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Camila
Asked: 2020-07-09 03:59:29 +0800 CST

Slack suddenly stopped working on Ubuntu 20.04

  • 772

I have been using Slack (Desktop App) for months now, without any problem. Today, for no apparent reason, the laptop (HP Envy) froze and since then Slack is not working anymore. It seems to try to launch, but then nothing. Any ideas?

slack 20.04

7 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Looks like there is a confirmed issue with the snap package.

    We’re very sorry for the trouble there. We are experiencing some difficulties with the Slack Snap package. Our team is working hard to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. For now, you can access Slack via a browser or on our Direct Download version: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/downloads/linux?eu_nc=1

    Source: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/1280808281989152771

    A fix should be available in the next snap slack package release.

    • 40

  2. I fixed this problem by removing the snap and installing the deb instead. https://slack.com/downloads/linux

    • 26

  3. Slack 4.7.0 seems to be the issue. Contrary to one of the comments above, it is entirely possible to install an older version, which is one of the key features of Snaps...

    To revert back to the previous version of Slack, use sudo snap revert slack:

    $ snap list --all slack
Name   Version  Rev  Tracking       Publisher  Notes
slack  4.4.3    24   latest/stable  slack✓     disabled,classic
slack  4.7.0    25   latest/stable  slack✓     classic

$ sudo snap refresh slack
snap "slack" has no updates available

$ sudo snap revert slack
slack reverted to 4.4.3

    Try to update again when there is a version above 4.7.0. This resolved my issue on Ubuntu 18.04 which exhibited the same issue (try to launch then immediately closes).

    • 24

  4. After recent upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 slack would not start - version 4.10.0. Reverting to 4.9.1 did not help.

    I removed via the following command

    sudo snap remove slack

    then reinstalled via

    sudo snap install slack --classic

    All good now (4.10.0 was reinstalled).

    Thanks for the above helpful snap commands!

    • 6

  5. Installing the latest version (4.7.0) directly through .deb worked for me on Ubuntu 20.04:

    wget https://downloads.slack-edge.com/linux_releases/slack-desktop-4.7.0-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i slack-desktop-4.7.0-amd64.deb
rm slack-desktop-4.7.0-amd64.deb

    I would prefer to install through Snap so I'm going to keep an update on the Snapcraft release to see when it hits the next version. Until then, this is a good work-around.

    • 2

  6. I'm running Snap 4.17.2 64-bit on Ubuntu 20.

    Help > Troubleshooting > Clear Cache and Restart fixed the problem for me.

    • 2

  7. Following the answer from leonexis, I used the following to get the older version of slack -- I too had reinstalled and thus could not use the nifty slack revert command...

    wget https://downloads.slack-edge.com/linux_releases/slack-desktop-4.3.2-amd64.deb
    • 1