Linux troubleshooting

If Franz on Linux misbehaves, this is the first place to check. Pick the symptom that matches what you see.

Tray icon missing on GNOME

Vanilla GNOME 3+ does not render legacy system-tray icons. Franz runs, but its tray icon never appears. Install the AppIndicator extension and the tray comes back.

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

On Fedora the package is identical under dnf. Log out and back in once so GNOME picks up the extension. Ubuntu ships AppIndicator support out of the box.

Wayland session: window won't show or flickers

On some Wayland sessions Franz launches with a blank window, a torn frame, or an invisible cursor. Let Chromium pick the platform backend explicitly via a launch flag.

./Franz-x86_64.AppImage --ozone-platform-hint=auto

For an installed build, add the same flag to the Exec= line of the franz.desktop launcher. This is an upstream Electron/Chromium flag, not a Franz-specific bug.

Signal: "signal not ready, add service first" on first launch

The bundled signal-cli can fail to warm up on first launch while the JRE finishes initialising. Quit Franz, make sure no other Signal Desktop or signal-cli process is still running, and start Franz again — the second launch usually succeeds. Make sure you are on Franz 6.1.0 or newer; earlier builds had a related arm64 issue that is now fixed.

KDE: KWallet hangs at launch

On KDE Plasma, Chromium's credential layer can try to open KWallet during startup. If KWallet is locked or misbehaving the network service hangs and Franz freezes before the window appears. Franz 6.1.0 already launches with --password-store=basic on Linux, so this should be historical — but if you still see a hang, confirm the flag is in play.

ps auxf | grep -E 'franz|kwallet'

If a kwalletd process is attached to Franz, kill it, log the wallet manager out, then relaunch Franz. The credential store falls back to an unencrypted file under your Franz user-data directory.

Snap: cannot access ~/Downloads or removable media

Snap installs run under confinement, so the Franz snap starts without permission to reach removable drives or some host paths. Grant the interface you need.

sudo snap connect franz:removable-media

The home interface is auto-connected on Ubuntu. To revoke an interface, use sudo snap disconnect franz:removable-media. Run snap connections franz to see what is wired up.

Still stuck?

If none of the above matches your symptom, send us the details: open the support submission form with your distribution, desktop environment, and the first error you see when you launch Franz from a shell.