Wren

Wren is a free Mac app for your Microsoft Teams chats and channels, laid out the way Slack users expect. It presents unreads, direct messages, group chats and teams in a sidebar — available in five colours named after birds and chosen in Wren's settings — with the active conversation and message box filling the rest of the window. Wren is made for people whose organisation runs on Microsoft Teams but who prefer a Slack-style way of working: one page that collects everything new, threads that open beside the conversation instead of replacing it, and keyboard shortcuts for getting anywhere quickly. The app is at version 0.5.0 and runs on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs. Everything you send from Wren still lands in Teams, so nobody else has to change a thing, and your organisation's multi-factor authentication and access rules still apply. Microsoft Teams is where many organisations keep their conversations, but its chat experience does not suit everyone. Slack users are used to a sidebar that maps out every conversation, threads that sit in a side panel, and a clear view of what is new since they last looked. Moving between those habits and Teams' own layout means relearning where things live and spending time on conversations you have already read. Wren closes that gap on the Mac. Rather than asking a team to migrate away from Teams — rarely an option when IT, security and the rest of the company depend on it — Wren changes only the surface you look at. It signs in with your own work account, talks to Microsoft Teams directly, and keeps every message where it already was, so colleagues who never install Wren see no difference in their chats, channels or threads. The centrepiece is the Unreads page. It gathers every new message from every chat and channel onto a single page, newest first, so you read it top to bottom and then mark it all as read, with Teams staying in step. A card can show the person, how many new messages there are, and anything included in the conversation such as a mention, a linked PDF or a chart. The page opens from anywhere with ⌘⇧A. Alongside it, Wren provides two navigation shortcuts that cut down on mouse work: ⌘K finds any chat, person or channel, and ⌥⇧↓ goes to the next unread conversation, so you can move through the day without hunting through a list. Threads are handled differently from Teams' own layout. Replies to a channel post open in a panel on the right of the window, so you keep your place in the main conversation while reading or writing a reply. Each thread keeps its own draft, which means you can start a reply in one thread, switch to another conversation, and return to unfinished text exactly where you left it. Starting a conversation is equally direct: ⌘N opens a New message dialog where you add one person for a direct message or several for a group chat, optionally name the group, and add more people later with a choice of how much history they see. Message writing in Wren supports Markdown as you type — bold, italics, code, lists, @mentions and emoji shortcodes — and every chat keeps a saved draft. Pictures are handled by pasting: a screenshot pasted into a message is sent as an image, and a Giphy link pasted into a message sends the GIF. Clicking any picture opens it full size. Any message can be turned into a task that links back to the message it came from, and the call buttons start a Teams call with everyone in the chat, though Microsoft does not let other apps place calls, so the call itself runs in Teams. Wren also pays attention to how the app feels on a Mac. It follows your Mac's text size, motion and contrast settings and provides labels for VoiceOver. The sidebar comes in five colours — Hedgerow, Kingfisher, Nightjar, Robin and Rook — that you choose in Wren's settings. Together with the keyboard shortcuts, these details are aimed at making a chat client that stays calm and legible during a long working day rather than one that demands attention. The way Wren connects is deliberately simple. It signs in with your work account and talks to Microsoft Teams directly using Microsoft Graph, the same way other approved apps do. There is no Wren server in the middle, nothing is stored anywhere but your Mac, and there is no tracking. Your sign-in is kept in the macOS Keychain, Wren can only see what you can already see in Teams, and your organisation's multi-factor authentication and access rules still apply. For IT, Wren is a public client with delegated permissions only: no client secret, no server and no telemetry. Setup means registering the app in Entra ID with http://localhost as a redirect URI for mobile and desktop applications, granting chat, channel and presence permissions (all delegated), and sharing two values — the client ID and the tenant — which people enter once when they first open Wren. The benefits follow from that design. You get a Slack-style reading experience for the chat you already have, without asking colleagues to move, without a middleman service holding your messages, and without a second place where conversations live. Catching up becomes a single pass down the Unreads page rather than a tour of dozens of separate conversations, replies stay attached to the discussion they belong to, and drafts are not lost when you move around. Because the app is installed locally and reads through your own account permissions, people only ever see what they already can in Teams. Typical use is a working day that starts with ⌘⇧A to clear the Unreads page, then a mix of threads read in the side panel while the main channel stays in view, group chats started with ⌘N when a conversation needs more than one person, and formatted replies written in Markdown with drafts kept between switches. Screenshots and GIFs are pasted straight into messages, a message that needs action becomes a task linked back to it, and a call is launched from the chat's call buttons and finished in Teams. When someone needs to find a specific chat, person or channel, ⌘K takes them there. Wren is aimed at Mac users inside organisations that run on Microsoft Teams, particularly those coming from Slack or who prefer that style of navigation. It requires an IT team that approves it once — an admin task that takes about ten minutes — and until then Wren cannot sign you in. macOS also asks you to confirm the first time, because Wren is not notarised by Apple yet. Some things are not there yet: the Outlook calendar, sending files other than images, and syncing tasks with Microsoft To Do. Wren is not made by Microsoft; it is an independent app that uses Microsoft Graph. It is free for Apple silicon and Intel Macs. In short, Wren gives Mac users a calmer, Slack-shaped way to read and write the Microsoft Teams chat they already have, with direct Microsoft Graph connections, local-only storage and no server in the middle — it changes the window, not the workplace.