I remember when I first tested Rambox way back in 2016 and I though to myself that the idea was quite brilliant (that of combining all my messaging and collaboration apps, as well as other popular web services into one app).
Then a few years later came Franz, another app with a similar philosophy but with some extra functional improvements. It wasn’t perfect, since the number of supported apps was quite limited, and adding custom services was a pain, especially for day-to-day users (you could do it by creating custom plug-ins for non-listed services).
When Ferdi was launched in 2021, I remember being quite impressed with the app and I thought to myself “now we’re going somewhere.” The app gathered quite the loyal user base over the following months, but unfortunately it’s success was somewhat short lived.
I was happy to hear that Ferdi has a spiritual successor in the form of Ferdium, all thanks to a team of passionate contributors who really wanted to keep the project alive.
What is exactly is Ferdium? To keep it as short as possible, Ferdium is a hard-fork of Ferdi, which in turn is a hard-fork of Franz. What does this mean?
Well, for starters, it means that you get all the benefits of Ferdi, but with a lot of additional features and practically no restrictions of usage. It also means that you can use your already existing Franz or Ferdi accounts to continue where you left off.
I also liked the fact that Ferdium allows you to access all your favorite communication/chat/collaboration web services without requiring an account (anonymous access). Oh, and you can add attachments directly from your external drive and all your Ferdium app data is safe and protected on your computer.
Just like Ferdi before it, Ferdium’s supported service list is impressive. You can also very easily add custom services (without any extra annoying steps), it has some improved resource management engine (hiberantes services that are not used to prevent your computer being overwhelmed), and you can also organize all your apps into workspaces.
Another thing I really enjoyed about Ferdium is the fact that it provides its users with a plethora of customization features. You can customize everything from the service icons to how the app prevents or allows notifications in certain situations.
For the most part, I enjoyed my time with Ferdium and I love the fact that it offers an improved experience over Ferdi, which in all fairness was also a really good app.
There are, however, a few things I’m not particularly sold on. For starters, there’s the todoits integration (the built-in Todo panel) which can be viewed in tandem with other services. The idea behind it is good, but I found it a bit awkward to use (especially considering that it takes up a lot of GUI space – and yes, I know it can be resized).
To be honest, I would have loved if this built-in panel allowed you to add custom services within it. It would have been more flexible, as not everyone is a todoist user.
Then there’s the issues of Electron. Just like Franz, and Ferdi before it, Ferdium will not shy away from eating as many resources as possible. I did find the app to be a bit more resource friendly than Ferdi, I have to give it that, but at the end of the day, it’s still an Electron-based app which means that you’ll definitely feel that 10 or more services are active at once.
