Article
How to stop Slack marking you Away while you read
You can spend an hour reading a document carefully and Slack will decide you've stepped away. It can only see your keyboard, and you haven't typed anything. There are a few ways to deal with that.
Why Slack thinks you've left
Slack's green dot follows your computer's activity. If your keyboard and pointer go unused for a stretch, Slack assumes you've stepped away and clears your green dot. Locking your computer or letting it sleep does the same thing right away. Slack can't tell the difference between someone at lunch and someone reading a printout two feet from the screen.
The built-in options
Set yourself back to Active
Slack lets you flip your own status: click your picture, then "Set yourself as active". It's quick and it works. But you have to notice you've gone Away before you can fix it, and once your computer locks or sleeps the dot slips again anyway.
Use a status message
A custom status like "On paper at my desk. Ping me, I'll see it" says exactly where you are, for anyone who reads it. In practice most people only look at the dot.
Stop your computer sleeping
Longer sleep settings help with the lock-and-sleep part, but Slack still drifts you to Away eventually, because nothing is being typed.
An app that does it for you
The dot stays green when Slack sees activity, so that's what Ticking Along provides. While it's on, it keeps your computer awake and nudges your pointer by a hair's width every few minutes, then puts it straight back where it was. You turn it on before you start, and it stops at the time you picked (or at the end of your office hours). After that your computer behaves exactly as it did before.
Whichever you choose
If you're only on paper for the odd ten minutes, honestly, "Set yourself as active" is all you need. It's when whole mornings happen with a pen in your hand that clicking it over and over gets old. That's the point where a schedule earns its keep: you set it up once and stop thinking about your dot altogether.
Teams does the same thing, on a shorter clock: why Teams shows you as Away after 5 minutes. If you'd rather have the options side by side, there's how to keep Slack showing as active.