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Changelog

What we have built, fixed, and improved in each release of Franz.

6.0.1

A small follow-up to v6.0.0 that cleans up three rough edges only the broader rollout could surface: sign-in stalling at the Cloudflare challenge on Windows after a fresh install, the new app-menu button crowding the page header on Windows, and freshly arrived emails staying bold in the global inbox until you switched folders.

Fixed

  • Sign-in on Windows after a cold start no longer hangs at the Cloudflare challenge. The challenge reuses warmed-up state between attempts now, so a second try settles in a handful of seconds instead of repeating the same long wait, and a real error surfaces when something actually goes wrong instead of a silent timeout.
  • Window controls on Windows — the new app-menu button stops overlapping the icons in the page header next to it, its glyph is the vertical ellipsis it should have been, and the stray divider line beside it is gone.
  • Newly arrived emails in the global inbox flip from bold to read the moment you open them, instead of staying bold until you click into a folder.

6.0.0

Franz turns ten this year, and Franz 6 is the release that marks it. One person at the keyboard, the same one who shipped the first prototype on a weekend in 2015, with everything ten years of stubborn work taught us built into a single version. This is the one I am proudest of. If you have used Franz at any point in the last decade, you are the reason it is still here. Thank you.

6.0.0-beta.3

This beta closes a long-standing gap: Franz finally tells you what changed. A new Release notes item in the Help menu and a matching link in Settings → Update both open this changelog scrolled straight to the version you're running. The next time Franz prompts you to install an update, the "what's new" dialog shows real notes written for you instead of a commit log. The integrations behind Slack, Discord, WhatsApp and the rest also refresh on their own at startup now, so fixes for upstream service changes reach you without waiting for a Franz release. Underneath that headline sits a long pass of polish: Signal voice notes that play natively on every phone, a Drafts folder that finally shows your drafts the moment you create them, and a long list of small fixes across email, onboarding, and WhatsApp that had been quietly nicking at the day.

New

  • Release notes inside Franz — a Release notes item in the Help menu and a matching link in Settings → Update, both opening the changelog scrolled to the version you're running.
  • Update dialogs that tell you what changed — when Franz offers to install an update, the notes are written for you, not pulled from a commit log.
  • Service updates that arrive on their own — the bits that integrate Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, and the rest now refresh at startup, so fixes for upstream service changes reach you without waiting for a Franz release.

Improved

  • Signal voice notes send in a format every Signal client decodes natively. Your iPhone and Android contacts hear them in the chat instead of getting a generic file attachment.
  • Signal stays connected through the cold-start hiccups (slow disks, big sync backlogs) that used to flicker the linked-device status to "unlinked" half a dozen times in a row before settling.
  • Email Drafts show drafts you started from "New email" or "Reply" the moment you start them. Clicking a draft row opens it in the composer where you left off, with attachments and signatures intact, instead of opening the read view and silently spawning duplicates.
  • Email composer polish — emoji typeahead anchors to your caret instead of the top of the window, replies stop seeding your own address into the recipient list, and quoting wraps just the line you selected.
  • Settings search no longer traps you — pressing Escape while typing in a settings search clears the search instead of closing the whole Settings window.

Fixed

  • Copy buttons inside services that had been silently doing nothing now actually copy. If "Copy" in Slack, Notion, or any other service had stopped working for you, it works again.
  • Onboarding no longer leaves you on a blank screen after signup. The first sidebar service activates automatically once setup completes.
  • Open email threads refresh when new messages arrive, instead of staying frozen on whatever was there when you clicked in.
  • Email search filters work again. Searches that relied on priority, smart tags, or folder scopes had been quietly returning nothing.
  • Long URLs and tokens in emails no longer push the message body off-screen.
  • Undo send restores attachments along with the message, so you don't have to re-attach files after fixing a typo.
  • WhatsApp contact suggestions stop showing the same name twice on the same row.
  • Email sender intelligence — the "Communication" card on a sender's profile now reflects how often you actually reply to them, instead of reading 0% for everyone.

6.0.0-beta.2

The release where privacy stopped being a promise and became a switch. Franz has always said that you shouldn't have to trade focus for surveillance — this beta makes that a setting you can see and control. A new Privacy & Analytics section in Settings lays out exactly what Franz collects, why, and how to turn it off, with anonymous product analytics and crash reports both explicitly opt-in. Beyond that, the polish updates only reveal once people start actually updating: auto-updates that finish cleanly on macOS, Windows installers that stop crying wolf, and a tray icon that respects your system theme.

New

  • Privacy & Analytics settings — a single place to see what's collected and turn it off. Product analytics and crash reports are both opt-in, both anonymous, and both listed field-by-field in a disclosure panel. Whatever leaves your device is stripped of email addresses, tokens, and file paths before it goes anywhere.
  • "Reset service data" action in Settings — when a service gets stuck (a logged-out Slack, a frozen WhatsApp), reset it without reinstalling the service.

Improved

  • macOS tray icon follows the system theme instead of drawing a dark icon on a light menu bar.
  • Settings update section now shows a colour-coded status badge right in the navigation so you can see at a glance whether Franz is up to date.

Fixed

  • Auto-updates on macOS finish properly on beta channels instead of hanging at "update downloaded" and making you relaunch by hand.
  • Windows installer no longer throws a false "Franz is already running" error during an upgrade.
  • Cross-device sync reconciles sidebar drift instead of overwriting what you just changed on the other machine.
  • Priority inbox deduplicates threads and clears stale "in the loop" entries that were sticking around.

6.0.0-beta.1

Ten years in, Franz 6 lays the foundation for the next ten. Underneath it's a full rewrite onto a modern runtime — on screen it's the Franz you already know, sharper around the edges. A Franz Cloud onboarding that finally feels right, Windows Hello unlock that shows up before you set a PIN instead of after, and a long list of the small fixes that accumulated over time and needed a release to call home. The first beta's job is simple: everything that worked before still works, only better.

New

  • Franz Cloud onboarding in-app — sign up, confirm consent, and reset your password without leaving the app.
  • Quit Franz from the Windows taskbar — right-click the Franz icon and quit directly, without opening a window.

Improved

  • Service and workspace forms now behave the way you'd expect — hit Enter to submit, screen readers read them correctly, and errors surface consistently.
  • Windows Hello settings stay visible whenever a Hello provider is available on your machine, so you can find the biometric unlock option even before setting your PIN.
  • Priority inbox sorts newest-first and regenerates the priority briefing without carrying over messages you already deleted.
  • Trial and upgrade modals no longer stack on top of each other mid-upgrade.

Fixed

  • Orphaned tabs from removed services are cleaned up at startup, so tab order stays stable across restarts.
  • Cross-device sync preserves changes you made offline instead of dropping them when a full sync runs.
  • Deleting a message, thread, or service sticks across your other devices instead of reappearing after the next sync.
  • Gravatar avatars stay visible after the app remounts from cache instead of flickering back to generic initials.
  • Saving an email as a file works from the preview window again — Cmd+S was being swallowed before.
  • Email composer — a whole pass through the reply experience: signatures route correctly, line breaks render as they should, draft restores stop duplicating content, the slash menu stops eating the first character you type, and the Manage Signatures deep link actually goes there.
  • Attachments and links inside the file viewer open in your system browser instead of stealing focus back into the viewer.
  • "Continue with Free" on the trial-ended modal now closes the modal instead of leaving it hanging.
  • Trial expiry registers immediately after a restart instead of needing a second relaunch.
  • Windows notification toasts are no longer hidden behind the window controls in the top-right corner.
  • Franz installer on Windows stops claiming Franz is running during an upgrade when it isn't.

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