Rambox is a free, open-source messaging and email app that groups all your favourite web apps into one easy-to-manage window.
Sound familiar?
We’ve highlighted apps like Rambox before, with Franz and the Gmail-specific Wmail being but two.
Like those apps, Rambox uses many of the same technologies, including node.js and Electron, to help integrate these remote web services into your local desktop environment.
Rambox Features
The big tick in Rambox’s box is that it supports 72 messaging and e-mail services. This is many, many more than competing apps.
Among the list of supported services are the ones you’d expect to find (WhatsApp, Skype, Gmail) as well as a few you might not, like KiwiIRC and Pushbullet.
- WhatsApp Web
- Telegram
- Slack
- Facebook Messenger
- Skype
- Wire
- Gmail
- Outlook Mail
- Tweetdeck
- KiwiIRC
Rambox is effectively a single-purpose web-browser, one that’s dedicated to running multiple messaging and e-mail services.
Each account you add will run in its own tab. But unlike a regular web-browser tab these have extra features, including unread count badges, and per-service status (you can go ‘offline’ for one service will remaining online for another).
You’ll also get native desktop notifications and, if you’re using Unity or an compatible ‘dock’ app like Plank, an unread badge too.
Cross-Platform Sync
One convenient (but entirely optional) feature that you can take advantage of is cross-platform synchronisation.
This back-ups up your accounts and settings to the cloud, saving you from needing to re-connect and set things up again when you install the application on a different device.
This sync feature “uses Auth0 for Single Sign On & Token Based Authentication with the integration with Firebase to store the services that [you use].”
Privacy
Rambox is fully-open-source, and it takes privacy very seriously. No personal information is saved, the developer’s say, and sessions persist using the ‘partition:persist attribute for web-views’.
Rambox can be locked while you step away from your computer to ensure that no one else can read your messages. You can also set a ‘master password’ that has to be entered to unlock the app each and every time you open the open it.
Other Rambox features include:
- Sync configurations between multiple computers
- Set a master password to ‘unlock’ app when opened
- “Lock” and “do not disturb” modes
- Drag and drop re-ordering of services in the tab bar
- Group apps in the tab bar
- Notification/Unread/New mail badges
- System indicator
- Mute audio to specific service
- Separate tabs floating to the right
- Per-service status, including ‘offline’
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Proxy support
Download Rambox for Linux
Like the sound of Rambox? You can give it a whirl on your Linux desktop very easily as the app is distributed as an AppImage for both 32-bit and 64-bit Linux distributions.
Just download the correct AppImage for your architecture and, when the download has completed, double-click on the file to run it.
The first time you run the AppImage it will ask if you want to integrate it in your system for each launching, etc.
If AppImages are a bit too modern for your tastes you can also download a standard Ubuntu installer.