6.6.0
Franz can take dictation now. Hold the shortcut, say what you want to send, and the words land in the message field you were already writing in, no matter which service you're in. A small pill shows the transcript while you speak, and the text drops in the moment you let go. It's included with Franz Pro, and it needs macOS 26 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac.
The rest of this release is repair, and quite a lot of it. WhatsApp could freeze for close to forty seconds while it started up, and loading older messages, downloading media and deleting a message had all stopped working against the current WhatsApp Web. Element couldn't be added as a service at all. Signal showed raw account ids instead of names for group members who aren't in your contacts. Local transcription of voice notes was switched off by a bug that told the app the engine wasn't ready when it actually was. Those are all fixed. Franz Mail got the other half of the attention, starting with an uncomfortable find: replies sent from Franz carried an internal id where the real message reference belonged, so in your recipient's Gmail or Outlook your reply opened a brand-new conversation instead of joining the thread. That one had been there since the very first version of Franz Mail.
New
- Speak your message. Hold the dictation shortcut, talk, and Franz types for you. The words land in the message field you were writing in, whichever service you're in, and a small floating pill shows the transcript while you speak. The text drops in when you release the key. Included with Franz Pro, on macOS 26 or later with Apple Silicon.
- Better voice notes on a Mac. Franz now uses Apple's own on-device speech recognition to transcribe WhatsApp and Signal voice notes on a recent Mac. It's a lot more accurate than what we had before, German especially. Nothing leaves your machine, same as always.
- Reply to any message in a thread. Every message in a Franz Mail conversation now has its own actions menu: reply, reply all or forward from right there, and the composer opens directly beneath the message it answers.
- Several drafts in one conversation. Answering one message while forwarding another is now perfectly normal. Each draft keeps its place in the thread, and when you leave the conversation and come back, every draft you had open is restored right where it was.
- Your signature, your call. The composer now has a signature control: switch to a different signature, remove it for just this message, or bring it back after removing it. A manage link takes you straight to your signature settings, and changing your From address updates the signature to match.
Improved
- Conversations read the way they happened. A reply now appears beneath the message it answers instead of at the bottom of the thread, so long back-and-forths stay easy to follow.
- Priority changes show up right away. Marking a message urgent or changing its tags from an open conversation now applies instantly and stays in sync with your priority and category views.
- Mute all looks muted. When you silence every service, the sidebar button now shows it, so you can tell at a glance why things have gone quiet.
- Settings is easier to scan. The settings list is grouped now, with your account and workspace items separated from the feature ones, and About sits at the bottom where you'd look for it.
- A smaller download. We trimmed what goes into the build, so the download and the install both take up less room.
Fixed
- WhatsApp doesn't freeze on startup. A WhatsApp Web update sent Franz hunting through the whole page for things that had moved, and that search could block WhatsApp for close to forty seconds while it started. It's back under a second, and if it ever happens again Franz now says so instead of just sitting there.
- WhatsApp messages, media and deleting work again. The same WhatsApp Web update broke loading older messages, downloading attachments and deleting a message. All three work again.
- WhatsApp voice notes transcribe by themselves again. Voice notes were the one kind of message the automatic transcription never picked up, because Franz was looking for the wrong type internally.
- Local transcription actually runs. The on-device transcription engine reported itself as not ready before it had finished loading, and everything that uses it waits for ready, so it sat there unused.
- Signal shows names, not account ids. Group members who aren't in your address book showed up as a long raw id. Franz now asks Signal for everyone it knows about, not just your saved contacts, so those people have names.
- Signal replies show what they're replying to. The quote above a reply now shows the message it points at, including whether that was a photo or a voice note, and clicking it jumps to the original in the thread.
- Signal says when it has stopped. If the Signal connection dies for good, Franz now tells you instead of looking connected, and it keeps its logs so a broken link can actually be diagnosed.
- Element can be added again. The Element service pointed at an address Element has since left, so it could never load. It also couldn't be installed at all, because one harmless field in its definition was enough to make Franz reject the whole thing. Unread badges for Element count properly again too.
- One bad service definition no longer takes the service with it. An unexpected value in an optional field used to throw away the entire definition instead of just that field.
- Your hibernation setting sticks. Turning hibernation on or off for a service was saved locally but dropped on the way to your other devices, so it never survived a second machine or a full refresh.
- Workspaces keep their services. A sync bug could quietly drop services out of a workspace's list.
- No more codes with nowhere to type them. Some screens sent you a verification email saying "enter this code in Franz" while having no code field anywhere. Those screens send a link again, and only the screen that has a code field asks for a code.
- Replies from Franz Mail thread properly for the person receiving them. Franz was sending an internal id where the real message reference belonged, so your replies started a new conversation in the recipient's Gmail or Outlook instead of joining the existing one. Replies now carry the proper reference.
- Escape closes the menu, not the conversation. Pressing Escape to dismiss an open menu in Franz Mail also backed you out of the whole conversation. It now closes just the menu, and only leaves the thread when nothing else is open.
- The what's-new screen waits for slow starts. After an update, the overview of what changed could count itself as shown before it ever appeared, and then never show up again. It now waits until you've actually seen it, and if it can't load, Franz tries again on the next launch.
Under the hood
- Franz moved to a newer Electron release, which brings the usual Chromium security and performance updates.