If you're anything like me, your chat drawer (list of groups and DMs) is growing daily! There are groups from projects that wrapped up months ago, DMs with people you haven't talked to in ages, and threads that ran their course but are still hanging around. You're still a member — you don't want to leave — you just don't need them cluttering your view every day. Until now, there wasn't a great answer for that.
Today we're introducing Hidden Chats — a simple way to tidy your drawer without leaving a chat. Hidden chats disappear from your main list, but you're still a member, still get notifications, and can still search them. And if someone sends a new message, the chat automatically comes back into view. Think of it as "hide until the conversation picks up again."
As always, after reviewing the feature release notes, please take a moment to let us know how this production release impacts you by answering this short (sub 3min) survey.
Pronto Feature Release Survey
For a growing library of documentation on the new Pronto features, visit here.
HIDING A CHAT
You can hide any chat type — groups, DMs, and threads are all supported. Hiding is personal: other members of the chat are completely unaffected.
On mobile: Long-press a chat in the drawer and choose Hide.
On web: Open the three-dot menu next to a chat in the drawer and choose Hide.
A few things that stay true even when a chat is hidden:
Notifications keep working — hiding is not muting. Push and badge notifications continue exactly as configured.
Search still works — message search spans all your chats, including hidden ones.
You're still a member — nothing changes for anyone else in the chat.
FINDING AND UNHIDING A CHAT
There are two ways a hidden chat comes back:
Automatically — when someone sends a new message in the chat, it reappears in your drawer. This applies to groups, DMs, and threads. Since @mentions generate a message, being mentioned in a hidden chat will bring it back too.
Manually — go to Profile → Hidden Chats, find the chat under the appropriate type (Groups, Direct Messages, or Threads), and tap Unhide.
If you have at least one hidden group, a Hidden Chats card will also appear at the bottom of your drawer with a shortcut button to jump straight to the Hidden Chats screen.
AUTO-HIDE
If manually hiding chats sounds like too much work, you can have Pronto do it for you. Go to Profile → Hidden Chats → Auto-Hide to configure automatic hiding based on inactivity — set separately for groups, DMs, and threads.
Available durations: Never, 3 days, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, or 12 months. All settings default to Never.
A couple of rules that protect you from unexpected behavior:
Unread chats are never auto-hidden.
Pinned chats are never auto-hidden.
CHANGE TO HOW NOTIFICATIONS BEHAVE FOR MUTED GROUPS
As of this release, if a user has muted a group, they will only be notified and have that group moved up to their "Recents" category if they are @mentioned specifically. Previously, a push notification and a change to the "recents" category would take place any time an @everyone was used.