Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

Is there an application that brings together all the social needs in same space? A kind of container to connect dozens of service in the same desktop app , without having to jump between tabs and logging out each service from its respective icon? It exists.And it's called Franz.

Franz is a kind of messaging app to govern them all.And it has years of tradition.For those who peck between Telegram's offer chats but need to streamline their video conferences in Hangouts, while they go up photos to the WhatsApp family group or check their calendars in Google Drive, Franz is a kind of Holy Grail.He also devours RAM and has some bugs , we must say.But let's go step by step.

A LITTLE HISTORY

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

This app was developed in Vienna by technology consultant Jonathan Burke and graphic designer Stefan Malzner.The first contributed the idea, the second put the technical muscle.Each one installed different native channels to communicate and keep up to date in several workspaces.

The name of the app comes from Emperor Francis I of Austria, one of the decisive actors in the defeat of the Napoleonic troops-thanks to his alliances with Russia, his army won the battle of Waterloo-.

The idea with Franz was clear: to support, for both Windows and Mac OS X and GNU/Linux , those users who have customers on Twitter, but work from Slack and talk with users in the Steam or Discord chat.A highly resolvable all-in-one.

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

One of Franz's strengths lies in its source code, available on Github under the Apache 2 license.That is, any user can contribute ideas, improve, propose changes to implement...Thanks to this democratic vocation, account with more than 20 languages: English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Italian, Polish ...

FAST INSTALLATION AND CONTINUED USE

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

First of all, it should be noted that each service has its encrypted access, even if they are one click away.Each one behaves independently, whether we are in Slack, WhatsApp, WeChat, HipChat, Facebook Messenger or GroupMe.For those who fear for their safety, they should have this very clear: it is a browser where there is no unification, but accessibility.

To download the app , in 32 or 64 bits, you just have to access its website and double click on the corresponding platform icon.There are no dialogs within an installer, just a container icon.

Among the supported services, as we can see in the image, are the most popular, which we can repeat as many times as we want:

Slack

Messenger

Twitter through Tweetdeck

Hipchat

Google Inbox

Google Calendar

Skype

Hangouts

Gmail

Discord

Office 365/Outlook

Trello

Google Keep

If we have, for example, three working groups in Slack, everything is as simple as creating two icons for it and on the left margin we can enable them for convenience, silence notifications, temporarily disable them or remove only the sound of the service.

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

Franz's own team has enabled a Google Doc in the form of a survey from which we can request support for services that are not on the platform.

SCREEN RESPONSIVE AND CUSTOMIZABLE ICONS

By clicking on the right mouse button on each icon, we can edit them, changing both the image and the name of the service and different configurations in the type of notifications.The only problem we find is in the huge cache that saves everything: if we delete it, the personalized image that we have loaded is lost, since it is housed in the temporary information.

We also said that it consumes a lot of resources. RAM spending is really aggressive.It's kind of Google Chrome in its early days .

Indeed, being based on the web versions of the different services, the load is less than if everything were managed from a native engine, but it is still a redundant load.We recommend not having everything linked (although we can do it) and whether to prioritize services.

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

Among the possibilities is, of course, make videoconferences or simply audio calls, upload and download files , use the word corrector, open links in a new tab within of the associated browser or even print documents directly from the dialog box.

Finally, one of the most interesting virtues, recently fixed through the last patch, is what we understand as the responsive screen.The width of the page affects how the different services are shown.it operates with certain errors, partially hiding the dialog box , while in others it works like a charm.

And if we want to temporarily silence all services, Franz has an icon with a bell, ideal to leave everything parked.

THE PRICE OF BEING BETTER

Franz is a completely free app , but among its payment services, for 4 euros per month or 35 per year, it will include shortly point-to-point synchronization, customizable user profiles and a greater support.In business licenses, these coverages are amplified on an industrial scale.

Franz, the app to centralize all your social networks and chats

In the near future, support for VPNs and equipment management from a Proxy will be provided, although we expect that the next ambition of the equipment will imply a saving in resource consumption.

Images | Franz (and app captures)

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