Messaging on mobile
What chat looks like for your clients in the branded mobile app. What they can read, how they send and manage messages with press-and-hold (the one gesture worth telling every client about), how they know a message reached you, and the one difference from the web composer.
Basic Your clients live in the mobile app, not the web dashboard. Here’s how messaging works on their side — useful both for supporting clients and for knowing how what you send will land.
What clients can read
Everything renders in full on mobile. Clients see your formatting (bold, italic, links, code), your @mentions, inline photos and videos, documents, and voice notes they can play back. Edited messages show the “edited” label, and live typing indicators work both ways.
See @Jordan — full plan's in Week 3.
The one difference: clients send plain text
There’s a single deliberate difference from the web composer:
Clients read rich formatting in full, but currently send plain text.
So a client’s replies arrive as clean plain text, while everything you compose on the web renders richly for them. Nothing is lost either way — it’s the same graceful-by-design model from Formatting & mentions. Richer mobile composing is on the roadmap.
Managing messages: press and hold
Mobile actions live behind a long-press on a message bubble. There are no visible buttons on a bubble, so this is the one thing worth telling clients about explicitly.
Tell your clients this. The most common client complaint we hear is “I can’t fix my typo” or “I can’t delete that message”. They can. Clients simply don’t know the menu exists, because nothing on screen advertises it. One line in your welcome message (“press and hold any message to edit, delete, copy or react to it”) prevents almost all of it.
Press and hold gives a client:
| On their own message | On anyone’s message |
|---|---|
| Edit, fix it any time, no time limit | Copy, grab the text |
| Delete, with a confirm prompt | Copy link, grab a URL on its own |
| A reaction, from the emoji row on top |
This mirrors the web actions, see Editing & deleting and Reacting to messages.
Knowing their message arrived
Clients get the same status ticks on their own messages that you get on yours, so they can see a message actually reached you rather than wondering:
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✓ single check | Sent |
| ✓✓ faint double check | Delivered to you |
| ✓✓ bright double check | Read, you’ve opened it |
This matters most for video. A form-check video is the message a client most wants confirmation on, and it’s the one they used to have no signal for.
If you’ve turned read receipts off for your workspace, client messages stop at Delivered and never show as read, in both directions. That’s the trade for not showing them when you’ve opened something. See read receipts.
“Processing video…”
A video needs a moment of processing after it’s sent before it can show a preview frame. During that window the client sees a spinner with “Processing video…” in place of the thumbnail, instead of an empty grey box that looks like a failed send. It fills in with the real preview by itself once processing finishes, with nothing for them to tap or retry.
If a client says a video “didn’t send”: have them check for the tick. Processing is normal and brief; a tick means it reached you regardless of whether its preview has drawn yet.
Starting the conversation: the + button
A client doesn’t have to wait for you to message first. The + button at the top of their chat list opens their direct conversation with you, creating it on the spot if it doesn’t exist yet. That matters for brand-new clients: they land in the app already enrolled in your broadcast groups, and the + button is how they reach out to you directly on day one.
Filters and the chat list
The client’s chat list works like yours: sorted by most recent activity, searchable by name, and with the same All | Unread | Drafts filter chips at the top (see Filter conversations). The list loads more conversations as they scroll, however long the history gets, and a conversation’s history keeps loading older messages as they scroll up inside it.
Inside a conversation, the magnifier in the header opens the same in-conversation search as the web dashboard: a result counter with up/down arrows that step between matches, scrolling to and briefly highlighting each one, even deep in history.
Read-only groups on mobile
In an announcement group, a read-only client sees the same quiet “Only admins can post” notice in place of the composer. They read everything and open your links, forms, and media — they just can’t post into the channel. Clients don’t see the group’s member list or size; the roster is only visible to you and your admins.
Notifications
New messages arrive as push notifications that deep-link straight into the conversation; an @mention adds a targeted nudge. If the client already has that conversation open, the message just appears live instead. See Notifications.
That’s the full tour. Back to the Messaging overview.