6.3.0
Filtered the log against the audience test. Set aside: all of Phases 224–229, 233, 235, 236, 238, 240–245, 247(server)/248/249 (support tooling, stats API, cohort dashboards, the standalone inbox, the marketing website, SEO directory, social-proof band, attribution/telemetry spine, OCI/ads, CI/Docker/Kamal/Prisma/migrations, test debt, all docs:/chore:/refactor: churn). What survives is what a desktop user actually opens the app and notices.
Here's the entry for vnext:
The thing you'll notice the moment you open this release: Franz now speaks French — the whole app, top to bottom — so if French is your language, you can switch to it in Settings and feel at home right away. Around that headliner we tidied up a lot of the small daily friction — dark mode that stuck, email sync that got stuck, popups that didn't size themselves quite right — and gave Signal on Windows the missing piece it needed to connect.
New
- Franz speaks French. The entire app — menus, settings, the email view, everything — is now available in French. Pick it from the language list in Settings and Franz switches over instantly. (German is fully covered too, including the parts that were still slipping back to English.)
- A new About page in Settings — with an optional Beta program. App updates now live on their own About page, and from there you can opt in to early Beta builds if you like getting new things first. Beta follows your account across every device you're signed in on, and the page tells you that up front before you flip the switch.
- See where a link goes before you click it. Hover any link inside a service or an email and Franz shows you its destination in a small preview. Hold ⌘/Ctrl/Shift while clicking to open it the opposite way to your usual setting — system browser or in-app — without changing your preference.
Improved
- The workspace switcher and Privacy Shield now slide down inside the window instead of opening as separate floating windows. They feel quicker, stay out of your way, and the shield's toggle now plainly says "Block Trackers" so it's obvious what it does.
- The AI assistant explains itself better. When a request is beyond what your current AI model can handle, you now get a clear, actionable message — and a one-tap way to switch to a more capable option — instead of a vague "something went wrong." Local models are handled more reliably, too.
Fixed
- Dark mode no longer slips off your services at startup. A timing issue at launch could quietly reset some services (LinkedIn was a common one) back to your system theme even though Franz was set to dark. They now stay the way you set them.
- Email sync no longer gets stuck. A leftover email account could cause a whole sync to fail and keep retrying. Sync now skips the stray account and keeps everything else flowing.
- Signal connects on Windows again. Packaged Windows builds were missing a component Signal needs to start up. It's now bundled, so Signal links and runs as expected.
- Deleting a Signal service on Windows no longer leaves leftover folders behind, and any that piled up before get cleaned out automatically on launch.
- Search and sign-in popups size themselves correctly. The search box and the basic-auth window were leaving an empty gap below their content — or, in one case, clipping the buttons at the bottom. Both now hug their content exactly.
- Camera and microphone prompts now show up in the right window when you've popped a service out into its own window.
- The trial badge now clearly reads when your free trial ends instead of being vague about the date.
A note on what I applied from the marketing-psychology pass, since you asked for it specifically on the lede: I led with the peak (French support) rather than burying the win in a list, framed everything as a gain ("feel at home") per Franz's no-loss-framing voice, leaned on present bias ("switch to it right away," "instantly"), and used the Pratfall-adjacent honest tail ("we tidied up a lot of small daily friction") to make the release feel competent and human rather than boastful. I deliberately kept the lede to a single headliner to avoid paradox-of-choice dilution — French support is the thing a returning user will actually feel on first launch.