Fixing Slack for iPhone’s “Only Some People Can Post” Error

Over the past week, I’ve encountered a problem with Slack on my iPhone that blocks me from posting. Instead, Slack shows “Only some people can post.” at the bottom, where I would normally enter a message (below left). It wasn’t a simple permissions problem—I’m an administrator and the owner of the channels in question.

The first time it happened, I just switched to my Mac to post, which indicated that it was a client app issue, not something associated with my account. For another day or two, I didn’t need to post anything to Slack from my iPhone, but the next time I did, the restriction annoyed me enough that I force-quit Slack in irritation (below right). To my relief, that simple action solved the issue because I had no other ideas about how to regain the posting privileges a user of my level should enjoy.

Nevertheless, I attributed the problem to cosmic rays and moved on with my life. A few days later, however, Glenn Fleishman said he had run into the same issue, and the next day, the problem recurred on my iPhone. Clearly, the problem wasn’t just a one-off occurrence. If you run into the problem, force-quit Slack by swiping up on it in the App Switcher.

Remember that force-quitting iPhone and iPad apps is helpful only for resetting badly behaved or frozen apps—it uses more memory and battery power than letting iOS manage the apps automatically (see “Why You Shouldn’t Make a Habit of Force-Quitting iOS Apps or Restarting iOS Devices,” 21 May 2020).