The heavy competition between Slack and Microsoft Teams has been unreal recently. Although Microsoft originally had thought about acquiring Slack back in the days, the company ended up launching its own product instead.

And that’s worked out really well so far. With Microsoft Teams now having more than 20 million active users, it’s easily bigger than Slack. Slack is obviously under a lot of pressure, with the company claiming it has more engagement than Teams just after Microsoft announced the new 20 million active users figure.

As it turns out, the competition might just be having some influence on Slack. The company is now testing a new interface for its mobile apps that looks a lot like Microsoft Teams, as first spotted by Jane Manchun Wong. The new interface introduces a new navigation pane at the bottom, much like Microsoft Teams, with your Channels, Messages, and other things separated into different tabs. For comparison, here’s the Microsoft Teams app interface — notice the bottom bar?

Slack’s new interface is arguably a little simpler and less crowded than that of Microsoft Teams, but it still goes to show how much competition can influence a product. Bottom navigation bars are obviously nothing new, but Slack has stuck to its classic hamburger navigation pane that opens up from the side for a long time, and this could be a significant change in the app’s design if Slack does end up releasing it to the public.

Tagged with Microsoft Teams, Slack