slackActivity

Slack Activity automatically updates your Slack status based on what you are doing locally, similar to Discord rich presence. It can show Steam games, Spotify playback, coding tools, design apps, meetings, and other desktop activity.

Setup

1. Copy .env.example to .env.
2. Create a Slack app and set the redirect URL to http://localhost:3000/auth/slack/callback.
3. Add Slack user scopes: users.profile:write and users.profile:read.
4. Create a Spotify app and set the redirect URI to http://localhost:3000/auth/spotify/callback.
5. Fill in SLACK_CLIENT_ID, SLACK_CLIENT_SECRET, SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID, and SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET.
6. Run npm start.
7. Open http://localhost:3000 and connect Slack, then Spotify.

Use npm run local for the old single-user local watcher.

Features

• Multi-user hosted Slack + Spotify authorization.
• Local agent for Steam games, desktop apps, coding tools, media tools, and meeting apps.
• Per-app status customization with custom text and emoji.
• Category priority settings, so users can prefer coding, games, music, meetings, or media.
• Pause mode and quiet hours.
• Optional quiet mode while a meeting app is running.
• Hosted settings UI for categories, priorities, privacy, and per-app custom status text/emoji.
• Hosted server communication for Slack status updates.
• Windows tray controls for pause/resume, dashboard, restart, exit, and start on login.
• Automatic Slack status expiration. The default is 30 minutes.
• Git project-aware coding status, such as Coding in slackActivity.
• Local agent update checks from GitHub Releases, with dashboard download support.

Supported Apps

Source	Supported apps/activity	Status format	Notes
Steam local agent	Installed Steam games	Playing <game>	Detects running installed Steam games from local Steam libraries. Ignores Steamworks Common Redistributables.
Spotify local agent	Spotify desktop process	Listening to <artist> - <song> or Listening on Spotify	Track title depends on what the OS exposes locally.
Spotify Web API	Spotify account playback	Listening to <artist> - <song>	Requires the user to connect Spotify in the hosted app.
Code editors	VS Code, Cursor, IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, CLion, Neovim, Vim, Xcode, Sublime Text, Android Studio, WebStorm, Rider, Eclipse, Terminal, Windows Terminal, iTerm, Unity, Unreal Engine	Coding in <app> or Coding in <git repo>	Requires the local agent.
Design tools	Figma, Sketch, Blender, Photoshop	Designing in <app>	Requires the local agent.
Other games/launchers	Epic Games Launcher, League of Legends, Valorant	Playing <app>	Process-name based detection from the local agent.
Music apps	Apple Music, foobar2000	Listening on <app>	Process-name based detection from the local agent.
Media tools	DaVinci Resolve, OBS	Using <app>	Requires the local agent.
Meeting apps	Discord, Zoom, Microsoft Teams	In a meeting on <app>	Requires the local agent.

Default local activity priority is:

Meeting > Game > Coding > Music > Design > Media > Spotify Web API > Clear status

Users can override this priority in settings.

Local Agent

The hosted app can read Spotify through the Spotify API, but Steam and desktop apps must be detected on the user's own computer.

Run the local agent on the user's computer:

$env:SERVER_URL="https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com"; npm run local-agent

The agent opens the hosted app in the browser. After the user authorizes Slack and Spotify, the agent saves its local token in ~/.slack-activity/agent.json and starts reporting Steam games and supported desktop apps. Fresh local activity takes priority over Spotify.

The local agent reports activity to the hosted server, and the hosted server communicates with Slack.

An optional local dashboard can be enabled for development only:

$env:LOCAL_DASHBOARD="true"; npm run local-agent

When enabled, it runs at http://localhost:3784. It is disabled by default in normal builds.

Settings

The hosted app includes a settings UI. After connecting Slack and Spotify, open:

https://your-app/settings?token=<LOCAL_AGENT_TOKEN>

The settings page lets users configure:

• quiet hours
• quiet mode while meeting apps are active
• enabled activity categories
• category priority
• privacy toggles
• per-app custom status text
• per-app emoji
• per-app enable/disable

The local agent fetches these settings from the hosted server. Local fallback settings can still be placed at:

~/.slack-activity/settings.json

Example local fallback settings:

{
  "pausedUntil": null,
  "quietHours": {
    "enabled": false,
    "start": "22:00",
    "end": "09:00"
  },
  "quietWhenMeeting": false,
  "enabledCategories": ["game", "coding", "design", "music", "media", "meeting"],
  "categoryPriority": ["meeting", "game", "coding", "music", "design", "media"],
  "appOverrides": {
    "VS Code": {
      "enabled": true,
      "text": "Coding in VS Code",
      "emoji": ":computer:"
    },
    "Valorant": {
      "enabled": true,
      "text": "Playing Valorant",
      "emoji": ":dart:"
    },
    "Spotify": {
      "enabled": true,
      "text": null,
      "emoji": ":spotify_logo:"
    }
  },
  "privacy": {
    "showProjectName": true,
    "showSongName": true,
    "showGameName": true
  }
}

To pause updates from local JSON settings, set pausedUntil to a future Unix timestamp in milliseconds. To disable a whole category, remove it from enabledCategories. To disable one app, set its override to { "enabled": false }.

Windows Tray

On Windows, users should run SlackActivity.exe. It starts the local agent in the background and adds a system tray icon.

Tray menu options:

• Open Slack Activity
• Pause for 1 hour
• Pause until tomorrow
• Resume updates
• Start on login
• Disable start on login
• Restart Agent
• Exit

Use the tray menu's Exit item to stop the agent. On exit, the tray app asks the agent to clear the Slack status before shutting down.

Status Expiration

Slack statuses expire automatically after 30 minutes by default. Override this with:

STATUS_EXPIRATION_SECONDS=1800

Set a larger value for longer-lived statuses, or a smaller value if you want Slack to clear stale activity sooner.

Auto-Update Downloads

The local agent can check the latest GitHub Release and download the correct asset for the current OS.

Downloaded updates are saved to:

~/.slack-activity/updates/

The updater currently downloads updates only. It does not replace the running executable automatically yet, because Windows cannot safely replace a running .exe directly.

Update controls are available in the optional local dashboard when LOCAL_DASHBOARD=true.

Set the current app version with:

APP_VERSION=1.1.0

Builds

Build local-agent binaries:

npm run build:agent:win
npm run build:agent:linux
npm run build:agent:mac

On Windows, macOS binaries are built unsigned. Sign them on a Mac before distribution.

Generated binaries are written to dist/:

SlackActivity.exe                     Windows tray app
linux/slack-activity-agent-linux-x64  Linux x64
macos/slack-activity-agent-macos-x64  macOS x64
macos/slack-activity-agent-macos-arm64 macOS Apple Silicon

macOS builds must be signed on a Mac before distribution:

codesign --sign - dist/macos/slack-activity-agent-macos-x64
codesign --sign - dist/macos/slack-activity-agent-macos-arm64

Hosting

Attach Postgres DB before connecting users, For this I used Neon DB as it is free and reliable :)

You need to set DATABASE_URL in your environment variable on your hosting service. Without Postgres, connected users are stored in SQLite and will disappear after redeploys or dyno restarts.

Set these config vars to your app URL:

BASE_URL=https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com
SLACK_REDIRECT_URI=https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com/auth/slack/callback
SPOTIFY_REDIRECT_URI=https://your-app-name.herokuapp.com/auth/spotify/callback

Add the same callback URLs in the Slack and Spotify app dashboards.

AI Declaration

I have used Codex in this project for bug fixing, replacing features and also it helped me to integrate HTML into the JS to build a proper web dashboard for the slack extension, it also gave me suggestions like what more features I can add.