authentication methods such as AD/LDAP or SAML, or for accounts that do not have this setting available, contact your System Admin to deactivate your account.

Deprecated settings

Notifications > Notification duration

Removed in June 16th, 2018 release

In Mattermost v5.0 and later, desktop notifications will stay onscreen for five seconds when supported by the browser and operating system.

Display > Display font

Removed in July 16th, 2017 release

Select what font is used.