A Chrome extension that answers from any reply box, and an AI assistant that sounds like you
Your best answers already live in your help center. The problem is getting them into the reply you're typing right now, and making sure your AI assistant answers the way your team would. This update fixes both.
⌨️ Answer from any reply box: Type
!!in Gmail, Slack, your helpdesk, or any other site to pull in an article, a short answer, or a full reply drafted by Fern🗣️ Customize the AI assistant: Set its tone, answer length, standing instructions, and topics it should stay away from
🗂️ Reorder sections and give them icons: Arrange your help center the way readers expect to browse it
📎 Attach downloadable files: Host PDFs, templates, CSVs, and schemas right inside an article
Answer from any reply box with the Chrome extension
The Ferndesk Chrome extension now works everywhere you write. Type !! in any reply box, on any site, and search your help center without leaving the conversation.
Press Enter to insert a link to the article
Press Shift+Enter to insert a short answer written from that article, with the link
Choose Draft a reply with Fern and she reads the conversation, then writes a full reply into the composer, linking only to your own articles
Drafted replies follow your workspace's drafting instructions, so they sound like your team. The side panel has also been redesigned to match the dashboard, and the toolbar popup lets you turn the extension on or off per site. See Search and draft replies with the popover.
Customize the AI assistant
The new AI Assistant settings page lets you decide how your customer-facing assistant answers: its tone (or your own custom voice), how long answers should be, whether it uses emoji or shows screenshots, standing instructions like "end every how-to with the tutorial video", and topics it should never discuss. Help centers that don't change these settings answer as before.
The assistant also understands the images and videos in your articles now, so it picks the right screenshot for the question, and links the walkthrough video from the article it used after the written steps. See Customize the AI assistant.
Reorder sections and give them icons
Drag sections in the sidebar (or use Move up and Move down) to set the order readers see on your help center. Sections can now have icons, which show in the help center tab bar, on section pages, and in the widget. Sections and collections also open in a new tabbed editor with Content, Translations, and Settings, so you can see and edit each language in one place. See How to create and manage sections.
Attach downloadable files to articles
The new File block lets you attach a downloadable file to any article. Type /File or drop a file into the editor, and readers get a tidy card with the file type, size, and a download button. Files can be up to 25 MB. See Content blocks.
Other improvements
Search finds matches deep in an article: Help center and widget search now finds articles even when the only mention of your search term is far down the page.
Take a collection offline by unpublishing its articles: When every article in a collection is unpublished, the collection disappears from navigation, the sitemap, and llms.txt. Publish an article again and it comes back.
Screenshots that clean up after themselves: After capturing screenshots in your app, Fern puts back anything she changed to get there, hides cookie banners and chat launchers, and her annotation arrows can now be moved and edited in the image editor.
Import from Archbee and Gleap: Bring your Archbee docs over with their exact sidebar navigation, callouts, code tabs, cards, and API pages, or import a Gleap help center with its collections and icons. See Migrate your help center to Ferndesk.
Plain imports work again: A Plain update had broken imports. They're back, and now keep callouts, videos, clean slugs, and redirects for every old URL.
Changelog announcements respect your users: The widget's "What's new" announcement now only appears for signed-in users and shows what shipped since their last visit. Developers can also choose the exact moment to show it. See Announce changelog updates in the widget.
A home page that's never empty: The dashboard home now always shows your five most recent Fern threads, unread first.
MCP is one click away: MCP setup now has its own row in the sidebar, under Integrations.
Jump to the live page: After a task is published, the banner in task review links straight to the live article or collection.
Fixes
API references show up in the widget again, with a cleaner layout, and widget articles retry instead of getting stuck on "Failed to load".
Articles opened in the widget sidebar from your own app can always be closed, and non-English widgets show translated labels everywhere.
Readers who sign in to a private help center with a shared password now land on your homepage instead of "No published content yet".
Links inside changelog announcements open the right page on help centers hosted in a subfolder.
Widgets on custom-domain help centers no longer hit "Too many requests" when lots of visitors are active at once.
Dropdown menus are readable in dark mode.
The collection picker stays on screen in help centers with lots of collections.
New workspaces see the setup checklist again.
Breaking changes
The Chrome extension's compose button is gone: The helpdesk-specific compose buttons (Zendesk, Intercom, Plain, Crisp, Fernand) have been replaced by the
!!popover, which works in every reply box.Empty collections return "not found": A collection with no published articles is no longer shown on your help center or in your sitemap.
No "Try it" button in the widget's API view: API operations in the widget are now a compact reference. The playground is still available in your help center on desktop.
changelogAnnouncements: trueno longer reaches anonymous visitors: Announcements are for signed-in users only. If you set this option before, it now behaves the same as leaving it out.