Chatter Mobile
Chatter Mobile was the standalone iOS and Android app Salesforce shipped to put a user's Chatter feed, posts, files, and notifications on a phone or tablet.
Definition
Chatter Mobile was the standalone iOS and Android app Salesforce shipped to put a user's Chatter feed, posts, files, and notifications on a phone or tablet. It launched in 2010 alongside the first Chatter release and ran as its own app, separate from the early Salesforce mobile CRM apps. The point was lightweight collaboration: read your feed, post an update, like and comment, join group conversations, and check notifications without opening a desktop browser.
Chatter Mobile is retired. Salesforce announced Salesforce1 at Dreamforce 2013, a single mobile app that built Chatter in through the Chatter REST API instead of keeping a separate product. Over the next few years Salesforce1 was renamed the Salesforce Mobile App, and the standalone Chatter Mobile app was pulled from the app stores by around 2015. The name still shows up in pre-2018 documentation and training, but current Salesforce docs only reference the Salesforce Mobile App and its built-in Chatter experience.
From a separate Chatter app to one mobile app
What the standalone Chatter Mobile app actually did
Chatter Mobile was built for one job: collaboration on the go. When it launched in 2010, the broader Salesforce mobile story was fragmented, so a dedicated Chatter app made sense. Users opened it to read the What I Follow feed, which surfaces activity from the people, groups, and records they follow. They could post text and photo updates, like and comment on items, mention coworkers, and open group feeds to keep a conversation moving. The interface was deliberately stripped down. It focused on feed consumption and quick posting rather than full CRM work like editing opportunities or running reports. Records were viewable in a basic read context, mostly so a comment had something to attach to. Push notifications told you when someone mentioned you or replied to a post you followed. For its time it was a useful companion app, but it lived beside the early mobile CRM clients rather than inside them. That separation is the detail that eventually drove its retirement, because nobody wanted to juggle two Salesforce apps to do mobile work.
Why two mobile apps did not last
Running Chatter Mobile next to a separate mobile CRM app created friction that got harder to justify as smartphones became the default work device. Each app meant its own login, its own navigation, and its own notification stream. A salesperson might get a Chatter mention in one app and an approval request in another, with no single inbox tying them together. Admins had two surfaces to configure and support. Salesforce read the room and decided the future was one mobile entry point, not a suite of single-purpose apps. The 2013 Salesforce1 announcement made that explicit. Rather than treat Chatter as a separate product on mobile, Salesforce1 wired Chatter in through the Chatter REST API so collaboration sat right next to records, dashboards, and notifications. Consolidation also matched how Salesforce was building the platform. Every interaction could tie back to a single customer record, which is awkward when feed and data live in different apps. Once the unified app could do everything Chatter Mobile did plus real CRM work, keeping the standalone app alive added cost without adding value.
Where Chatter mobile lives now
Today you reach Chatter on a phone through the Salesforce Mobile App, the descendant of Salesforce1. The app describes itself as Salesforce on the go, giving you the same information you see at your desk but arranged for short bursts of work between meetings. Chatter is one tab inside it. From there you open the same useful feeds the desktop offers, including What I Follow, To Me, Bookmarked, Company Highlights, and My Drafts. You post updates, like, comment, mention people and groups, attach a file, and read group feeds. The big difference from the old standalone app is context. Collaboration now sits beside the records it is about, so you can comment on a post and jump to the related account in the same session. The Salesforce Mobile App ships free with every org and is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. That bundling is part of why the separate Chatter download stopped making sense; the feature you wanted was already in the app everyone installed.
What mobile Chatter does not do
Putting Chatter inside the Salesforce Mobile App is not a perfect copy of the desktop feed, and the official help page on the topic is titled around what is different or not available. Some formatting and convenience features are trimmed for mobile. You cannot apply rich text formatting or post code snippets, and you cannot attach more than one file to a single feed item. The feed does not render inline images in the main stream the way the desktop does, and you will not see live, auto-refreshing feed and comment updates. Sharing a post and sending or viewing Chatter messages are not supported in the app. Chatter Questions is only partially supported. Feed search is limited; you cannot search within feeds on user profiles and records from mobile. None of these gaps are dealbreakers for quick collaboration, which is the point of mobile, but they matter when you train users. Someone used to the full desktop feed should know that a few authoring and viewing features only exist back at a laptop, so they do not assume a missing button is a bug.
Notifications, the strongest reason to consolidate
The clearest payoff from folding Chatter into one app is notifications. In the Salesforce Mobile App, a single notifications tray collects Chatter mentions, comments on posts you follow, approval requests, and other system alerts. With the old standalone Chatter Mobile, a mention pushed through the Chatter app while a CRM alert came from somewhere else, so users checked multiple places or missed things. One tray fixes that. On mobile, Chatter sends a push notification to people based on their push settings. As an example, group members who turned on the option for when someone mentions their group get a push when an at-mention hits that group. The lesson for admins is that defaults can be noisy. If every group event pushes to every member, people start ignoring the badge, which defeats the purpose. Tuning notifications per group and per user keeps the signal high. This is the kind of control the unified app makes practical, because all the alerts route through one settings surface instead of being split across separate apps with separate preferences.
Migrating off Chatter Mobile was almost nothing
The move from Chatter Mobile to the Salesforce Mobile App was about as painless as a retirement gets, because the data never lived on the phone. Chatter posts, comments, files, and group membership are stored in Salesforce, not in the app. A user simply deleted the old Chatter Mobile app and installed the Salesforce Mobile App. Same login, same feeds, same groups, same notifications, now sitting next to full record access. There was no export, no data migration, and no risk of losing posts in the switch. For admins the work was communication, not engineering: tell users which app to download, point them at the Chatter tab, and help them reset notification preferences in the new app. Because the standalone app was eventually removed from the app stores, the migration also happened by attrition. New phones could not install Chatter Mobile, so users landed on the unified app by default. If you are reading older runbooks or certification material that still says install Chatter Mobile, treat that as a translation problem. The current instruction is always the Salesforce Mobile App and its Chatter tab.
Reading the legacy name in old material
Chatter Mobile shows up across a decade of Salesforce content, so knowing how to read the name saves confusion. Pre-2018 admin guides, partner blog posts, and certification prep often reference Chatter Mobile or the early Salesforce1 brand. When you hit those, mentally map them to the Salesforce Mobile App. The collaboration features described are mostly still there, just inside the unified app. It also helps to place Chatter Mobile in the wider cleanup Salesforce has done around Chatter clients. Companion products like Chatter Desktop and Chatter Messenger were retired too, part of a steady consolidation of standalone Chatter apps into the main platform. Salesforce keeps a public list of past product and feature retirements where these land. The other shift worth noting is Slack. After Salesforce acquired Slack, a lot of real-time team collaboration moved there, and Slack has its own strong mobile app. Chatter remains the right place for record-anchored conversation inside Salesforce, while broader cross-tool chat often happens in Slack. Both can coexist, and knowing which surface a team actually uses helps when you read or write mobile collaboration guidance.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Chatter Mobile.
- Salesforce Mobile AppSalesforce
- Salesforce Past Product and Feature RetirementsSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Chatter Mobile.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. How do users reach Chatter on a phone now that the standalone app is retired?
Q2. Why was no data migration needed when users moved off standalone Chatter Mobile?
Q3. Which capability is highlighted as especially valuable in the mobile Chatter experience?
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