IRCCloud on your desktop, inside Franz

IRCCloud is IRC that does not drop you the moment you close the lid: it stays connected for you and keeps the backlog, so you can scroll up and read what was said in a channel while you were away. That always-on history is exactly why you want it open as a real desktop presence rather than a browser tab you keep accidentally closing and reopening to an empty scroll. Franz gives IRCCloud a permanent home as a desktop service tab, right beside GitHub and the rest of your developer stack, so the channels you follow are always one click away in your sidebar.

IRCCloud next to the rest of your developer stack

Most developers keep several tools open at once: GitHub for the code, an IRC network for an upstream project or a community, maybe Gitter and a status page on the side. Franz groups IRCCloud with the other developer tools so your whole workflow surface sits in one window. When a conversation in an IRC channel relates to an issue or a pull request you have open, you can move between the chat and the code without breaking flow or losing your place among a dozen browser tabs. The context of a piece of work stays together instead of scattered across windows you keep losing.

Always connected, with notifications you can trust

The point of IRCCloud is that it does not miss the messages you were not there for, and Franz extends that to your desktop. It surfaces native desktop notifications for IRCCloud so a direct message or a highlight in a channel reaches you even when you are heads-down in your editor, and its own unread badge in the sidebar shows an active channel without you going to look. You stay signed in, the backlog stays intact, and reaching your channels is a keyboard shortcut rather than a tab hunt, so the always-connected experience IRCCloud is built for actually reaches you where you work.

IRCCloud on macOS, Windows, and Linux

Franz is a native desktop app for all three major platforms, and IRCCloud behaves the same on each: the same web app, the same login, a real dock or taskbar presence and fast switching to and from GitHub and your other services. Whether you work on a Mac, a Windows machine, or a Linux workstation, your IRC channels are set up identically, so the always-on chat you rely on travels with your workflow instead of being rebuilt per platform.