How to send a direct message

A direct message is a private conversation between exactly two people. They live in a rail pinned to the bottom of the channel list, alongside who is online right now.

How do you start one?

Click somebody in the Online list. The conversation opens immediately.

Your existing direct messages sit under Direct messages in the same rail, each with a green dot when that person is online.

You start a DM with somebody who is online. If the person you want is not there, the rail tells you plainly, showing either that nobody else is online or that everyone online already has a conversation open with you.

When somebody is offline and you need them, post in the channel they work in and tag them. The mention reaches their Inbox and their notifications, which a DM they have not seen would not do any faster. See How to tag people, tasks, documents and products.

What does "online" mean?

Somebody with Tideswell open right now, shown with a green dot on their avatar and a live Online, N count.

The browser checks in every half minute or so, so somebody can linger as online for about a minute after closing their tab. Treat the dot as "around recently" rather than "at their desk this second".

There is no away or do-not-disturb state and no custom status, so the dot is the whole story.

Does a DM work like a channel?

Yes, in every respect that matters: formatting, @ tags, files, replies, threads, unread counts and notifications all behave identically.

The only visible difference is the title, which is the other person's name rather than a channel name.

That means everything in How to send and format a message and How to tag people, tasks, documents and products works here too.

Who can read a direct message?

The two of you, and workspace admins through their blanket access.

That last part is worth knowing before you treat a DM as private in the strong sense. It is private from your colleagues, not from an administrator of the workspace.

When should something be a channel instead?

Almost always, and this is the one habit worth having an opinion about.

A decision reached in a DM is invisible to everyone else and unfindable in three months. A decision reached in a channel is neither, and can become a task, a callback or a recorded decision in one click, per How to turn a conversation into work.

Use a DM for the things that are genuinely between two people. Use a channel for the work.

Note also that direct messages never appear in the channel list, so a conversation that should be findable by the team should not start here.

Are DMs on the phone?

Direct messages and the online rail are web features. The iPhone app covers channels, threads and notifications.

If you need to reach somebody who is on their phone, a channel message that tags them will reach them; a DM will not.