6.8.0
Press ⌘J, or Ctrl+J, and Franz shows you what you have. That's the magic bar, and it's the headline of this release: type a name and the mail, the WhatsApp and Signal messages, the todo, the calendar event and the service all come up in one list, and Enter takes you there in the right workspace. Hit Tab and the same bar turns into Ask Franz. That one got rebuilt underneath, and on Franz Cloud and some of the keys you can bring, a question that takes several steps now comes back as one answer. Two writing features arrived alongside it, Translate on any selected text in any service, and Snippets for the replies you write over and over. The in-app browser links open in got back, forward and an address bar, 1Password autofill works on Windows the way we said it would, and there's quite a lot of reliability work sitting under all of it.
The plans changed too. Franz Pro is the complete daily workspace now: unlimited services and workspaces, Franz Mail and Todos, the privacy tools, dictation on a supported Mac, 1Password on the direct downloads, Smart Translate on whichever model you've configured, and a library of plain snippets that follows your account. Nothing on that list needs Franz Cloud. What Max adds is the part that writes for you: smart snippets that fill in the name, the date and the thing you promised from the conversation you have open, plus the managed Franz Cloud allowance so you don't have to bring a model at all.
Franz Mail got quieter as well. A trial user wrote in to say the AI in Franz Mail was too much, and that they couldn't get it to go away. They had a point. A row in the list could carry a priority badge plus a whole stack of tags, the summaries had no way to dismiss them, and there wasn't a switch for any single one of them. Every row shows one chip now, and you correct Franz right there on the chip. Summaries read in full and remember when you collapse them. The briefing waits until a new mailbox has finished syncing before it writes anything, and each AI surface got its own switch in Settings.
Printing arrived too. ⌘P, or Ctrl+P, prints the service you're looking at, and in Franz Mail it prints the open conversation laid out properly for paper. Franz could also freeze while syncing, and on one day with two large accounts we counted seven freezes, from 24 seconds to more than 17 minutes. That's fixed, opening a message in a big mailbox got quite a bit faster along the way, and if you sync a big mailbox, this is the one to update to.
New
- Everything you have, one shortcut away. ⌘J on a Mac, Ctrl+J on Windows and Linux, from anywhere in Franz. It searches your mail, your WhatsApp and Signal messages, your contacts, todos, calendar events, workspaces and services, and groups what it finds by where it came from. Enter opens the row you picked and switches workspace if that's where it lives. Type
/for commands and filters likefrom:,to:, unread, starred and has-attachment, or scope the search to one service. Dictation works in the bar, so you can speak instead of typing. Open it empty and your recent searches are waiting. - Ask Franz from the same bar. Tab switches from searching to asking. The answer streams in place, cards and all, and ⌘↵ hands the whole conversation over to the assistant when you want more room. It's the same Ask Franz in both places, and it got rebuilt for this release.
- Ask Franz works through the whole question. Ask something that takes several steps and you get one answer at the end. Ask which customers are still waiting on you and to draft each a reply, and the drafts come back together. On 6.7.1 that same question produced no card at all. Each run shows one plain line saying what it did.
- It works over your data, with or without a dedicated tool. Franz can answer over what you have even where nothing was built for that question specifically. The result card now covers your calendar, todos, Signal and WhatsApp, not just mail. Correct a chip on the card and Franz runs the same work again without asking the model.
- A draft says what it doesn't know. If Franz doesn't have the date, the price or the thing you promised, it says so instead of inventing it, and the card marks the gap for you. Nothing gets sent without a click.
- The new loop runs on Franz Cloud and on some of the keys you can bring. Local models and the other keys keep the older, simpler loop.
- ⌘K searches the service you're in. In Franz Mail and Signal, ⌘K, or Ctrl+K, opens the magic bar already scoped to that service, and the search field in the header shows the shortcut so you know which one drives it. Clicking the field does the same thing.
- Compose from anywhere. Compose email in the magic bar and ⌘N both open the Franz Mail composer. If you don't have a Franz Mail account yet, Franz says so and offers to set one up, and the new service lands on its Email accounts tab ready to sign in.
- Print what you're looking at. ⌘P on a Mac, Ctrl+P on Windows, prints what's in front of you: a service, a popped-out tab or a page in the in-app browser. There's a Print item in the Services menu and a Print row in the magic bar, and they all do the same thing. Tested on macOS and Windows so far.
- Franz Mail prints a proper conversation. Subject and sender on top, then every message in order with who wrote to whom, names and email addresses both, the full date, Cc and the attachments with their sizes. The quoted history under each reply is left off, so you don't print the same thread over and over, and a forwarded message prints whole. Print sits in the thread's overflow menu and in the right-click menu in the message list, and every message has its own Print this message. Remote images aren't fetched again for paper, so a tracking pixel doesn't fire a second time. They print as their description instead.
- Translate anything, anywhere. Select text in any service, right-click, pick Translate. Signal has it in its own context menu, and
/translatein the magic bar translates whatever you type or paste. The card keeps the original next to the translation, both languages are chips that open the language list, and Swap flips them. Copy and retry are one click each. Part of Franz Pro and Max, on any supported model you've configured: your own key, a local model or Franz Cloud. Under a result from a model that isn't Franz Cloud, Franz shows one line recommending Franz Cloud AI, and the result stays exactly as it is. - Type a sentence, get a translation. Free text that matched nothing used to end in No results found. Now there's a Translate row under the real hits, and Enter translates what you typed.
/translateworks as before. - Snippets. Save the replies you write over and over in the Snippets rail and drop them into whichever message field you're in, or onto your clipboard when the field can't take them. Search, create, edit, duplicate and delete your library, and it syncs with your Franz account, so it's on every machine you use. A plain snippet never touches a model, and it's part of Franz Pro. Smart Snippets go further: put an instruction in double braces and Franz fills that part in from the conversation that's open, then shows you the result to read and edit before you press Insert. Nothing goes in until you say so, and a snippet with no conversation to read from tells you that instead of failing. Smart snippets are part of Franz Max, work with your own configured model as well as with Franz Cloud, and Lifetime and active trials get them too.
- One switch per AI surface in Franz Mail. Settings, AI has a switch each for the priority briefing, thread summaries, the classification chips and smart replies. Switch one off and it's gone right away, no reload, and Franz stops asking the model for it. Everything stays on until you say otherwise.
- Look inside spam and trash when you mean to. Spam and trash stay out of your search results by default, the same way the magic bar and Ask Franz already handled it. Type
in:spamorin:trashwhen you actually want to look there. It shows up as a chip you can remove again. - The in-app browser got real controls. Links from a service have always opened inside Franz. That window has back, forward and an address bar now. The switch in Settings, General still decides whether links open in Franz or in your system browser, and holding Cmd, Shift or Ctrl while clicking still does the opposite.
- 1Password autofill on Windows. The padlock fills your logins and your one-time codes on Windows now, the same way it has on a Mac. 6.7.0 said Windows was next. Part of Franz Pro, on the macOS and Windows direct downloads, and not in the Mac App Store version.
- The trial is a Max trial. 14 days with everything Max has, plain and smart snippets included, and 1M Franz Cloud tokens for the trial. When it ends on Pro, your plain snippets keep working and your smart snippets stay in the library with an upgrade path, nothing is deleted.
- Lifetime includes the workflows. A Lifetime licence has plain and smart snippets, Smart Translate and the native integrations on their supported platforms, all with your own model. Hosted Franz Cloud AI stays an optional add-on.
Improved
- Franz Pro includes dictation and 1Password autofill. Both used to sit a tier up. Dictation needs macOS 26 or later on Apple Silicon.
- The in-app plan comparison shows snippets and Smart Translate. Plain snippets on Pro, plain and smart on Max, and the translation row is checked on both. The two platform-dependent rows, dictation and 1Password, are still explained on the feature pages rather than in the modal.
- Downloads moved into the utility rail, next to your todos and calendar, and you can filter them down to a single service.
- Franz Mail search answers straight away. The first results come out of the text index, so you get something the moment you type, even when the smarter half of search hasn't warmed up yet.
- Local model downloads say what went wrong. A download that fails now tells you why instead of leaving the button as it was, and Download is offered for whichever model you select, not just the one Franz picked for you.
- Signal reads like a chat. Messages from the same person in a row join into one block, search has tabs, a chip showing what you asked for and highlighted snippets, you can paste an image straight into the composer, and Reply puts the caret where you type.
- A service that won't load tells you more. The recovery actions sit behind a Troubleshooting disclosure, and a DNS failure names the host Franz couldn't reach.
- Unread from your other workspaces. The collapsed workspace switcher shows when something new landed somewhere else, and a badge clears properly when its service unloads.
- One chip per row, and the chip is the control. A message in Franz Mail shows a single reason chip instead of a badge plus a row of tags, and an approval outranks a review everywhere. Click the chip and you can tell Franz it's not this, that the mail isn't priority, or that this sender never is. Franz then says in plain words what it did. The reading pane header shows the same chip as the row, so one email doesn't have two different reasons depending on where you look.
- Thread summaries slide in when they're ready. No more placeholder box that shows up, holds space and jumps. The summary opens by default, reads in full instead of being cut off, and if you collapse it Franz remembers that.
- The priority briefing reads in full. The summary got its own line at the full width of the card, and it's open the first time you see it. Mark something as read, snooze it or archive it and it leaves the briefing right away. While a fresh briefing is on its way the old text stays, with a small spinner next to the greeting.
- The briefing's numbers match the list under it. With two mail accounts connected the header could say 0 urgent over two visible rows. It counts what the list shows now, across all your accounts. Show all next to the week's unread count opens exactly those messages.
- A new mailbox gets a briefing worth reading. While Franz is still syncing and sorting a freshly connected account, the card says so and tells you how many messages are left. The briefing shows up when that's done, instead of being written over a half-synced inbox. A busy day also can't use up the day's briefings and leave the card empty any more.
- Smart replies got calmer. Each suggestion has its own row and wraps, so a long sentence isn't a chip you have to drag sideways. The tone colours and the Fast badge are gone. It's still one click.
- Urgent means more. A stranger writing URGENT in a subject counts for less than it did. Urgency words weigh fully when the sender is someone you've replied to, a VIP, on your own domain, or when there's a real deadline in the text. The model also got a proper definition of what high priority means, and promotional mail using urgency words isn't it.
- The Add filter menu lists Invoice, in the same order as the chips in the sidebar.
Fixed
- Franz no longer freezes while syncing a large mailbox. The app could stop responding for anything from a few seconds to many minutes while a big account synced. Conversations without proper reply headers still group into one thread like before.
- Emails that showed nothing show their text. Some messages on IMAP accounts arrived with a blank reading pane. If you hit that, this is the version to get.
- Turning Franz AI on takes effect right away. The switch in Settings used to write the setting and then do nothing until the next launch, with nothing on screen saying a restart was needed. Mail sorting and search intelligence now start the moment you switch it on.
- Quitting Franz stops Signal's helper too. The process Franz talks to Signal through used to outlive the app, and because every Franz install on a machine shares its connection, a second profile couldn't link Signal until you found and ended it by hand. Both ways of quitting, the menu and an update restart, end it now.
- Signal quotes work in both directions, your own replies included, and an edit lands on the message you actually edited. Each Franz profile keeps its own Signal database, so two profiles on one machine stop writing over each other, and a slow Signal start no longer switches the service off.
- Passkey sign-in no longer loops on Windows. A page asking for a passkey Franz can't put a dialog on screen for is turned down now, instead of reopening the same dialog forever.
- The WhatsApp badge counts what's in your chat list, not the chats you've hidden from it.
- Date phrases in German and French resolve properly. "nächsten Freitag" now means this coming Friday whether or not you typed the umlaut, and the date is read in your app language first.
- Windows tray icons are transparent again, and a todo due tomorrow says tomorrow instead of "in 9,287 seconds".
- No more update offers on macOS 12. Newer Franz builds can't run there, so Franz stops offering them instead of failing to install.
- With more than one Franz Mail service, the one you're looking at updates live. Sync progress, inbox counts, the priority list, snoozes, signatures and account changes could all land in the wrong place and leave the open mail view stale until you reloaded it.
- The classifying status tells the truth. It could stay on over an idle app, and on other days it never showed while Franz was busy sorting. It's on while mail is being sorted and clears when the last message is done.
- Attachment sizes follow your language, so German and French read 1,5 kB.
Under the hood
- Sorting your mail stays out of your way. The work that indexes and sorts your mail runs in a process of its own now, on a budget Franz sizes to your machine, so a big mailbox being worked through doesn't make the rest of the app sluggish.
- Signal stopped writing message text to the log. The helper Franz talks to Signal through was printing message bodies and contact names into the app log. It doesn't any more.
- Opening a message in a big mailbox is faster. Franz used to recount its whole stored mail every time you opened a message or a thread, which could cost well over a tenth of a second each time. It keeps a running total now.