This Week in Matrix 2026-07-17

🔗Matrix Live S13E02 - Amandine talks Foundation Mission & Funding and Matthew talks about P2P

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

uhoreg says

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:

• MSC4509: Auto join on accepted knock
• MSC4508: Sliding Sync Extension: Typing Notifications
• MSC4507: Return additional room state from /_matrix/federation/v1/hierarchy/{roomId}
• MSC4506: Push Rules for Knocking
• MSC4505: Push Rules for Live Location Sharing
• MSC4504: Using a global version number for the entire specification (v2)
• MSC4503: External Protocol Handles

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC3784: Using room type of m.policy for policy rooms

Closed MSCs:

• No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

🔗Dept of Servers 🏢

🔗Tuwunel (website)

Enterprise successor to conduwuit, the high-performance and feature-rich fork of Conduit.

june ✿ 🏳️‍⚧️ (it/she/puppy) announces

Tuwunel 1.8.2 brings richer, more private link previews: preview media now covers video and audio as well as images, relayed through the server so the previewed site sees Tuwunel rather than the person who shared the link. az4521's contribution added the proxying, separate page and media user-agents, and the video previews they had requested.

Packaging expanded on several fronts, all from June: RPM and COPR builds, a SELinux policy module, an apt repository published from CI, and Debian packaging that adopts an existing conduwuit or Conduit database in place.

Appservices now receive more in every transaction: device-list changes and one-time-key counts via MSC3202 and to-device events via MSC4203, both opened by dark-collective. The Synapse-compatible admin API added server-notice, redaction, login-as, federation-destination and media endpoints, and operators can cap forward extremities and list or prune a room's leaves from the admin console.

Federation delivery no longer runs hot against a server that keeps failing: the per-server backoff now reads a server's full failure history rather than one time bucket. Tuwunel also refuses to open over database remnants without a readable manifest, after ItsLiyua reported and diagnosed a wipe-on-open, and native OIDC login completes again after failing mid-redirect.

On spec: v1.18 and v1.19 are declared, basnijholt got MatrixRTC transport discovery working for Element Call without a token, and one-time-key counts match Synapse so a drained client replenishes its keys instead of starving. obodnikov repaired non-unix and macOS builds.

Full release notes: https://github.com/matrix-construct/tuwunel/blob/9099defe5ee340140ca0d56e478751637f34354d/RELEASE.md

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💕 GitHub ✦ Releases ✦ DockerHub ✦ Playbook ✦ Containers ✦ Documentation 🐕️ Tuwunel 💕

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🔗Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element.

madlittlemods (Eric Eastwood) says

This week we have a new release candidate, Synapse v1.157.0rc1. To highlight:

• As part of the 'Synapse rustification' work, we ported the synchronous core of client event serialization to Rust (#19837), and Rust code can now make database calls through the same connection pool as Python (#19878). This unlocks being able to write more endpoints in Rust (/versions is backed by Rust now). To keep all this new async Rust testable, our test utilities now drive the Tokio runtime in Rust just as well as the Twisted reactor in Python (#19871, #19879).
• Sliding Sync picked up several database fixes: a deadlock fix (#19826) and new indexes that should smooth out some inconsistent performance (#19912, #19923).
• Presence got a few minor performance improvements and tuning options (#19939, #19941, #19942, #19948, #19935) but we still recommend keeping it disabled for any large deployment as the current paradigm doesn't really scale.
• The war against test flakes continues. We tracked down and fixed a few more this week (#19890, #19929). Some of this work manifests as fixing flawed tests in other repos (like Complement) but we also merged a fix in our workerized Docker image to prevent nginx from temporarily marking workers as unavailable when a test restarts a server (#19936). See #18537 for a loose list of flakes we experience often.
• Support for the deprecated MSC3861 Auth Delegation (experimental_features.msc3861) has been dropped in this version, in favour of the stable Matrix Authentication Service integration. This was deprecated last August but is finally being removed now.
• On the experimental side: new support for MSC4446 to allow moving fully read markers backwards (#19663 thanks @SpiritCroc @ Beeper!), and the MSC4140 delayed events implementation now limits the number of delayed events a user can have scheduled at once (#19539).

... and a whole lot more!

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.

🔗continuwuity (website)

Continuwuity is a community-driven Matrix homeserver in Rust.

nex [starstruck] reports

Continuwuity v26.6.0 has been released! This major release is packed full to the brim with new features and bug fixes, to the point that it makes you wonder "how much of the codebase can be replaced before it's a new project".

This is a landmark milestone for the project. With over 700 commits since our last feature release, ~65,000 lines of code have been changed across >500 files. In the past year alone, we've changed >180,000 lines of code across >900 files. That's an incredible amount of code to have written since the April of 2025, but we didn't do it alone; 80+ contributors have helped us build this software, and that's not even including the hundreds more that have reported bugs and helped out in our thriving community.

I've been saying for a long time now that there's big things on the horizon - this is the horizon! This huge release includes long awaited and highly demanded features, including (but absolutely not limited to): Native OAuth2 and OIDC support, static musl binaries, room upgrade overhauls, improvements to federation catch-up and state resolution, and many fixes to sync.

But TWIM isn't for changelogs, the release notes are! Go read them!

All Continuwuity deployments are encouraged to upgrade as soon as possible - there are hundreds of internal changes that improve the performance and reliability of the server, not to mention a bunch of new features everyone has been practically begging for in the past 3 months. If you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to reach out!

A keen eye may have also noticed we changed our version scheme! Instead of using "zerover", we're now using "calver", which means our versions are now based on the date in which they enter the release cycle. This should more accurately reflect our development cycle, and allows us to build things even faster than before.

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There's still even more to come, so stay tuned (perhaps by joining our announcements room). If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach out in our support room, and even if you don't have a reason to, you should check out the rest of our rooms in our space. The general rooms continue to be more active than your local town square, I bet.

If you like the work we're doing, please consider giving us a star on GitHub: https://github.com/continuwuity/continuwuity. While we don't primarily host there, leaving a star boosts our visibility! Also recommend the project to your friends, if they aren't already using it.

Anyway, enough yammering. I've got more code to write.

➡️ https://continuwuity.org

nex [starstruck] reports

Continuwuity v26.6.2 has been released, which fixes several bugs uncovered shortly after v26.6.0 started being adopted. It is recommended you skip v26.6.0 and upgrade to v26.6.2. If you find any new bugs, please let us know by opening an issue on our forge. The team is very busy now but we're working as fast as we can to smooth over the teething pains of a major release, and reporting issues will allow us to prioritise work more efficiently. Otherwise, questions and concerns can be raised in #continuwuity:continuwuity.org as usual!

Breaking change notice: some bugs fixed in this version have created an incompatibility with Synapse and as such you will be unable to receive invites from Synapse servers if you update to this version. Do not upgrade if this is something you require, and perhaps subscribe to the relevant issue to be notified when the problem is resolved.

➡️ https://continuwuity.org

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗Tesseract

Marco says

Hello again! 0.8.14 and 0.8.15 went out since the last post!

• Due to popular demand (one github issue), Tesseract now supports legacy non-MAS username/password login. Only existing accounts, creating accounts is not supported.
• Now you can edit your emoji & sticker packs! During the transition to the stable MSC2545 names, packs will be read from both unstable and stable room state names, and NEW packs will also be saved on both (existing packs will be updated as they are). AND the personal sticker pack is still supported, even if it fell off the spec. So every pack created with other apps should be there! A checkbox in the new advanced settings tab (via the 'advanced' button in the about tab) allows you to only use the stable names, if that's your thing. Choices for everyone :)
• Custom emojis now work everywhere, via shortcodes, emoji picker, rendered in the composer and in the timeline.
• You can also see all the room media with the new room media gallery available from the room info panel.

Calls are still under a compile flag, but they will probably be enabled by default in the next release. Stay tuned.

Check it out while it's hot!

🔗Harmony

catcraft reports

Hello everyone! Reset the counter, because another matrix client has been released!

Harmony is different from most other clients in that it supports loading user-provided plugins at runtime. In fact, the entire client is built on top of this plugin system. This means that everyone can develop features for it, without needing to maintain a fork and go through the pull request process. It also allows for a more modular approach to how you use your client (you can turn off support for most features).

Harmony was designed from the start to be easily extensible, so anyone with some JavaScript knowledge can make plugins! We even have documentation!

Even if you don't plan on developing plugins, Harmony currently supports most features required for daily use, such as

• End-to-end encryption and device verification
• Spaces (+ nested subspaces)
• Attachments
• Custom emoji
• Reactions
• Rich replies
• Link previews
• and more!

You can find more information and pre-built releases on Codeberg here. You can also join our matrix rooms using the links below:

• Space
• General room
• Plugin developer room
• Announcements

Happy hacking!

🔗Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 17+.

Doug says

This week we made the RC for version 26.07.4, which is available on TestFlight and will land on the App Store on Monday. This release consists of minor changes: calls are always displayed in dark mode and we’ve fixed an issue that could occur when opening rooms whilst your device was offline along with a crash in the Sentry crate that’s bundled within the SDK.

The work on User Status continued this week and is progressing well. We hope to test the new Sliding Sync extension against a live server next week.

Separately we’ve been iterating on our test suite to fix some long-standing issues with flakiness and in the process have added a test parameter that simulates running on a heavily overloaded CI runner (by spawning 20× yes > /dev/null, if you're interested 😄).

🔗Element X Android (website)

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

Benoit announces

Hey all! 👋 A quick look at what landed in Element X Android this last week.

• Content scanner integration — initial support for server-side content/antivirus scanning of media in Element Pro, so attachments can be checked before you view them.
• Media & gallery polish — your in-progress caption is now kept when you attach media, and replies to galleries show a handy item-count placeholder in the reply box.
• Onboarding refresh — the onboarding screens were reworked to match the latest Figma designs.

Jorge says

Hi everyone, this week is a quiet one, since we've been working mainly on:

• Improving accessibility in the app.
• Bug fixing, including the issue with access to homeservers in local networks in Android 17 and some live location ones.
• UX tweaks in the app and Element Call.
• Starting to build a new user status feature.
• Building some Element Pro features for parity with the classic Element Android app.

A new v26.07.1 release candidate should be available soon for beta users too with most of these changes.

That's all for now, enjoy the summer, avoid the heat and stay hydrated!

🔗Matrix Federation Stats 📊

Aine [etke.cc] announces

TWIM

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

As of today, 19723 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 4155 (21.1%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 20416 rooms.

The most popular server software among the online servers is:

• synapse: 15508 (78.6%)
• continuwuity: 1633 (8.3%)
• conduit: 567 (2.9%)
• dendrite: 323 (1.6%)

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.

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	184
2	continuwuity.org	185
3	sp5mi.eu	230
4	starseeker.nexus	237
5	raccoon.cafe	264
6	zirco.dev	269
7	nerdhouse.io	273
8	piros.pitty.hu	317
9	waywardinn.com	335
10	awesomesheep48.ca	336

🔗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.