title: How do I jump to a specific date in history or the oldest message in a Slack channel in the desktop app?
body: <p>My specific question is how to do this in the Slack desktop app, but I wouldn't mind settling for a way to do this via a web browser, and then worst case, a web api.</p>
  
  <p>I often want to jump to the beginning of a channel and just read, but it takes FOREVER to scroll up. What's the shortcut?  I was hoping for something like /InTheBeginning, jk too long. How about /begin /oldest or something like that or a keyboard shortcut like ctrl+shift+home or something like that?  I don't care what it is, I just want it.
  How about "/jump oldest" "/jump latest" and "/jump 11/29/2015", because maybe I want to see what was said on my B'day?</p>
  
  <p>This is starting to sound like a feature request, but hopefully the functionality already exists and I'm just missing it.  </p>
  
  <h2>Update1</h2>
  
  <p>I'm using the latest version of Slack v1.2.7 64-bit on Windows 7 Ent Sp 1.<br>
  I now see that the Home button does retrieve "some" history, but only if you select a message first.  I was previously pressing Home when my cursor was in the "+" input message text box and nothing happens in that case.  However, I still can't get it to go all the way to the beginning with a single key stroke.  Also, I saw a vague setting in preferences' "Advanced Options" -> <em>Page up, Page down, Home, and End keys always scroll messages</em>, but I can't see a difference between when it is checked or not.</p>
  
  <h2>Update2: "archives" path</h2>
  
  <p>I found a faster way for the browser, but not the desktop app.</p>
  
  <pre><code>https://{team_name}.slack.com/archives/{channel_name}  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The above "archives" path shows a page that has a date picker "BROWSE BY DATE". Click on "Pick a date" and you can quickly scroll back to the beginning of time.</p>
  
  <p>Maybe there is an even faster way to get to a specific date or the beginning of a channel using only the URI. Also, if anyone can find docs on this "archives" path please add in a comment.  I don't remember how I stumbled across this.</p>
  
  <h2>Update3: <strong>Hack</strong> for linking directly to beginning of channel</h2>
  
  <p>It looks like the DatePicker passes the epoch time in seconds, so I discovered if I pass s0000000000000000 it goes to the beginning of the channel. It works if you shorten to s00, but not s0 for some reason. Voila!</p>
  
  <p>https://{team_name}.slack.com/archives/{channel_name}/<strong>s00</strong></p>