The official client is clunky and being electron on the desktop doesn't make it better. Messengers live and die on UX. Since it's an open protocol alternative clients exist of course, but are often not feature complete. Things are often slow, especially with large group channels with lots of messages.
If you host a server yourself - it's great that you can! - you'll try the official implementation, synapse — ...and discover that it's a resource hog. Things got a bit better with some streaming sync protocol or something like that, but last time I looked it up that was still experimental and the server is still a chonker. Again, alternative servers exist, again the problem with feature parity.
I feel like the protocol is bloated as well, but I didn't dive into it too much to have a good opinion on that.
When choosing a messenger, I go to Signal for security, to IRC for simplicity and to Telegram for UX. I never thought "Oh let's use Matrix"...
Alternative clients feel like a broken promise to me, since features seem to be optional or implemented differently. You're basically stuck with Element if you want to be reasonably sure you're seeing what other people are.
Even the official clients are a little weird. Element X, their next gen super fast client released in 2023, still won't allow me to create a thread on iOS. It will let me put a caption on a photo though, but Element won't.
From time to time, I go and check if there's a stable non-Electron Matrix client available - Qt would be nice. Thus, I'm still on IRC. I've tried participating in some bridged Matrix channels, but the IRC bridges I've encountered were super annoying. All messages come from one user, the bridge. Very often, the same message gets repeated twice or more, for some reason. I guess Matrix has no limit on usernames, so some users have names that are more than a line long. It's all very tedious.
> synapse — ...and discover that it's a resource hog.
I thought that, too, but at the very least it probably grows with usage. On my single-user-server, synapse currently needs ~100MB of RAM and does not consume CPU at all. It's not "slim" but I wouldn't call it a resource hog either.
One of the big problems is that folks judge Matrix based on the legacy Element apps, which have now been succeeded by Element X: https://element.io/blog/we-have-lift-off-element-x-call-and-... etc. Element X kicks ass, in my (very biased) opinion: it's a super-speedy Rust core with fancy SwiftUI and Compose native UI layered on top. It radically outperforms any other encrypted messenger i've used in terms of UI perf and usability.
However, because it's a rewrite, it doesn't quite have feature parity with the old apps, which are now over 10 years old: Threads is in beta; Spaces haven't landed yet, and Widgets aren't implemented yet. Therefore, we have to keep the old app around for users/customers who depend on those.
As a result, >80% of the people who say "Matrix sucks" are actually talking about bad experiences on the old Element mobile apps - rather than better client Element X or indeed Matrix clients from other folks.
There's also a large set of people who got bitten by encryption problems, almost all of which were fixed by Sept 2024.
Finally, there's folks who got bitten by the sad history of bridging in Matrix: IRC bridging used to be relatively okay; the team then got very stretched due to lack of funding; we tried to land a major PR to improve its architecture; the PR introduced bugs; Libera got very upset; we tried to fix things but failed to do fast enough. As a result, bridging to Libera in particular is awful these days, using adhoc bridges which funnel all traffic through a single user, with no ability to join arbitrary IRC channels on demand or use Matrix as a bouncer.
These days, the priority at Element is providing a self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments... and once we get sustainable doing that, we'll be able to spend time building community features once again.
Okay, but they do that because they used those apps, and they did that because you released those apps and said the same thing you're saying now ("use our app, it's really cool"). Surely you can understand why someone who dealt with that is going to be suspicious of "this time for sure".
> However, because it's a rewrite, it doesn't quite have feature parity with the old apps, which are now over 10 years old
So people can either judge based on "legacy" apps that do more, or the shiny new app that does less. Again, surely you can understand why people might be disappointed with both of those.
There isn't any way to avoid being judged on your whole history.
I recently tried Element X. I will say the onboarding was better, although that comes with the caveat that I'm not sure how that would go if I didn't have another device at hand to verify with. And UTD errors have definitely decreased (across all clients). Apart from that, the UX is okay, but I don't see it as radically better than the old Element.
There has been a good deal of improvement in Matrix, which I appreciate and kudos are due to you and the team for that. But I think it's a bit of a stretch to make claims like Element X being "radically better" than any competitor. And, importantly, making grandiose promises like that increases the risk of losing trust if people's experience isn't absolutely stellar.
> One of the big problems is that folks judge Matrix based on the legacy Element apps, which have now been succeeded by Element X
Which is mobile-only. Element's UX on desktop is still a joke.
> These days, the priority at Element is providing a self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments... and once we get sustainable doing that, we'll be able to spend time building community features once again.
In other words, you don't have the community's best interests in mind, but we should rest safe because you'll have their best interests in mind at some point in the future, maybe.
You're probably right that it's the UX of the OG Element that was the original problem people got hung up on but Element X isn't actually a relevant answer until it's usable, regardless of how much better it sounds like it will be on paper. A secondary problem people got hung up on was the endless parade of "you're just using the wrong client, try ${this}" and then finding it was missing half the things that they were told Matrix can do.
I'm still optimistic about Matrix but I am a bit worried that it has lost a lot of steam because of this UX history.
It's been years of seeing Matrix posts being made on hn here (and founder - that is you - enthusiastically replying to comments; which is actually nice that you still care) and even that is long after I finally gave up on it realising it is (and now it seems was never even planned to be) a communication tool for the "masses" or end users - you know - you, I and our friends and family... kind of.
Reason? It is still "work" to even try to start using Matrix and yes I tried the kicks-ass-new-swift-client and it seems to be just another dull almost useless iOS messaging app which was done as a proof of concept of an open source project with very high values and goals and completely missing the point of usability and what people need and where smartphone messaging is today.
Also by the way - how many has it been? Matrix -> Riot -> Element.. is it changing again now?
> 80% of the people who say "Matrix sucks" are actually talking about bad experiences on the old Element mobile apps
Maybe 100% of times you are missing the point why people think that way by just assuming this?
> self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments
Well, I do hope you realise that "Govt as the entity" per se that would not use these apps - but "the people" (which actually kinda comes back to you, I, and our friends) in those governments will use those apps and services.
I think this happens a lot. At least a lot more than people think. Take Firefox vs Chrom{e,ium} (yes, that includes Brave). The differences are really minor and 99% of people wouldn't notice the difference. But boy do people have strong opinions. I'll make one argument for Firefox and I'm not sure other ones matter nearly as much: there needs to be competition in the browser space, and different colors of Chrome don't count. Having one backbone is good for no one. Yes, even Brave gives Google too much power over the entire internet. Hopefully Ladybird will become competitive, but in the mean time some of you should stop being dumb and use Firefox. Because frankly, it doesn't affect your browsing experience. You're just biased in your evaluation because things are "different".
The reason I brought that up is because there are so many parallels with what you're talking about with Matrix. Even down to the rewrite in rust and people acting like software hasn't improved in a decade. But the competition space is very important in chat platforms, just like browsers. You can support Signal and Matrix at the same time. They solve different problems. You can also use WhatsApp, Telegram, and/or iMessage or whatever. Competition is necessary in this space. We don't want monopolies. Especially if you're a firm believer in distributed systems! Distributed systems can become highly centralized. Just check your email account. I'll bet you have a Gmail account... I'll bet you also have an Outlook account. Or look at your phone!
Totally unrelated fun fact: people consider Coke and Pepsi an oligopoly, yet *combined* they only have a 70% market share. (This is definitely unrelated and definitely doesn't have any connection to our discussion...)
Because the product design people there seem to focus on an enterprise use case where the client is pushed out with a custom config to devices, instead of catering to end consumer usages.
I assume this is caused by the company that does the Matrix development getting its revenue from such customers.
I get the impression it is more designed to be a Slack replacement than a Signal or WhatsApp replacement, which is a shame.
No one is going to use Matrix that doesn't have privacy-focused contact forcing them to because the privacy benefit of the slight inconvenience is something almost nobody cares about. Things that are non-issues to someone who read the online Matrix documentation becomes a mountain to a middle aged mom who taps through errors without reading them and is used to things "just working" in the way Apple products just work, not the way Linux just works.
If you log into multiple devices, you have to go through a verification process to verify the new device. You may need to backup and restore your encryption keys manually or all your messages will be "Unable to decrypt message". Keeping multiple clients open simultaneously is supposed to have one client request the keys from the other client, but this either takes a while or doesn't always work. I have a contact with an unverified device (so all his messages show up with a warning) who refuses to fix it because all the other messengers just work by logging in. This is on top of people being upset that you're adding one more app to their menagerie of texts, Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, etc.
I use Matrix with my close contacts but I can't imagine anyone ever saying "Damn, I'm going to use this instead of Discord now!"
I tried it a few years ago and it was not friendly at all too. I'm sure it hasn't changed and everything felt confusing and complicated.
I don't remember the details but I have this feeling that I won't use it again. It seemed like the server could do everything (good) but they didn't found their niche (bad and impossible for such a generic framework).
hashworks|8 months ago
If you host a server yourself - it's great that you can! - you'll try the official implementation, synapse — ...and discover that it's a resource hog. Things got a bit better with some streaming sync protocol or something like that, but last time I looked it up that was still experimental and the server is still a chonker. Again, alternative servers exist, again the problem with feature parity.
I feel like the protocol is bloated as well, but I didn't dive into it too much to have a good opinion on that.
When choosing a messenger, I go to Signal for security, to IRC for simplicity and to Telegram for UX. I never thought "Oh let's use Matrix"...
doubled112|8 months ago
Even the official clients are a little weird. Element X, their next gen super fast client released in 2023, still won't allow me to create a thread on iOS. It will let me put a caption on a photo though, but Element won't.
ElijahLynn|8 months ago
encom|8 months ago
mqus|8 months ago
I thought that, too, but at the very least it probably grows with usage. On my single-user-server, synapse currently needs ~100MB of RAM and does not consume CPU at all. It's not "slim" but I wouldn't call it a resource hog either.
unknown|8 months ago
[deleted]
Arathorn|8 months ago
However, because it's a rewrite, it doesn't quite have feature parity with the old apps, which are now over 10 years old: Threads is in beta; Spaces haven't landed yet, and Widgets aren't implemented yet. Therefore, we have to keep the old app around for users/customers who depend on those.
As a result, >80% of the people who say "Matrix sucks" are actually talking about bad experiences on the old Element mobile apps - rather than better client Element X or indeed Matrix clients from other folks.
There's also a large set of people who got bitten by encryption problems, almost all of which were fixed by Sept 2024.
Finally, there's folks who got bitten by the sad history of bridging in Matrix: IRC bridging used to be relatively okay; the team then got very stretched due to lack of funding; we tried to land a major PR to improve its architecture; the PR introduced bugs; Libera got very upset; we tried to fix things but failed to do fast enough. As a result, bridging to Libera in particular is awful these days, using adhoc bridges which funnel all traffic through a single user, with no ability to join arbitrary IRC channels on demand or use Matrix as a bouncer.
These days, the priority at Element is providing a self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments... and once we get sustainable doing that, we'll be able to spend time building community features once again.
BrenBarn|8 months ago
Okay, but they do that because they used those apps, and they did that because you released those apps and said the same thing you're saying now ("use our app, it's really cool"). Surely you can understand why someone who dealt with that is going to be suspicious of "this time for sure".
> However, because it's a rewrite, it doesn't quite have feature parity with the old apps, which are now over 10 years old
So people can either judge based on "legacy" apps that do more, or the shiny new app that does less. Again, surely you can understand why people might be disappointed with both of those.
There isn't any way to avoid being judged on your whole history.
I recently tried Element X. I will say the onboarding was better, although that comes with the caveat that I'm not sure how that would go if I didn't have another device at hand to verify with. And UTD errors have definitely decreased (across all clients). Apart from that, the UX is okay, but I don't see it as radically better than the old Element.
There has been a good deal of improvement in Matrix, which I appreciate and kudos are due to you and the team for that. But I think it's a bit of a stretch to make claims like Element X being "radically better" than any competitor. And, importantly, making grandiose promises like that increases the risk of losing trust if people's experience isn't absolutely stellar.
throwaway98334|8 months ago
Which is mobile-only. Element's UX on desktop is still a joke.
> These days, the priority at Element is providing a self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments... and once we get sustainable doing that, we'll be able to spend time building community features once again.
In other words, you don't have the community's best interests in mind, but we should rest safe because you'll have their best interests in mind at some point in the future, maybe.
Not very reassuring.
zamadatix|8 months ago
I'm still optimistic about Matrix but I am a bit worried that it has lost a lot of steam because of this UX history.
db579|8 months ago
crossroadsguy|8 months ago
Reason? It is still "work" to even try to start using Matrix and yes I tried the kicks-ass-new-swift-client and it seems to be just another dull almost useless iOS messaging app which was done as a proof of concept of an open source project with very high values and goals and completely missing the point of usability and what people need and where smartphone messaging is today.
Also by the way - how many has it been? Matrix -> Riot -> Element.. is it changing again now?
> 80% of the people who say "Matrix sucks" are actually talking about bad experiences on the old Element mobile apps
Maybe 100% of times you are missing the point why people think that way by just assuming this?
> self-hosted, decentralised WhatsApp and Teams replacement for governments
Well, I do hope you realise that "Govt as the entity" per se that would not use these apps - but "the people" (which actually kinda comes back to you, I, and our friends) in those governments will use those apps and services.
Anyway, good luck.
freilanzer|8 months ago
Yeah, wake me up when X supports all the features the original app has. Until it's usable, there is no point.
godelski|8 months ago
The reason I brought that up is because there are so many parallels with what you're talking about with Matrix. Even down to the rewrite in rust and people acting like software hasn't improved in a decade. But the competition space is very important in chat platforms, just like browsers. You can support Signal and Matrix at the same time. They solve different problems. You can also use WhatsApp, Telegram, and/or iMessage or whatever. Competition is necessary in this space. We don't want monopolies. Especially if you're a firm believer in distributed systems! Distributed systems can become highly centralized. Just check your email account. I'll bet you have a Gmail account... I'll bet you also have an Outlook account. Or look at your phone!
Totally unrelated fun fact: people consider Coke and Pepsi an oligopoly, yet *combined* they only have a 70% market share. (This is definitely unrelated and definitely doesn't have any connection to our discussion...)
pixxel|8 months ago
[deleted]
sneak|8 months ago
I assume this is caused by the company that does the Matrix development getting its revenue from such customers.
I get the impression it is more designed to be a Slack replacement than a Signal or WhatsApp replacement, which is a shame.
VariousPrograms|8 months ago
If you log into multiple devices, you have to go through a verification process to verify the new device. You may need to backup and restore your encryption keys manually or all your messages will be "Unable to decrypt message". Keeping multiple clients open simultaneously is supposed to have one client request the keys from the other client, but this either takes a while or doesn't always work. I have a contact with an unverified device (so all his messages show up with a warning) who refuses to fix it because all the other messengers just work by logging in. This is on top of people being upset that you're adding one more app to their menagerie of texts, Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, Discord, etc.
I use Matrix with my close contacts but I can't imagine anyone ever saying "Damn, I'm going to use this instead of Discord now!"
panki27|8 months ago
jacooper|8 months ago
stasy01|8 months ago
Disposal8433|8 months ago
I don't remember the details but I have this feeling that I won't use it again. It seemed like the server could do everything (good) but they didn't found their niche (bad and impossible for such a generic framework).