element-ios VS Synapse

There are quite a few issues that they've stopped fixing in the Element app in favor of doing it in Element X, the one I've been following is where the iOS app causes a breakage in E2EE when you use the share extension, so they just disabled the share extension entirely and said they'd fix in X - https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/7618

But X requires Sliding Sync on the server, which is still a separate service to run alongside the homeserver and doesn't have a stable API, much less a spec (?). I am increasingly disappointed with how centralized Matrix is becoming, since AFAIK there isn't really an alternate client close to the same level of quality as Element.

I probably would've made all of the same decisions myself though, so I don't blame them I'm just a bit disappointed in how it's shaking out.

Element X is an entirely new client written in Rust + Swift UI/Jetpack Compose (https://github.com/vector-im/element-x-ios and https://github.com/vector-im/element-x-android) which will eventually replace the legacy Element apps (https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios and https://github.com/vector-im/element-android).

The features already exist serverside; we're just working on getting them out of beta.

You're being downvoted, but I originally had the same question.

It's actually a native app. It's mostly Objective C, but increasingly written in Swift. https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios

There is clearly room for improvement, but apparently they just hired a handful of new iOS developers to work on it. Good things should be coming soon.

afaik, there is no "official" way to do it: https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/590

Sure. Element for Android, iOS, and web

Every issue I had with Signal, and listed here, is solved.

One issue I have with the Element iOS client is that it doesn't respect system font sizing. So, for older relatives, that app can't be used. I put my mom on something called "Fluffy Chat" though, which does respect font sizes. If Element fixes that, I'll move her back again. It's kinda nice having multiple clients to choose from, though Element is by far the most polished.

https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/3245

That lets me assume that they either have a restyled fork of Element, or are directly telling us to use Element.

Here’s the iOS pull request for example: https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/pull/3890

There's a GitHub issue mentioning the same domain, but it doesn't suggest it's used for verification

4. While core functionality is both broken and undocumented, the maintainers announce rabbit hole features that no one asked for and seem very much like distractions, like their recently-announced microblogging view/client[4]

In short the Element maintainers have shown little interest in making the platform accessible to the people who need its differentiating features the most, and have prioritized the "mad science"/technical aspect of their platform at the expense of the human element (end-users and operators).

It'd be cool if Element used their resources to hire some UX folks and community advocates whose sole focus is addressing the horrid accessibility of their platform. I think most users would rather see that than further "mad science".

[1] https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/3762

What are you thinking of here? Synapse has supported purging room history since 2016: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/911, and configurable data retention since 2019: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/pull/5815.

Meanwhile, Matrix has never needed the full room history to be synchronised - when a server joins a room, it typically only grabs the last 20 messages. (It does needs to grab all the key-value state about the room, although these days that happens gradually in the background).

If you're wondering why Matrix implementations are often greedy on disk space, it's because they typically cache the key-value state aggressively (storing a snapshot of it for the room on a regular basis). However, that's just an implementation quirk; folks could absolutely come up with fancier datastructures to store it more efficiently; it's just not got to the top of anyone's todo list yet - things like performance and UX are considered much more important than disk usage right now.

some context re the Matrix isses, long history apparently: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481#issuecomm...

Why not Matrix? Here's one reason: it has incredibly hard-to-debug edge cases, and plenty of bugs. One of my favourites is the one where people are kicked out of your room at random, which was reported a year ago[0]. It wasn't fixed, however, because the head of the Matrix foundation (Matthew) presumably didn't like the issue being posted on Twitter.

This is honestly really disappointing behaviour from a platform owner.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14481

> That doesn't make this situation any less bad to the rest of the community.

How is the community suffering here? Let's say Element adds a bunch of baller stuff to their versions over the next few months and then closes the source. Can't the community just fork the last AGPL version? You might say, "well then no one can take the AGPL fork and make their own closed-source business", but do you want them to? Even if you do, they still can with the existing Apache-licensed version, just like Element is doing right now.

You're arguing that Element will lose a lot of contributions, but TFA points out that despite being super open, the vast majority of contributions are still made by Element employees (which seems to be true [0]). It's not the case that Element is looking to monetize the (small) contributions of others, it is the case that others are looking to monetize the (huge) contributions of Element.

And besides, aren't the MSCs the core of Matrix? It's already super possible to build your own compliant client and server.

The situation is that Element needs money to keep developing the ecosystem. It would be cool if there were a big network of donors and contributions, but there isn't. You're essentially saying, "that's fine, go out of business then, and the community will keep developing the ecosystem", but that's not happening now, and it can still happen anyway with the Apache-licensed versions, which again people can still contribute to.

[0]: https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/graphs/contributors