This Week in Matrix 2024-09-27

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element

Devon Dmytro announces

This week we released v1.116.0rc2. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Guests can now use the new media endpoints to download media, as described by MSC4189
• Add initial implementation of delayed events as proposed by MSC4140
• Add implementation of restricting who can overwrite a state event as proposed by MSC3757
• Add an asynchronous Admin API endpoint to redact all of a user's events, and an endpoint to check on the status of that redaction task

...and a whole lot more. Check out the release notes for the full set of changes! Thank you to all our contributors for helping to make Synapse the best it can be. As always, feel free to stop by #synapse:matrix.org to join in on the discussion and if you encounter a bug make sure to report it here.

Dept of Clients 📱

Fractal (website)

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille says

Back to school, and Fractal is back too! The leaves are starting to cover the floor in our part of the globe, but you don’t have to shake a tree to get our goodness packed into Fractal 9.beta:

• We switched to the glycin library (the same one used by GNOME Image Viewer) to load images, allowing us to fix several issues, like supporting more animated formats and SVGs and respecting EXIF orientation.
• The annoying bug where some rooms would stay as unread even after opening them is now a distant memory.
• The media cache uses its own database that you can delete if you want to free some space on your system. It will also soon be able to clean up unused media files to prevent it from growing indefinitely.
• Sometimes the day separators would show up with the wrong date, not anymore!
• We migrated to the new GTK 4.16 and libadwaita 1.6 APIs, including CSS variables, AdwButtonRow and AdwSpinner.

As usual, this release includes other improvements, fixes and new translations thanks to all our contributors, and our upstream projects.

It is available to install via Flathub Beta, see the instructions in our README.

As the version implies, there might be a slight risk of regressions, but it should be mostly stable. If all goes well the next step is the release candidate!

If you have a little bit of time on your hands, you can try to fix one of our newcomers issues. Anyone can make Fractal better!

Element X iOS (website)

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

Doug reports

• This week brings the Release Candidate for v1.8.4 to TestFlight which amongst other things enables Message Pinning - long press on a message and tap Pin to try it out yourself!
• v1.8.4 is also our first build to use Xcode 16 which should fix some iOS 18-related bugs and we’ve been fixing any smaller bugs that we’ve encountered as the week has progressed.
• Lots of time has been spent on our tests (some of which fell apart a little after the Xcode 16 upgrade), and hopefully we’ll soon be back to enjoying a stable suite of tests.
• Finally we’re tackling the big AGPL migration and are updating Element iOS Classic, Compound iOS and the Rich Text Editor to be inline with all of our Element licenses.

Element X Android (website)

Android Matrix messenger application using the Matrix Rust SDK and Jetpack Compose.

ganfra reports

• This week we've released version 0.6.4 to Google Play Open Testing. Message Pinning is now stable - long press on a message and tap Pin to try it out yourself!
• We have spend most of our time fixing bugs and improving code, including tests.
• Finally we’re tackling the AGPL migration on various projects to be inline with all of our Element licenses.

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

vodozemac-bindings for c++

tusooa🏔️ reports

vodozemac-bindings for c++ now works for builds without exceptions. We have also written a doc: https://iron.lily-is.land/w/from-libolm-to-vodozemac/ . Again, any help is welcome.

It now supports building on Windows. See Merge Request 10 for more details.

Dept of Services 🚀

etke.cc (website)

Your matrix server on your conditions

Aine [don't DM] says

A while back, we at etke.cc announced our Synapse-Admin fork, and this week we're excited to share two major updates:

• Upgrade to React Admin v5
• Restrictions on modifying specific users

The React Admin upgrade enhances the Synapse-Admin UI experience, especially if you found the previous dark theme too high-contrast.

The second update is a quality-of-life improvement you've always wanted but may not have known you needed. 🙂

Previously, we introduced a feature to prevent users from accidentally deleting their sole homeserver administrator account.

Now, we're addressing another common issue: inadvertently altering system user accounts managed by appservices (such as bridges and bots). Editing, deleting, locking, or changing the passwords of these appservice-managed accounts can cause serious problems. To prevent this, we've added a new feature that blocks these types of modifications to such accounts, while still allowing other risk-free changes (changing display names and avatars). By defining a list of MXID regex patterns in the new asManagedUsers configuration setting, you can protect these accounts from accidental changes.

If you're using matrix-docker-ansible-deploy, the playbook automatically handles this configuration setting to ensure appservice-managed user accounts remain safe.

Source code

Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Matrix User Meetup Berlin

saces announces

As we have all not seen each other for a long time, I can proudly announce:

Next Matrix user meetup 2.10.2024, 8 pm @ c-base

Meet other matrix users, chat about Matrix, the rest, and everything else, discuss your Matrix ideas, sign each other in persona, and maybe spice the evening with a good mate or beer.

Every first Wednesday of the month in the c-base at 8pm ('til the next pandemic).

Matrix room: #mumb:c-base.org

Dept of Interesting Projects 🛰️

AlexGames: simple Lua/Rust WebAssembly powered board games running in a Matrix widget

axby announces

I put together a collection of simple board games written in Lua and Rust, built them to WebAssembly, and focused on a standalone web application that relies on a websocket server for multiplayer. I tried swapping out the websocket server for the Matrix widget API, and it works! This means that all you need is the static HTML/JS/WASM hosted on a server, and you can add a widget to a small Matrix room like this:

/addwidget https://alexbarry.net/dev/games/matrix-widget/?matrix_widget_id=$matrix_widget_id&matrix_user_id=$matrix_user_id

And you can play games with a friend, using Element web or desktop. No other server side handling required!

Here's a demo video, two Element web sessions playing chess together, using the Matrix room for game state changes: https://youtu.be/a_uR0tPeR18?t=15

Source code is available in a branch on GitHub here, and feel free to join #alexgames:matrix.org if you're interested in more, or want to find someone to try a game with. To try the standalone web version, you can visit https://alexbarry.github.io/AlexGames/ . I'd be happy to update and polish the Matrix widget version if there's interest. I also set up my project so that you could write your own games in Lua and upload them to the existing web/matrix version, without having to build the project. See my very simple API (e.g. draw_rectangle, handle_user_clicked) and the API demo example game.

Matrix in the News 📰

HarHarLinks reports

While the team is still working hard on the video recordings from The Matrix Conference (watch this space!), we got some news coverage:

• 🇬🇧 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/24/meet-the-scrappy-tech-company-taking-on-slack
• 🇬🇧 https://www.heise.de/en/news/Matrix-conference-On-current-developments-the-state-of-open-source-and-more-9951334.html / 🇩🇪 https://www.heise.de/news/Matrix-Konferenz-Zu-aktuellen-Entwicklungen-dem-Stand-von-Open-Source-und-mehr-9939673.html
• 🇬🇧 https://www.fastcompany.com/91194828/nato-is-testing-out-this-decentralized-messenger-for-communications-between-member-nations

Matrix Federation Stats

Aine [don't DM] announces

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

As of today, 9994 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3079 (30.8%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 21297 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	conduwu.it	211
2	tomfos.tr	213
3	fost.re	224
4	awawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawaw.gay	228.5
5	puppygock.gay	250
6	girlboss.ceo	275.5
7	itzzen.net	277
8	bark.arf.wf	315.5
9	ipv6.girlcock.systems	352
10	speakup.nl	375.5

#ping-no-synapse:maunium.net

Join #ping-no-synapse:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	tomfos.tr	66.5
2	fost.re	81.5
3	conduwu.it	83
4	transgender.ing	98.5
5	girlboss.ceo	131
6	nerdhouse.io	175.5
7	bark.arf.wf	176.5
8	constellatory.net	182.5
9	littlevortex.net	195.5
10	ipv6.girlcock.systems	208.5

That's all I know

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