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Changelog

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

6.2.0

Every inbox quietly accumulates ghosts — the people you used to talk to all the time, who slipped off your radar without you noticing. This release gives them a name. Ghosts, new in Franz Mail, surfaces the relationships that are cooling off so you can reach back out before they go cold for good — and it's computed entirely on your own machine, so nothing about who you talk to ever leaves your device. Around it: you can now bring your own Google Gemini key to the Pro AI assistant, Cmd+K finally searches inside your WhatsApp messages instead of just chat names, overdue todos now count toward your dock badge so nothing slips, and a run of fixes lands on draft handling, smoother reply sending, and pop-up windows on Windows and Linux.

New

  • Ghosts — see the relationships that are fading. Franz Mail now has a dedicated Ghosts view that gathers the people you used to be in regular contact with and have quietly drifted from, grouped by how cool things have gotten (Cooling, Cold, Frozen) and sorted by how warm the relationship once was. Each one is a single click away from a pre-addressed reply. It's all worked out on your device from your own mail history — the warmth math never goes to a server. The free plan shows your three warmest quiet relationships; Franz Pro opens up the full list. And when you start writing to someone you haven't spoken to in a while, a gentle note in the composer lets you know — no nagging, just a heads-up.
  • Bring your own Google Gemini key. Franz Pro's AI assistant now supports Google Gemini alongside the existing providers — drop in your own Gemini API key in Settings and the assistant runs on it, with full support for the assistant's multi-step actions.
  • Search inside your WhatsApp messages. Cmd+K now reaches into the text of your WhatsApp messages, not just conversation names. Find that thing someone mentioned, and the result jumps you straight to that message in the thread. Group chats are searched too.
  • Overdue todos in the dock badge. Todos that are overdue now add to the count on your dock and tray icon, right alongside unread services — so an overdue task is visible without opening Franz. Tick one off and the badge updates immediately.

Improved

  • Your draft is waiting where you left it. Reopen an email thread that has a saved draft and Franz now drops you straight into the composer with that draft loaded, instead of making you find and click Reply again. A Forward chip stays handy in case you meant to forward instead.
  • Search every email from one sender. The sender details panel in Franz Mail gets a Search button that pulls up every email from that address in one go.
  • Sending a reply is smoother. The moment between hitting send and seeing your message land in the thread used to flicker and briefly go blank. The reply now stays visible the whole way through, with no jump.
  • App menu items reflect what you can actually do. Entries like Focus Search Bar, Find Next/Previous, and Toggle AI Assistant are now active only when they apply to what's on screen, instead of being there but doing nothing.

Fixed

  • Avatars and custom service icons sync again. Setting a profile picture or a custom icon for a service was silently failing to save — it never made it to your other machines or to your account on the web. Uploads work again, so your avatar and icons follow you everywhere.
  • Cmd+K stopped hijacking other services' shortcuts. A recent change meant to protect WhatsApp's search was over-broad and broke the native Cmd+K quick-switchers in Slack, Discord, and Teams. Cmd+K now behaves normally in those services again.
  • Slack huddles and similar pop-ups open again. Some services open a blank pop-up window and then fill it in — Slack huddles, certain sign-in and feature dialogs. Those were being blocked and would fail with an error; they open correctly now.
  • Google Calendar sign-in stays put. Signing in to the Google Calendar service used to bounce you to a separate browser window and leave the calendar stuck on its marketing page. Sign-in now stays inside the service where it belongs.
  • Generated-draft paragraphs survive sending. Drafts written with the AI generate shortcut looked right in the editor but arrived in the recipient's inbox with the paragraph breaks flattened into one run-on block. Your paragraphs now make it through intact.
  • Pop-up windows look right on Windows and Linux. The Basic Auth, Download Manager, and screen-share windows no longer show stray app title-bar buttons, the corners are now drawn cleanly by the OS instead of doubling up on Windows 11, and the Basic Auth dialog sizes itself to its content instead of clipping the buttons at the bottom.
  • Search box sizing and shortcut hints. The Cmd+K search pop-up now sizes itself to its results instead of clipping the last row or showing up too narrow on Windows, and the keyboard hint correctly reads "Ctrl+K" on Windows and Linux rather than the macOS ⌘ symbol.

6.1.0

This release brings Franz 6 finally to Linux. AppImage, .deb, and snap packages on x64 and arm64, with native window decorations, system tray, autostart, live OS theme sync, and proper franz:// and mailto: handling — the goal was for Linux to feel native rather than ported. Alongside that, a new "Mute all services" button silences every tab in one click (with a per-service mute toggle in each tab's header), email search now reads the message body and not just the subject, and a stack of cross-app fixes lands on frozen email folders, smart-reply line breaks, and WhatsApp typing lag.

New

  • Linux builds, finally. Franz 6 now ships natively on Linux as AppImage, .deb, and snap packages, for both x64 and arm64. Your desktop environment draws the window decorations; the tray icon registers on KDE (and on GNOME with the AppIndicator extension installed); the autostart toggle in Settings writes a proper XDG entry; the OS dark/light theme is followed live; and franz:// links plus the optional default-mail-client handler register the same way they do on macOS and Windows. Signal device-linking works on Linux arm64 too.
  • Mute everything, or just one. A new "Mute all services" button at the bottom of the sidebar silences every service in one click. Each service tab also gets its own mute icon in the header, so you can quiet one without touching the rest. Both settings persist across restarts; turning global mute off restores your per-service preferences exactly as you left them.

Improved

  • Email search reads the message body. Searching for a word that only appears inside an email — not in the subject or sender name — now finds it. The index rebuilds automatically the first time you open a folder after upgrading.
  • Smart reply keeps your paragraph breaks. Inserting a smart-reply suggestion into the composer used to flatten line breaks into spaces; the paragraph structure now survives all the way into the sent message.
  • Thread reader opens at the latest message. Opening a long thread no longer scrolls you to the top — it lands at the most recent reply, with the sender row visible instead of tucked under the sticky header.
  • WhatsApp typing is snappier. A background poll and an over-broad DOM observer were stealing main-thread time on the WhatsApp tab; both are gone, so the typing cursor keeps up with you.
  • WhatsApp unread badge counts every conversation. Group chats no longer get demoted to a separate indirect dot — every unread chat, 1:1 or group, contributes to the same direct count the way unread mail does.
  • Folder unread badges match the folder. The "N new" badge was counting messages that lived in both a folder and Trash or Spam, so it disagreed with what the folder actually showed. The badge now uses the same filter the folder list does, so the two numbers agree.
  • Browser and custom-website services contribute to the dock and tray. Self-reporting services published via the new in-page unread schema now count toward the macOS dock badge and the system tray badge alongside everything else.

Fixed

  • Post-send failures surface as toasts. The 10-second undo-send countdown used to silently swallow any error that fired after the countdown ended — the draft just reappeared with no feedback. You now see a toast explaining what happened (rate-limit, network error, etc.) when a send fails.
  • Email folders freezing on open. Opening folders with very few items — Drafts, low-volume labels — could lock the email tab with one CPU core pinned and the UI frozen but still scrollable. The folder load no longer spins on itself.
  • Avatar upload in Settings → Account. Applying a custom avatar after cropping was throwing "An object could not be cloned" and silently failing. It saves now.
  • Failed and cancelled downloads have a context menu. Right-clicking a download that errored or was cancelled used to do nothing; the menu now opens with "Remove from List".
  • Download Manager popup double-border on macOS. The popup was painting its own rounded border on top of the OS window frame, producing a visible double-edge. Cleaned up.

6.0.4

The way Franz Assistant answers catch-me-up questions got most of the work this release — the idea is to have the assistant do more of the reading for you so you can scan and act. Ask "what do I need to do today?" and you get a structured briefing instead of long prose — emails grouped by priority with a one-line summary on each card and Reply, Snooze, Archive, or Remind one tap away; todos grouped by what's overdue or due today, with a checkbox to tick off right there. Elsewhere, a new Settings → Network toggle helps Franz get past managed corporate networks that were blocking Gmail and WhatsApp, inline images finally display inside HTML emails, and the Help menu has a new entry that opens an in-app summary of what changed in the version you're on.

New

  • Structured catch-me-up briefings. Catch-me-up in Franz Assistant now returns structured cards instead of long prose. Emails group by priority — Urgent / Important / Informational — with a short summary on each card; todos group by Overdue / Due today / Upcoming with a checkbox you can tick off right there. Hover any email card for Reply, Snooze, Archive, or Remind. Up to three follow-up actions for the whole answer sit in a row of pills beneath the cards.
  • Corporate network compatibility. Settings → Network has a new toggle for managed corporate networks where Gmail, WhatsApp, or other Services wouldn't load. When a service fails to load with a network error, the recovery panel also offers "Enable corporate network compatibility" as a secondary action so you can fix it from the error screen.

Improved

  • Stronger passwords for new accounts. New signups and password changes now require at least 12 characters. Existing accounts keep working — only newly-set passwords are subject to the new minimum.
  • Quieter background activity when your session expires. When the app's sign-in expires, background syncing and entitlement checks pause instead of repeatedly retrying with a stale token. They resume automatically once you sign in again.

Fixed

  • Inline images in HTML email now display in the message body. Images embedded directly into the message (rather than fetched from a remote server) were being dropped silently. The "Images are hidden for privacy" banner still appears for messages that try to load images from a remote server.
  • A pass over catch-me-up rough edges. The spinner no longer hangs above the answer when the model's output is slightly malformed, the structured cards reliably render instead of occasionally falling back to a plain text chip, the redundant prose recap that used to follow the cards is gone, and the raw "Looking up todos / Checking emails" intermediate cards are hidden from the start instead of flashing for a few seconds before collapsing.
  • The page header search bar resizes with the window instead of staying at full width on narrow windows and squeezing the buttons on either side.

6.0.3

Mostly an unblocking release. Gmail sign-in had quietly stopped working for consumer accounts. Corporate networks running authenticated proxies were swallowing every outbound request Franz made. Both are sorted. Alongside that, Mattermost and Rocket.Chat get back their Hosted / Self-hosted choice, Signal opens cleanly on a fresh install, and a handful of smaller papercuts around email attachments, service deletion, and the session-expired banner are gone.

New

  • Hosted or Self-hosted for Mattermost and Rocket.Chat. Adding or editing one of these services now shows a Hosted / Self-hosted toggle. Hosted points at the official cloud and works on any plan; Self-hosted lets you point Franz at your own server and is available with Franz Pro. Existing services keep working as before — if you're on Free with a self-hosted setup, you'll see an upgrade card on the service until you upgrade to Pro or switch to a hosted instance.

Improved

  • Discord unread and mention counts stay accurate as Discord keeps redesigning its UI. The number on the sidebar matches what's actually waiting for you.
  • Email thread attachments in the list and collapsed view now include attachments from every message in the thread — a paperclip on an older reply is no longer hidden behind a newer text-only one.
  • The "X new" pill on email folders matches what's actually in the folder. Archived, trashed, and snoozed mail were being counted, which produced "N new" badges over folders that showed nothing fresh.
  • Login, register, and password-reset rate limits are more generous. Households and corporate networks — anyone behind a shared internet connection — were sometimes hitting rate-limit walls made up of strangers' traffic. Successful sign-ins also no longer count against the login budget.
  • The unread badge font shrinks when the count reaches "99+" so the number fits inside the circle instead of overflowing it.
  • Service icons in tight layouts hold their size instead of being squeezed by neighbouring elements.
  • Pressing Enter inside a service-settings field saves the form, instead of accidentally triggering the upgrade modal.

Fixed

  • Gmail sign-in for consumer accounts is working again.
  • Sign-in behind authenticated corporate proxies goes through cleanly now, including networks that require proxy authentication, certificates installed by your IT team, or Windows-domain credentials.
  • Signal failing to load on a fresh install with a "no such table" error. Signal now opens cleanly the first time you launch it.
  • Deleting a service didn't unlock the rest. If you were over your service limit and then removed one, the others stayed locked. They unlock as soon as the count drops back within your plan.
  • Trial accounts that should have expired could stay entitled indefinitely when a renewal signal never arrived. Trials now end on the date they were supposed to.
  • Cancelled paid subscriptions that were still inside their billing period were being silently downgraded to Free. They now keep their plan until the period actually ends.
  • The session-expired banner appears immediately the first time your sign-in is rejected, rather than around thirty minutes later, and no longer leaves the app stuck in a half-signed-in state with no clear way out.
  • The unverified-email banner dismisses when you verify in the browser and switch back to Franz. Previously the app didn't notice the window had regained focus, so the banner lingered until you restarted.

6.0.2

This release closed a few things you'd likely noticed missing like Email accounts now sync across your machines. Add Gmail on your desktop and the account shows up on your laptop, ready to sign in.

New

  • Email accounts sync across devices. Add a Gmail or Outlook account on one machine and it appears on every other machine you're signed in to. Synced accounts arrive with a Reconnect button — one sign-in per device and mail starts flowing in. If an account is removed on one device, the others ask you to confirm before clearing it locally, so a sync glitch can't quietly wipe a mailbox out from under you.
  • Unverified-email banner. If you haven't confirmed the email on your Franz account yet, you'll see an amber banner with a one-click Resend confirmation button. The Franz Assistant stays unavailable until confirmation lands, and shows a clear card explaining why with the same Resend in place.

Improved

  • Cross-machine setup. Copying your Franz data to a new computer no longer leaves the app in a half-signed-in state where nothing worked but nothing looked broken either. The app now detects an unreadable session cleanly and asks you to sign in again.

Fixed

  • Email search filter chips stay active when you clear the text query, instead of dropping you back to the Priority Inbox. Marking a search result as read also updates the row in place, instead of leaving it bold until you re-run the search.
  • Search typeahead finds Signal contacts and WhatsApp chat partners again. Both had quietly stopped returning results.
  • Dark mode contrast on email-account rows that need reconnecting — the account name is legible again against the amber background.
  • Banner buttons on Windows no longer slide under the minimize / maximize / close controls in the top-right corner. The fix that v6.0.1 applied to the unverified-email banner now covers every top-edge banner in the app.
  • Settings · AI providers: removed a duplicate "Pro" label on the provider card — the tier badge already says it.

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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