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+++ date = "2025-02-14T18:30:00Z" title = "This Week in Matrix 2025-02-14" path = "/blog/2025/02/14/this-week-in-matrix-2025-02-14"

[taxonomies] author = ["MTRNord"] category = ["This Week in Matrix"] +++

Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Trust & Safety

Jim announces

If you are wondering what the Foundation Safety team get up to, and what we have planned, we have an update for you. Check out the post: Building a Safer Matrix

Dept of Spec 📜

TravisR announces

Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.

MSC Status

New MSCs:

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

  • No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

  • No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

  • No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Update

Lots of MSC implementation and iteration is happening behind the scenes at the moment, leading to not very exciting Spec Core Team (SCT) updates :) As this implementation work progresses, the Matrix 2.0 MSCs in particular will continue to push forwards towards acceptance.

In the meantime, early versions of Extensible Profiles is up for review and today's blog post "Building a Safer Matrix" hints at some T&S spec changes expected soon.

The next spec release is expected in early March 2025 - if there's MSCs you think should be included there, let the team know in the SCT Office!

Informal TI-Messenger Spec Discussion

Johannes reports

@this-week-in:matrix.org for people interested in informally discussing the Matrix-based TI-Messenger (TI-M) spec, as of today we have a public room: https://matrix.to/#/#tim-spec:matrix.org

If you haven't heard of TI-M before, in a nutshell it's a chat standard for the German healthcare system.

Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Our FOSDEM Wrap-Up post is out

Thib (m.org) reports

We could showcase our work, drown in enthusiasm, gather in smaller committee to discuss what works or what should work differently.

According to one of the FOSDEM organizers themselves we have one of the most impressive booth roster they have ever seen. We can be proud to have such a solid community!

And shout out again to our sponsors Famedly, Nordeck and Workadventure for making it possible to have such a great Fringe Event!

📚️ Read about it all and have a look at the video recordings on our blog

Dept of Clients 📱

Quaternion 0.0.97 (website)

A Qt5-based IM client for Matrix

kitsune reports

A new stable version of Quaternion is out, with the timeline looks getting a bit of a refresh, E2EE being unconditionally on, and a few other nice additions. Note for packagers as well as (command-line) Flatpak users: the application id has changed from com.github.quaternion to io.github.quotient_im.Quaternion. If these words don't mean anything to you, you can most likely just ignore that change. Anyway, all the details are in the release notes and links from it, as usual.

Fractal (website)

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille announces

Due to a couple of unfortunate but important regressions in Fractal 10, we are releasing Fractal 10.1 so our users don’t have to wait too long for them to be addressed. This minor version fixes the following issues:

  • Some rooms were stuck in an unread state, even after reading them or marking them as read.
  • Joining or creating a room would crash the app.

This version is available right now on Flathub.

If you want to help us avoid regressions like that in the future, you could use Fractal Nightly! Or even better, you could pick up one of our issues and become part of the problem solution.

Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element-iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 16+.

Doug reports

We decided to postpone this week’s RC to next week so we will deliver the following features together:

  • User verification is now available directly in Element X, you no longer need to use Element Web for this 🎉
  • It is now possible to swipe between Media directly from the room timeline without having to go to the Media Browser.
  • The Knocking feature is complete (but will remain behind a feature flag until we’re ready to launch on all platforms).

Cinny v4.3.0 (website)

Cinny is a Matrix client focused on simplicity, elegance and security

Lozenge announces

We’re excited to announce the release of Cinny v4.3.0, bringing a host of improvements that make your experience even better. This update introduces a refreshed design, stronger security, and new features to enhance your overall experience.

  • The App Settings have been revamped with a new look, following our Folds design system. This redesign creates a cleaner, more intuitive interface, making it easier to navigate and find what you need quickly.

  • In terms of security, we’ve made a major upgrade by replacing the deprecated libolm encryption library with vodozemac. Along with this upgrade, we’ve also fixed various verification-related bugs, ensuring a smoother and more secure experience.

  • Managing your devices has also been simplified. With improved device verification and simplified terminology (using MSC4161)—like Device Verification and Recovery Key—it’s now easier than ever to keep track of your devices.

  • We’ve also taken privacy to the next level. Sensitive information, such as your IP address, Recovery Key, and Access token, are now hidden by default, minimizing any potential risks to your security.

  • For the custom emoji lovers, you’ll be happy to know that personal emojis and stickers can now be imported in bulk, saving you time and hassle when creating personal packs.

  • Additionally, users can now pin messages in rooms, making it easier to highlight important information and keep key messages front and center.

  • Lastly, for our more advanced users, we’ve added Developer Tools in the app settings, giving you more control and customization options.

Thank you for being a part of the Cinny community. We’ve got even more updates coming soon! 🎉 Checkout Github release for more technical notes.

{{ figure( img="/blog/img/WmLObJrnxdBhskEhGcraESbD.png" caption="The new Settings modal in Cinny") }}

Tammy (website)

Multiplatform messengers build on top of Trixnity Messenger

Benedict announces

The latest update of Tammy (1.1.4) brings a lot of bug fixes for a smoother overall experience, including fixes for device verification, message redactions, and text input issues.

Never heard of Tammy? Try it out and leave feedback at #tammy:imbitbu.de

Dept of Non Chat Clients 🎛️

Timo K. announces

MatrixRTC Update! ☎️

At FOSDEM, the Element VoIP team presented MatrixRTC: Building Real-Time Applications on Matrix 🎙️✨

We showcased the current state of MatrixRTC and how you can start using it today! Plus, we hacked together a simple demo to show how MatrixRTC can power real-time experiences.

We just published the demo, maybe it can serve as a resource or inspiration for your own projects!

📺 Watch the talk: MatrixRTC: Building Real-Time Applications on Matrix.

💾 Check out the demo repository: https://github.com/toger5/matrixRTC-example

#MatrixRTC #FOSDEM

Rory&::MatrixUtils - General utility suite for Matrix

Emma [it/its] announces

Nothing too major, mostly just UX and performance updates :)

Changes:

  • The membership history tool has been re-written! You can actually drill down to every single possible transition, while being generally faster.
  • Moving a window will no longer absolutely break down. Untested with touch screens, but it should work?
  • Better support for authenticated media - images flicker a lot less now, but is less reliable.
  • Made the homepage more reliable, hopefully? Misconfigured homeservers should no longer throw internal exceptions.
  • Logs will no longer be spammed when a tool is fetching the current session.
  • Added some logic to warn about room versions with low server support (ie. v1-v6), to encourage room admins to upgrade their rooms to maximise server support (/me looks at conduit/+derivatives)
  • Optimised some uncommon tools that haven't seen updates in ages.
  • Fixed some long outstanding issues, such as the navigation bar link to git.

The "first party" instance is available at https://mru.rory.gay, and is a clientside-only web app!

And, as with all of the other projects:

  • The code is available at cgit.rory.gay!
    • All contributions are more than welcome, be it documentation, code, layout/UI/UX improvements, anything!
  • Discussion, suggestions and ideas are welcome in #mru:rory.gay

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

Matrix Rust SDK (website)

Next-gen crypto-included SDK for developing Clients, Bots and Appservices; written in Rust with bindings for Node, Swift and WASM

poljar reports

Last week, we released Matrix Rust SDK 0.10.0, marking the final version that includes support for MSC3575.

On the development side, we're making the event cache, including offline storage, more functional and ready for use. For those unfamiliar, the event cache plays a crucial role in managing all events received by a room. It constructs a high-level model of the room, which the timeline then uses to render an accurate view.

Recent changes to the event cache

  • Add a new benchmark to measure the time to fill a timeline with many events (#4668)
  • Introduced EventCacheStore::filter_duplicated_events (#4659)
  • Extract the deduplication of events out of RoomEvents (#4656)
  • Handle more timeline item content kinds in replied-to details (#4649)
  • Simplify the transition from an unencrypted event to encrypted (#4630)
  • Maintain aggregations when an event is deduplicated (#4576)

Authentication system improvements

  • Only support public clients when authenticating (#4634)
  • Switched from openidconnect to the oauth2 crate (#4604)
  • Removed unnecessary E2EE imports in the OIDC submodule (#4553)

Other notable updates

  • Enforced TLS 1.2 or newer for all HTTP requests (#4647)
  • Allow fetching encryption info using session ID (#4658)
  • Ensured known secrets are deleted from 4S when recovery is disabled (#4629)

Dept of Services 🚀

🎉 Today marks 4 years of etke.cc! 🎉 (website)

Your matrix server on your conditions

Slavi reports

The etke.cc managed Matrix hosting service was launched on the 12th of February 2021 and has turned 4 years old today!

Below is an overview of improvements that have happened over the last year.

Component changes

In the past year, we have launched a smaller number of components compared to last year. Most of our effort was spent on improving existing components, keeping up with upstream bridge replacements and polishing our service.

These components can be installed on existing servers upon request through our contact page.

Matrix-related components
  • ✨ Addition: ($3/mo) maubot - a plugin-based Matrix bot system offering a wide range of plugins
  • 🚀 Replacement/Upgrade: (+$3/mo) baibot - a Large-Language-Model (LLM) bot developed by us as a replacement for our old ChatGPT bot offering. You can use it to communicate with OpenAI's ChatGPT and various other LLM providers.
  • 🔄 Replacement: the old mautrix-facebook bridge was superseded by the new mautrix-meta bridge for bridging to Messenger. See our docs here.
  • 🔄 Replacement: the old mautrix-instagram bridge was superseded by the new mautrix-meta bridge for bridging to Instagram. See our docs here.
  • 🔄 Replacement: mx-puppet-discord was removed, in favor of the better mautrix-discord bridge we've been offering already
  • 🔄 Replacement: mx-puppet-slack was removed, in favor of the better mautrix-slack bridge we've been offering already
  • 🔄 Replacement: appservice-webhooks was removed, in favor of the better Hookshot bridge we've been offering already
  • 🔄 Replacement: wireguard+dnsmasq was removed, in favor of the better Firezone VPN solution we've been offering already
  • 🗑️ Removal: The following components were removed: mx-puppet-steam, mx-puppet-groupme, dimension. We removed them because they were not maintained upstream. Unfortunately, there's no alternative right now.
Non-Matrix-related components
  • ✨ Addition: (+$1/mo) [previously-offered and making a comeback] the LanguageTool proofreading software, now with optional n-grams support
  • ✨ Addition: (+$5/mo) [brand new] the Funkwhale decentralized audio hosting platform
  • ✨ Addition: (+$5/mo) [brand new] the PeerTube decentralized video hosting platform
  • ☁️ Upgrade: (free) S3 Object Storage support was added to GoToSocial to make local disk space less of a limiting factor when scaling up
  • 🔄 Replacement: We've replaced the Redis implementation twice, first with KeyDB and then with Valkey (which established itself as the leading and more compatible Redis implementation). Redis is an internal dependency component and only enabled on servers that need it.

Other changes

  • ✨ Addition: A new monitoring service was created to monitor the health of each server and alert customers when troubles occur.
  • ✨ Addition: Our new demo service allows new and existing customers to test various components and features before ordering a Matrix server.
  • ✨ Addition: A new hosted version of the synapse-admin software is now available at admin.etke.cc. We still install synapse-admin to to each customer's server as well, but the hosted version is a more bleeding-edge alternative that contains yet-unreleased features.
  • ✨ Addition: synapse-admin provides exclusive features to etke.cc customers, which connect synapse-admin with etke.cc's monitoring system and scheduler bot.
  • 🚀 Upgrade: HTTP/3 support was added an enabled by default to all Matrix and non-Matrix services
  • 🚀 Upgrade: Our private Docker registry now supports caching and authentication via docker-registry-proxy
  • 📈 Upgrade: Thanks to our new monitoring service, some customers (those packing too many services on a small VPS) became aware of high RAM utilization. As a result we've adjusted database tuning to lower RAM cap and made SWAP more aggressive.
  • 📨 Upgrade: Overdue payments alerts are now delivered both to Matrix and email, ensuring important notifications are not missed.
  • 📨 Upgrade: DKIM support was added to the mailing service (exim-relay) used by all components, to improve email deliverability when the Matrix server sends outgoing emails. Last year, we added DKIM support to the Postmoogle email bridge so this is a continuation of that effort.
  • 🆘 Upgrade: We've migrated our customer support system from Matrix (powered by Honoroit and Postmoogle) to Freescout (self-hosted via our own mash-playbook). Using a dedicated customer support system has proven to be more manageable compared to dealing with chat threads in Matrix.
  • 🆘 Upgrade: New orders are now followed by an Order Status page that simplifies the completion process. It contains instructions for next steps regarding DNS settings and other configuration requirements.
  • 🆘 Upgrade: The scheduler bot now supports a new price command, which provides an overview of server costs with detailed breakdown by components
  • 🧑 Upgrade: We have finally added an About page to our website. Thankfully, it took us less than 4 years to get to it.

Free-software work

We've continued our work on the free-software (AGPLv3) Ansible mega-playbook - mash-playbook, which has grown to include 110+ components.

As part of our work over the past year, we have also developed and released as free-software (AGPLv3) the following new tools:

We've also done a lot more. Keep an eye on our GitHub for more.

Numbers

  • 🏗️ We've installed 700+ Matrix servers in total, out of which 250 new ones.
  • 🔄 Pushed 391 updates and enhancements to the automation framework used as the service core (this does not count the number of updates to the components and upstream projects themselves).
  • 📢 Posted 56 updates in the announcements room, so you're always up-to-date with what we're working on.

For those interested in previous etke.cc birthday posts:

Matrix Federation Stats

Aine [don't DM] announces

collected by MatrixRooms.info - an MRS instance by etke.cc

As of today, 10620 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3155 (29.7%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 162675 rooms.

Stats timeline is available on MatrixRooms.info/stats

How to add your server | How to remove your server

Dept of Ping 🏓

Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.

#ping:maunium.net

Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank Hostname Median MS
1 bfo.shork.ch 190.5
2 nexy7574.uk 282
3 bi-vibes.com 296
4 littlevortex.net 310
5 codestorm.net 318.5
6 nerdhouse.io 389.5
7 tomfos.tr 474
8 pissing.dev 503
9 play.matrix.toys 602.5
10 halogen.place 901

That's all I know

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!

To learn more about how to prepare an entry for TWIM check out the TWIM guide.