Synapse 1.54 released

Synapse 1.54 is out! Let's see what goodness is coming your way with this new release.

Improving URL previews

As part of the Matrix specification, Matrix clients have the option to rely on the homeserver to generate URL previews. This means the homeserver (in this case Synapse) needs to have a look at the content at that URL and extract data to send back to the client.

In the past, Synapse has had issues with generating complete URL previews, and some metadata (e.g. image, description) would be missing from the data that Synapse sends to clients. Synapse 1.54 includes improvements to the generation of URL previews, and while testing it we've been able to observe improvements to previews generated for Twitter and Reddit.

New module callbacks

Synapse modules allow third-party developers to write extra features for Synapse, that wouldn't necessarily be generic enough to fit within the Matrix specification. This includes custom behaviours such as smarter event filters, bespoke media storage providers, or spam checkers. Since we rewrote Synapse's module system in Synapse 1.37, we have been improving it by adding new callback functions that module can implement, allowing them to interface better with Synapse.

Synapse 1.54 includes three new module callbacks. One of them, get_displayname_for_registration, allows modules to define the display name for newly registered users. Together with the existing get_username_for_registration introduced in Synapse 1.52, they allow modules a better control over the user registration process.

The two other module callbacks introduced in Synapse 1.54, on_profile_update and on_user_deactivation_status_changed, allow modules to react to profile changes, as well as the deactivation (or reactivation) of users.

Everything else

This release of Synapse also includes more work to make joining large Matrix rooms faster (I was telling you about that in the Synapse 1.53 release announcement). While it's still very experimental and not yet ready for show time, it's still very exciting to see this work happening!

Synapse 1.54 also includes a change to the client-side versions endpoint to advertise Matrix 1.1 and 1.2. See the Matrix 1.2 release announcement to read all about the changes this latest version of the specification brings to the ecosystem.

See the full changelog for a complete list of changes in this release. Also please have a look at the upgrade notes for this version.

Synapse is a Free and Open Source Software project, and we'd like to extend our thanks to everyone who contributed to this release, including (in no particular order) Dirk Klimpel, Andrew Ryan, and lukasdenk.