This Week in Matrix 2026-04-07

🔗Matrix Live S12E04 – Matrix DMs in Bluesky

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Thib reports

It was an open secret, but it's finally out in the open: we will gather for The Matrix Conference 2026 between 20th and 23rd October in Malmö, Sweden!

Our Call for Proposals is open, and we want to hear from you!

We're looking for proposals from:

• Individuals innovating around Matrix
• Organisations working with Matrix in any context
• Authors of toy projects, hacks, and experiments worth sharing
• Anyone contributing to digital sovereignty
• You!

Read the full announcement here, and we're looking forward to seeing you in person in October 🥳

🔗Dept of Working Groups 💪

🔗Homeserver Decentralization Community Group (website)

The Homeserver Decentralization Community Group aims to promote decentralization of the Matrix network by fostering a smoother onboarding experience (to homeservers and clients) on homeservers other than matrix.org, and might propose additional measures in the ecosystem as a whole. It is not an official Matrix Foundation Working Group, but aims to become one.

Nicolas Da Mutten announces

Hello, I'm excited to finally announce our little community group to a more broad audience! 🎉

A small group of people met at the last matrix conference in Strasbourg and had the idea of pushing the decentralization of the matrix network further and help new users find a homeserver other than matrix.org. The idea then grew further and more concrete at 39C3 in Hamburg and we started setting up a Matrix Working group. We already had a few meetings (of which you can find the notes here currently) and recruited some new people to the group and now feel comfortable with sharing our progress more broadly.

The motivations behind decentralization can be many, but amongst others we initially intended to lighten the hosting load of the matrix.org homeserver, improve the experience on first contact with matrix and therefore push matrix adoption as a whole as well as making the matrix network more resilient.

One of our initial goals is to foster a smoother onboarding experience (to homeservers and clients) on homeservers other than matrix.org and might propose and push additional measures in the ecosystem as a whole down the line (like account portability etc.).

Currently, we are focused on discussing a curated server list, what it might contain, what rules it follows etc. and we have a draft of the policy for the matrix.org mainained list.

We are not yet an official Working Group of the Matrix Foundation, but hope that someone from the governing board would like to sponsor us and the Board itself thinks our efforts are a good idea.

If you want to engage with us, you can find a more detailed description of the group in our (temporary) Github repository, reach out in the #homeserver-decentralization:matrix.org room or join us in our next meeting taking place April 8th, at 19:00 CEST.

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} reports

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:

• MSC4446: Allow moving the fully read marker to older events
• MSC4445: Clarify /sync timeline order
• MSC4441: Encrypted User Profile Annotations via Account Data
• MSC4440: Profile Biography via Global Profiles

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

• MSC4444: Malicious PDUs
• MSC4443: Permission Level Sync
• MSC3124: Handling spoilers in plain-text message fallback

🔗Spec Updates

Another year, another April Fools. MSC4444: Malicious PDUs kicked us off with some mid-week fun. It was promptly closed after the date, to keep the spec backlog clean.

And speaking of closed MSCs, there were a couple more that were additionally closed based on author and SCT request.

Otherwise, we have a couple new MSCs revolving around user profiles entering the pipeline, and a couple more about client interaction. MSC4445: Clarify /sync timeline order is interesting from nailing down the historically ambiguous ordering of events in the spec. And MSC4446: Allow moving the fully read marker to older events actually grew out of a conversation in the #matrix-spec room to allow clients to revert fully read markers (which Synapse currently blocks).

It turned out that Synapse had good reasoning to block it (out of sync clients), and thus an MSC was created to add a new parameter to tell the homeserver that "yes, I really do want this to go backwards. I'm not out-of-sync, I promise!". Kudos to SpiritCroc for jumping into the spec process off the back of wanting to improve features in their client (SchildiChat)!

Otherwise there's been forward movement on MSC4186: Simplified Sliding Sync as part of moving Matrix 2.0 to its eventual conclusion. As well as lots happening across a range of other MSCs!

And as a bonus, a a ton of work has been put into adding a fuzzy search feature to spec.matrix.org by @Johennes (which I personally can't wait to have)!

🔗Dept of Trust & Safety ⚖️

🔗Draupnir (website)

A moderation bot for open Matrix communities.

Gnuxie 💜🐝 says

We have released Draupnir v3.0.0 which is focused on improving maintenance of the project, including incorporating all of the Draupnir stack into a monorepo to improve contribution workflow. There are a number of breaking changes to consider that are listed as the major changes in the release notes.

If for some reason you do encounter an issue with upgrading Draupnir, it is safe to downgrade back to v2.9.0 without changes, and receive support either in our support room #draupnir:matrix.org or issue tracker.

🔗Homeserver Deployment 📥️

🔗Element Server Suite (website)

Element Server Suite (ESS) is a backend hosting solution for Matrix-based communications that supports self-hosted and fully managed deployments.

Patrick Maier announces

🔗ESS Community migration tooling now available!

We are pleased to announce a little Easter present (for those celebrating it). Since the launch of ESS Community, the official Matrix stack from Element, many have asked us how they can migrate existing environments to ESS. Finally we have an answer to this question! Just this week we have published an initial release of the ESS Migration Tool 🚀

• The ESS Migration Tool is an interactive application that guides you through a migration from an existing Synapse and MAS deployment into ESS Community
• This is its initial release with basic functionality, more to follow
• All the details can be found in our dedicated blog post https://element.io/blog/introducing-the-ess-community-migration-tool

So, enjoy the Easter break, migrate to ESS and let us know about your experience!

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗Extera Next

rustyraven[extera.xyz op] says

Hello federation! It's been like 3 months since I wrote something about Extera. I haven't really noticed that, so I am gonna tell about changes for several updates in one post!

🔗26.0.5

• Fixed pasting images on Linux! Now, just hit Ctrl+V to paste a screenshot/any-other-image you've got in your clipboard.
• Added partial support for MSC4320 Rich Presences. Rich presences are now visible in profiles, although I don't recall any client which sends them yet.
• Fixed mentions when replying option, you should be able to toggle them.

🔗26.0.6

Extera 26.0.6 was a minor update, but I will cover some parts of it:

• Fixed markdown parser escaping "<" and ">" in code blocks.
• New appbar and navbar design, heavily inspired by Telegram. If you don't like it, go to Settings - Feature switches and turn on "Legacy search bar" or "Legacy navigation bar" as you like!

🔗26.0.8

I don't think 26.0.7 is such a significant update to cover it, so let's jump to 26.0.8.

• No more blurry pictures of your homework, just enable "LaTeX math" in Settings - Feature switches.
• New incoming invite UI, probably inspired by Element's?
• Added background audio player, so you can catch up to that 5 minute voice message, while answering other pings too.
• AI is cool and interesting, but someone may prefer to not use it: AI-powered message translations can now be toggled off in Feature switches.
• Speaking about message translation, you may now use another backend for translating (see advanced config)! See docs/ in Extera repo to know how to implement it.
• Some minor changes and fixes: copying links by long-pressing them, fix reactions on desktop, etc...

🔗26.0.9 and 26.0.91

• Added profile banners! And the best part? They are compatible with Commet's profile banners.
• Added support for predictive back gesture on Android.
• Updated polls UI & added "Poll results" dialog!
• Added Jitsi group calls behind a feature flag.

As always, you may see source code or download the app from our website. If you have questions or wanna talk, our room is located at #extera:extera.xyz

🔗SchildiChat Revenge (website)

Matrix client for desktop written in Kotlin and using the Matrix Rust SDK

SpiritCroc reports

It's been a while since I announced SchildiChat Revenge here, so I figured it's time for a quick update. If you need a reminder what Revenge is, it's a new SchildiChat desktop client that is not an Element fork (in contrast to other SchildiChat clients), and is still to be considered in its alpha stages.

In the last few months, there has been steady progress in adding missing features and improving existing functionality. Highlights include initial support for desktop notifications, rendering threaded timelines, and a new optional multipane layout that should make Revenge more familiar to those who prefer opening chats next to the chat list in the same window by default.

Further changes include support for sending typing indicators, and the possibility to launch SchildiChat minimized. Additionally, translations have been set up via our weblate instance, so I'd welcome anyone to stop by if you'd like to help out and use SchildiChat Revenge in your native tongue!

🔗Nexus (website)

Matrix client made with Flutter and a Gomuks backend.

QuadRadical (Ping) reports

🔗What's new?

Hello TWIM! I posted last week, but a lot has happened since then!

• Windows builds are done... kind of. EXEs build, but don't run yet. We are investigating!
• Fix those pesky controller reloads that were causing messages to jump around
• Added timestamps to messages
• Show messages as soon as you send them, and visually update when sent
• Show errors when messages and redactions fail
• Added the ability to copy matrix: links to rooms, spaces, and events
• Added support for server-generated URL previews
• Added power level checks for redact, kick, ban, send message, to show it in the UI rather than just erroring out when attempting the action
• Added filtering of members to "Joined", "Invited", or "Banned" in members list
• Add a popover when clicking on a user, including options to kick, ban, and unban

I'd still like to modify this a bit, maybe. I'm not super happy with the action buttons, but it's good enough for now. The message button doesn't work yet.

• And a whole lot of bug fixes!

You can grab any of the builds using these links in our README if you want to try it out yourself.

🔗Coming soon...

The next few features on the To-do are:

• Sending media
• Reaction support
• Fix Windows builds

After these, and likely some bug fixes, I think it will be time for an alpha, so that should be done in the next couple of weeks.

If you want to help with development or simply keep up with new features, join our Matrix room at #nexus:federated.nexus or check out the Git repo at https://git.federated.nexus/Henry-Hiles/nexus!

🔗Fractal (website)

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille says

Things have been fairly quiet since the JasonAI takeover, but here comes Fractal 14.beta.

• Sending files & location is properly disabled while editing/replying, as it doesn’t work anyway.
• Call rooms are identified with a camera icon in the sidebar and show a banner to warn that other users might not read messages in these rooms.
• While we still support signing in via SSO, we have dropped support for identity providers, to simplify our code and a have a closer experience to signing in with OAuth 2.0.
• Map markers now use a darker variant of the accent color to have a better contrast with the map underneath.
• Many small behind the scenes changes, mostly through dependency updates, and we have removed a few of them. Small improvements to the technical docs as well.

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!

We are very excited to see several new contributors opening MRs lately to take care of their pet peeves with Fractal, which will benefit everyone in the end. If you have a little bit of time on your hands, you can try to join them by fixing one of our newcomers issues.

🔗FluffyChat (website)

The cutest instant messenger in the [matrix].

Krille - Christian K. reports

🔗🚀 FluffyChat 2.5.0 has been released!

Oh dear, this was a lot of work! Since the Matrix Conference, the number of users has skyrocketed from around 20k daily active users on the Play Store to now 85k! And that’s only counting the official Android distribution, not F-Droid, other stores, iOS, Linux, Web, and so on!!

Of course, this made us very happy, but also quite hesitant to push a new release. If so many people are enjoying the app, I also get anxious about potentially introducing regressions that could disrupt your user experience.

So the first thing we did was write integration tests that run in CI, and we added a lot of additional code analysis tools. Entire categories of bugs are now caught long before they reach the main branch. 🥳💪

🔗New Homeserver Selection

I also wanted to make the app more focused on decentralization. I thought a lot about whether we should host our own homeserver for FluffyChat, but that would mean a huge burden in terms of hosting and moderation. So instead, I decided to introduce a new onboarding UX where users are presented with a list of homeservers.

It was actually quite difficult to find well-maintained homeservers with open registrations.

If you would like to add your own homeserver to the list, you can send a pull request to this file: https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/blob/main/recommended_homeservers.json

There are no strict rules yet for inclusion, but in general, your server should have a clear moderation strategy, open registration, support for SSO or OIDC, and no obvious red flags (like promoting radical right stuff).

🔗Native Matrix OIDC

This is now implemented, but still hidden behind a feature flag. You can find it in the advanced config viewer! 😊 The token refresh mechanism hasn’t been thoroughly tested yet, so use it at your own risk. This is likely going to become the default in the near future.

🔗Other Improvements

Besides that, there are many smaller changes:

• Improved and more polished UI -> A new friendly support banner that asks for your support roughly every 6 weeks, but can easily be hidden forever by tapping “I already support” -> There is no verification for this so feel free to ignore it if you don’t want to support the project
• Support for low-priority rooms
• Ability to mute rooms directly from Android notifications
• Much faster image compression on Android, iOS, and Web
• Fixes for power level handling (including support for the owner role)
• Chat filter is now always visible
• Set erase flag to true on account deactivation
• Lots of smaller bug fixes and improvements

See the full changelog here: https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

Ah, and there’s a hidden gem! We’ve secretly brought back Jitsi calls in FluffyChat 😅Calls are one of the most requested features, but we’re still figuring out how to support them with minimal overhead. So we thought we’d give Jitsi another try ... maybe as a temporary solution, maybe it will work well long term.

Just search for “jitsi” in the advanced config viewer.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for upcoming updates ❤️

🔗Tammy (website)

Multiplatform messenger built on top of Trixnity Messenger.

Benedict reports

Tammy is available on iOS now: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/tammy-chat/id6760345615

It was (and still is) quite an odyssey that Apple puts you through if you want to publish apps automatically without using their terrible default tools. That’s why this isn’t the latest version of Tammy, but we’re doing our best.

🔗Dept of Ops 🛠

🔗Ketesa (formerly Synapse Admin)

Aine [etke.cc] announces

Ketesa v1.0.0 is out — and with it, a new name! 🚀 What started in August 2024 as a fork of Awesome-Technologies/synapse-admin has grown into its own project: redesigned interface, comprehensive API coverage, nine languages, and enough new features that sharing a name with the original no longer made sense.

Here's what landed in v1.0.0:

• 🎨 Full UI redesign - cleaner layout, reworked dark theme, consistent visual identity throughout
• 📱 Mobile-first - tables collapse to readable lists, everything is reachable on small screens
• 🔐 MAS integration - browse and revoke sessions (personal, browser, OAuth2, compat), manage linked emails, create users via MAS, handle policy/consent data
• 🏠 Room management - block/unblock, history purge, a built-in messages viewer with filters and jump-to-date, space hierarchy view
• 👥 User management - shadow banning, user impersonation (login-as), device create/rename/bulk-delete, cross-signing reset, tri-state filters, live redaction progress
• 🗣️ Localization Performance - lazy-loaded translations with per-locale code splitting; correct RTL rendering for Persian and other RTL languages

Ketesa is a zero-configuration drop-in replacement for Synapse Admin - swap the Docker image tag to ghcr.io/etkecc/ketesa:latest and you're done. ✅

Full writeup: Introducing Ketesa 📖

Come say hi in #ketesa:etke.cc! 💬

🔗matrix-docker-ansible-deploy (website)

Matrix server setup using Ansible and Docker.

Aine [etke.cc] reports

The matrix-docker-ansible-deploy playbook has been updated alongside the Ketesa release. The matrix-synapse-admin role has been renamed to matrix-ketesa, using the new ghcr.io/etkecc/ketesa image. Existing installations are automatically migrated — the playbook stops and removes the old service on the next run. 🔄

All matrix_synapse_admin_* variables must be renamed to matrix_ketesa_* in your vars.yml. The playbook will catch any leftover old variable names and tell you exactly what to rename. The default path prefix stays /synapse-admin for backward compatibility; switching to /ketesa is recommended but not required.

See the Ketesa role documentation for details. 📄

🔗Dept of Services 🧑‍🔧

🔗Connectivity Tester (website)

MTRNord (they/them) reports

I just released and deployed version 0.4.0 of the connectivity tester with some new features, improvements and bugfixes:

🔗What's Changed

• Split brain resolution detection and warning
• OAuth2 backend for the alerts
  • Multiple email addresses possible
  • Less need for the magic links
  • Magic Links still available if preferred
• Redis locking and synchronizing of the email detection to ensure it is possible to run multiple instances at the same time
• Various bugfixes and refactoring and improvements.
  • Fix IP Literal support
  • Fixed the connection limiting to actually work correctly, which does ~half the median response time on requests from ~811ms to ~471ms
  • We now internally have k6 benchmarks to monitor changes in performance better
  • Bump quinn-proto from 0.11.13 to 0.11.14 in the cargo group across 1 directory by @dependabot[bot] in https://github.com/MTRNord/rust-federation-tester/pull/23

Additionally on the frontend the UI now uses the new OAuth2 backend and adds some basic MatrixRTC validation. Note that the MatrixRTC validation is very experimental still and due to lack of sufficient test data might still have bugs causing incorrect results.

As usual you can find the tags at https://github.com/MTRNord/rust-federation-tester/releases/tag/v0.4.0 and https://github.com/MTRNord/matrix-connection-tester-ui/releases/tag/v0.4.0

Find the deployed version at https://connectivity-tester.mtrnord.blog or if you are daring occasionally try https://stage.connectivity-tester.mtrnord.blog/ which is the staging deployment which gets changes earlier but at less stability.

If you find issues or want to request features please direct them at the 2 repositories :)

🔗Dept of Bots 🤖

🔗Quoted Matrix Bot

rustyraven[extera.xyz op] reports

Wanna save some wildest takes from your group chat? I've built Quoted specifically for that purpose. Inspired by QuotLy, a telegram bot.

Reply with ..q to a message you wanna save and the bot will create a sticker with it. The bot also adds it to room sticker pack called "quoted".

Source code: https://github.com/ryotairi/quoted

🔗Matrix Federation Stats 📊

Aine [etke.cc] reports

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

As of today [2026-04-02], 18833 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 4329 (23.0%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 19112 rooms.

The most popular server software among the online servers is:

• synapse: 15082 (80.1%)
• continuwuity: 1356 (7.2%)
• conduit: 611 (3.2%)
• dendrite: 369 (2.0%)

Stats timeline is available on 📊 MatrixRooms.info/stats

🧩 Integrations with apps and servers | 💜 Support the project | 👉 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	vrkknn.net	195
2	vibb.me	220
3	coneja.tel	223.5
4	nerdhouse.io	231
5	starstruck.systems	235
6	31a05b.net	251
7	mustelid.chat	277.5
8	848226.xyz	319
9	the-lamp.net	381
10	muoi.me	389

🔗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.