You might know the problem: You might prefer Whatsapp and Telegram but a handful of other people you know are mainly using Facebook Messenger or Hangouts or Skype. Same with team messaging platforms like Slack and Hipchat. So you run a combination of open tabs and native applications but it feels a bit like the days before Adium and Trillian.
Franz is a quite elegant take on this. One Mac app that unifies them all. The nice thing about Franz is that unlike in other cross-platform messengers like Adium where some features of some platforms only work some of the time Franz is actually using the web based messengers underneath so whenever there is a new sticker pack or a new way to share gifs Franz supports it immediately.
@__tosh it might be great to have a mobile app for it which could be challenging but worth it. I think if you make it paid $2 to $5 orpeople will pay for it 😄 may be more .
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@__tosh Bravo! Awesome creation! Also, are you planning to make this cross platform?
@__tosh Love this! So useful. And such a smart implementation by making it all web!
One thing, could you add auto focus of text field when I cmd-tab into the app?
@josef_trauner thank you for your feedback. "Mute all" is something that crosses my mind for quite a while now and I hope I'm able to add a nice solution for that soon.
@smalzner@josef_trauner Up Stefan, this would be super awesome for distracted people like me :D And thank you so much for this (already) amazing product
Installed and hooked up Slack, Messenger and Whatsapp. Great experience, straight to the point. Got up and running in no time.
Not sure about the icon design. Is it a hipster mustache passing as a bridge? Why not just the mustache and lose the two pillars that look like walrus fangs?
@pddro quick question.. are you still using Franz for all these? I tried it for a while but switched back to the native apps except for Gmail and Whatsapp
@pddro what made you switch? do you use Franz for anything at all?
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There is a horrible thing with this kind of things. Probably not your fault but electrum. In the Mac, the close button should minimize by design, not close the app. I want it running in the background and giving me notifications. Not close... Slack manage to do it well on Mac. Any ideas about this? I do not use the Hangouts Chrome App for the same reason, as I end closing it by default and not receiving notifications.
@themiguelamador This is actually a relatively easy fix with Electron, the main fix is just removing this code:
app.on('window-all-closed', function () {
app.quit();
});
unfortunately Franz doesn't seem to be open source.
@akshaybharwani you can sign up for the windows beta at the website. We'll start roll out next week.
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Tested the memory footprint is less than using the apps for each in separate. Getting 1gb with Skype, Slack, Hangouts, Whatsapp and Messenger on! Usually the individual apps used 400mb each.
@smalzner love it but theres 3 things which i hate
1) i cant receive pictures (skype - shows up as not authorized)
2) cant audio/video call straight from franz i always have to log back into skype
3) it keeps logging me out of skype and hipchat and i need to relogin
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@smalzner What is the brand story behind the name Franz?
@batkom we are working on a fix for sending attachments in skype and it will come with one of the next updates. Skype calls is a bit trickier but we are working on that one too.
About logging you out of Skype and HipChat... can you please head over to franz.zendesk.com and open a ticket, would love to get more information.
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This is really cool!
It'd be great though if there were a keyboard shortcut to switch between the messaging apps similar to tab switching in browsers (cmd + shift + "{", cmd + shift + "}", ctrl + tab, ctrl + shift + tab)
If you're using a German keyboard yourself, I realise the ones with curly brackets don't make much sense there, but they do on English ones :)
@sebmos thank you for your feedback. I'm confident that one of the upcoming versions will have better shortcut support ;) #FranzLeaks
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@sebmos this made me try CMD + (number). which works surprisingly. +1 for more shortcuts though!
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@pstoellberger@smalzner I guess it works, because the tabs in Franz are similar to rethemed chrome tabs?
However, if I middle-click on one of them Franz opens a new window of itself, just like a link in crome would. A Chrome-Tab would close itself...so not 100% sure about my explanation above :)
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