Slack status updater

A simple shell script to update your status in slack from the command line, based on presets you provide in a configuration file.

Installation

Copy slack_status.sh to somewhere in your path.

Setup

Before you can use this, you need to add the status updater as a new slack app. To do this:

• Go to https://api.slack.com/apps/new to create a new app
• Choose a name for the new app: Slack status updater
• Select your workspace from the "Development Slack Workspace" dropdown
• This will bring you to the app configuration section, choose "OAuth and Permissions" from the sidebar on the left under the "Features" section.
• Scroll down until you see "User token scopes" and click "Add an OAuth scope"
• Type in users.profile:write and select it from the menu.
• If you want to use the awayback.sh script that's also in this repository, add the users:write scope as well.
• Scroll back to the top and click the "Install App to Workspace" button.
• You will be brought to a screen asking you to allow the app access. Click "Allow"
• You will be taken back to a screen containing an access token starting with xoxp-. Click the "Copy" button to copy this to the clipboard.

Once you have the token, run slack_status.sh setup and follow the prompts. This will create a configuration file for you.

If you wish, edit the config file to add additional presets.

Usage

• slack_status.sh PRESET - updates your slack status to the preset
• slack_status.sh none - resets your slack status to be blank
• slack_status.sh PRESET ADDITIONAL TEXT - any additional text you type will be added to the end of your slack status.

Example:

$ slack_status.sh test
Updating status to: :check: Testing status updater
$ slack_status.sh none
Updating status to:
$ slack_status.sh vacation
Updating status to: :hotel: On vacation
$ slack_status.sh vacation until June 15
Updating status to: :hotel: On vacation until June 15

Helpers

Zoom helper

There is a helper script for hammerspoon that will automatically set your status appropriately when you are in a zoom meeting.

To install it:

• Install and set up the slack_status.sh script (make sure it's in your path)
• Ensure there is a 'zoom' preset (one is created by default during setup)
• Install hammerspoon (brew cask install hammerspoon) if you don't have it already.
• Copy the zoom_detect.lua file to ~/.hammerspoon/
• Add the following line to ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua: local zoom_detect = require("zoom_detect")

Alfred workflow

There is an alfred workflow in helpers/alfred to let you quickly update your slack status from within alfred. See the README in that directory for more information on using it.