Slack messaging service adds video calling feature for Chrome, Mac, and Windows 10 apps

Workplace collaboration platform Slack is finally rolling out video calls — a long-awaited feature initially teased back in March.

The team behind the popular app announced on Slack’s official blog this Tuesday that face-to-face calls are now supported through the desktop apps for Google Chrome, Mac, and Windows. This means users can now make video calls either across the office or from wherever they are around the world.

In a blog post, the messaging service said the video chat feature is a follow up to the audio chat services that it released earlier this year. The video service operates along the same lines as chat, but to initiate a video conference, users just tap the camera icon on an existing call and the video feed begins instantaneously.

Users do not need to open a separate app to engage in a video conference; they can simply dial into one-on-one or a group meeting. The feature also works with shared links.

Users on the mobile apps can still join any ongoing video call but will be limited to sharing and receiving audio.

The messaging service slack also works with third-party apps like Google Hangouts and Zoom. After the announcement of the video and voice calling features, it is clear that Slack is troubling Google’s Hangout and Microsoft’s Skype, a lot.

Slack’s user base has grown steadily since its launch at the end of 2013 and today includes more than 4 million daily active users. The company has been quite active over the last year introducing new features that take on both traditional email as well as other cloud-based chat services. In March 2016, Microsoft wanted to acquire Slack but the deal expected to be of $8 billion, got cancelled.