Slack’s verbose logging on Linux

I’m a long-time user of Slack. Many of my customers use it, and we share channels to exchange information and work better together. I’m also a member of a number of other Slack workspaces for various projects.

The Linux app is great, with one exception – it’s very heavy on logging:

slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:26:475] info: API-Q cb429c3b-1662987506.474 client.shouldReload called with reason: polling
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:26:475] info: API-Q cb429c3b-1662987506.474 client.shouldReload is ENQUEUED
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:26:487] info: API-Q cb429c3b-1662987506.474 client.shouldReload is ACTIVE
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:26:631] info: API-Q cb429c3b-1662987506.474 client.shouldReload is RESOLVED
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:26:632] info: [MIN-VERSION] No need to reload
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:34:433] info: DND_V2 Checking for changes in DND status for the following members: XXXXXXXXX,XXXXXXXXX,XXXXXXXXX
slack.desktop[27635]: [09/12/22, 13:58:34:435] info: DND_V2 Will check for changes in DND status again in 1.43 minutes

I don’t want my syslog littered with information that’s not useful! Other applications such as gnome-shell are pretty good at being verbose, but not to Slack’s extent.

The fix, thankfully, is super easy. Create a file named /etc/rsyslog.d/20-slack.conf with the following:

Drop info log messages from Slack
:rawmsg,contains,"slack.desktop" /dev/null
& stop

Run sudo systemctl reload rsyslogd and ta-da, no more Slack logging in your syslog.