Slack vs Microsoft Teams: Keyboard Shortcuts Compared
Slack and Teams solve overlapping problems — workplace chat plus meetings — but their shortcut sets reveal genuinely different priorities. Slack's shortcuts lean almost entirely toward fast channel and message navigation, since it began as a pure chat tool and meetings came later as a bolted-on feature. Teams' shortcuts split more evenly between chat navigation and meeting controls, reflecting its origin as part of Microsoft 365 where calling and video have been first-class from the start rather than an addition.
| Action | Slack | Microsoft Teams | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quick switcher/jump to channel | Ctrl+K | Ctrl+E (search) | Both offer fast navigation but Teams routes it through search rather than a dedicated switcher. |
| Mute microphone | No dedicated default (huddle-specific) | Ctrl+Shift+M | Teams has a much more developed, globally-configurable mute shortcut. |
| Mark everything read | Shift+Esc | No direct single-key equivalent | Slack has a more deliberate bulk mark-as-read shortcut. |
| Bold text in composer | Ctrl+B | Ctrl+B (varies by composer state) | Functionally similar. |
| Start a new chat | Ctrl+K then select person | Ctrl+N | Different default entry points to a similar action. |
Quick navigation: similar concept, different keys
Both apps offer a Quick Switcher-style fast navigation tool, and both bind it to Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on Mac) — a rare case of direct agreement between the two. Where they diverge is in jumping to unread content: Slack uses Alt+Shift+Down (Cmd+Shift+Down on Mac) to jump between unread channels, while Teams doesn't have a precisely equivalent single shortcut, relying more on its activity feed and notification badges for triage rather than a dedicated next-unread keyboard jump.
Meeting controls: Teams is built around this, Slack added it later
Teams' meeting shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+M for mute, Ctrl+Shift+O for camera, Ctrl+Shift+A to accept a call) are deeply integrated and consistent with the rest of Microsoft 365's calling conventions. Slack's huddle and call features exist but don't carry nearly the same density of dedicated keyboard shortcuts, since Slack's calling functionality has historically been positioned as a lighter-weight, more spontaneous feature than Teams' formal, calendar-integrated meetings.
Message formatting overlaps closely
Both use Ctrl+B for bold and follow broadly similar Markdown-influenced formatting conventions in their message composers, since both are ultimately built on a similar rich-text-with-shortcuts model. Code formatting differs slightly in exact key combinations, but the underlying concept — wrapping selected text in a specific syntax to render as code — is shared.
Verdict
If your organization lives primarily in asynchronous text chat with occasional spontaneous calls, Slack's shortcut set — tuned for fast channel triage and unread management — will feel more natural. If your work is structured around scheduled meetings, video calls, and tight Microsoft 365 integration, Teams' deeper meeting-control shortcuts and global mute/camera bindings are the more mature, deliberately built-out half of its shortcut set. Organizations using both (not uncommon after mergers or partial migrations) should expect the meeting-control shortcuts specifically to require separate muscle memory, since neither app's calling shortcuts transfer to the other.
FAQ
Can I make Slack's mute shortcut behave like Teams' global one?
Not natively to the same degree — Teams' mute/camera shortcuts can be configured to work globally (even when Teams isn't the focused window) directly in its settings, a feature explicitly built out given how central calling is to the product. Slack's huddle mute controls are less developed as global system-wide shortcuts, reflecting its comparatively newer and lighter-weight approach to voice/video.
Why does Teams split navigation between Chat and Teams sections while Slack uses one unified sidebar?
This reflects a genuine structural difference, not just a shortcut difference — Slack's workspace-and-channel model is flatter, with channels and DMs often appearing in one combined or lightly-separated sidebar. Teams maintains a stricter separation between informal Chat (one-on-one and group messaging) and the structured Teams/Channels hierarchy, which is why their respective navigation shortcuts (Ctrl+2/Ctrl+3 in Teams vs a more unified switcher in Slack) don't map directly onto each other.
See full references: Slack shortcuts · Microsoft Teams shortcuts