Nexus as a Ferdium alternative
Ferdium is the community successor to Franz, and it is a living project. If you are looking for an alternative, it is probably not for the reason usually given: it is because the version you installed moves slowly, and some services have started to complain.
Let us start with what is false
The real difference lies elsewhere, it is measurable, and it rests on no value judgement: it is how fast that work reaches the person who installs a stable release.
Two stable releases a year
The development branch moves every day. The stable branch, the one downloaded by somebody installing the app, moves far more slowly: v7.1.0 in May 2025, v7.1.1 in October 2025, v7.1.2 in April 2026. Between two rounds of fixes, the wait is measured in months.
For a volunteer team that is an entirely defensible choice. It also explains what many users describe: irritations that stay in place for a long time, and an open-issue count above 767 when it was recorded on 8 August 2026.
The engine, and why it decides everything
An aggregator ships its own copy of Chromium. It only moves when the application publishes. Web services, meanwhile, regularly drop support for old engines, and once the gap grows too wide, they show a warning, then block.
| Ferdium | Nexus | |
|---|---|---|
| Latest stable release | 7.1.2, 19 April 2026 | 1.0.0 |
| Engine | Electron 37 · Chromium 138 | Electron 43 · Chromium 150 |
| Stable cadence | Roughly two a year | Follows the Electron stable line |
| Price | Free | Free |
| Licence | Open source | Open source, MIT |
| Isolated session per service | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows 10 and 11 |
Recorded on 8 August 2026 from the primary sources listed at the foot of this page. Ferdium covers three operating systems, Nexus one: on that point the advantage is not ours.
The 9 November 2026 deadline
Slack runs a twice-yearly deprecation policy. Its documentation states that Chromium 142 and earlier stop being supported on 9 November 2026: on a browser that has become unsupported you can no longer sign in, create a workspace, or manage settings.
Ferdium runs Chromium 138, below the line. A tracking issue has been open on their side since 6 August 2026, and nothing technically prevents an Electron bump before the deadline: it is in fact the likely outcome. So the point to take away is not “Slack will break”, it is the mechanism: twice a year a service decides, and the aggregator that does not follow loses that service.
What Ferdium does better
- Three operating systems: Windows, macOS and Linux. Nexus covers Windows only.
- A far larger service catalogue, with recipes maintained by the community.
- Years of history, an active community, and a project that does not depend on one person.
- Nightly builds, if you are willing to run a pre-release to get fixes early.
When Nexus is the better choice
- You are on Windows and cross-platform support does nothing for you.
- You want the engine to stay current without having to watch a repository.
- You mostly add common services and custom URLs, not an exotic long tail.
- You prefer an application that does few things and keeps doing them.
Both are free and open source. Trying them costs one install, and neither asks you to create an account.
Common questions
- Can I import my Ferdium configuration into Nexus?
- No, there is no automatic import today. Services are added by hand from the catalogue, and each session signs in once.
- Can I keep both installed?
- Yes. They are independent applications with their own data. Nothing stops you from trying Nexus without uninstalling Ferdium.
- How do I check my aggregator’s Chromium version?
- Open a service that reports your user agent, or read the dedicated page on this site: it walks through the check, which works for any Electron-based application.
- Will Nexus come to macOS and Linux?
- Nothing is announced. The project is MIT-licensed and the source is public, so a port is possible, but it is not promised, and it is better to choose on what exists today.