This Week in Matrix 2026-10-30

🔗Matrix Live - The Matrix State of the Union

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Andy P says

We've wrapped up The Matrix Conference for this year!

We've dedicated this week's Matrix Live slot to bring you The Matrix State of the Union from the event, in case you missed it. We've also just posted a full write-up of highlights, including links to many of the talks, all of which are available to watch online right now.

Next on our radar: FOSDEM 2027! Planning is well underway, and we're happy to share the Call for Participation in the Decentralised Messaging Devroom. If your talk did not make it onto the schedule for The Matrix Conference, why not consider submitting it for FOSDEM? We'll have more information to share about our broader plans for FOSDEM over the next few weeks.

🔗Matrix in the News 📰

Andy P announces

Happy to see several news reports that came out of The Matrix Conference last week.

• The Register covers digital sovereignty, and the need for greater funding.
• ComputerWorld also talks about the overall European public sector movement.
• Computer Weekly focuses on Luxembourg and Austria case studies.

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} 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:

• MSC4569: Calendar
• MSC4568: DTMF for MatrixRTC

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC4551: Sliding Sync Extensions: Receipts
• MSC4548: Sliding Sync Extensions: Account data
• MSC4543: Sliding Sync Extensions: End-to-end encryption
• MSC4538: Sliding Sync Extensions: To-Device messages
• MSC4354: Sticky Events
• MSC4196: Voice and video calling application for MatrixRTC
• MSC4195: LiveKit transport for MatrixRTC
• MSC4143: MatrixRTC – Real-time communication over Matrix

Closed MSCs:

• No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

🔗Spec Updates

Hello from The Matrix Conference hackathon!

We have a blur of MSCs being accepted this week! All of them are related to the big push last week to get Matrix 2.0 MSCs over the line. Sans MSC4480 and MSC4075, they have all now landed! 🎉

Once the SCT has had some days to recover from the conference, they will work to get these remaining MSCs in shape for merging. After that, Matrix 2.0 will shortly follow!

Matrix conference talks related to Matrix 2.0 MSCs:

• Bringing MatrixRTC to the Matrix Ecosystem
• Matrix State of the Union

Outside of Matrix 2.0, the new MSC4569 federated calendaring MSC is also off the back of a Matrix conference talk this week. Give it a watch!

🔗Dept of Trust & Safety ⚖️

🔗policyserv (website)

A proactive safety and moderation tool for Matrix communities.

TravisR reports

PolicyServ v1.8.0 has been released! Aside from the plethora of dependency updates, this release primarily contains a refactor to use MSC4456 harms taxonomy internally. By using the harms taxonomy, we're able to more clearly communicate why an event wasn't allowed in a room via MSC4387's M_SAFETY error code (when client support follows).

The refactor may have changed how some filters behave or work. We encourage using a staging environment where possible, though it's safe to roll back to v1.7.0 if something goes wrong. Let us know if you run into any bugs in #policyserv:matrix.org.

The Foundation's policyserv instance is available to communities, and has been running the release over the weekend.

🔗Dept of Servers 🏢

🔗Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element.

madlittlemods (Eric Eastwood) says

This week we have a new release, Synapse 1.164.1. To highlight:

• We've been busy this week addressing the onslaught of security advisories reported in our dependencies. This required a few patch releases to bump pillow used for media, msgpack to fix a memory exhaustion issue reachable through the public room list API, and certifi/rustls-webpki to distrust the compromised eMudhra intermediate CA certificates. As with any security issue, it's recommended to update as soon as you can!
• Synapse now advertises support for Matrix v1.16 and v1.17 (#20333, #20334).
• The experimental MSC4140 Delayed Events and MSC4354 Sticky Events implementations had a flurry of updates, as the spec solidified in time for the Matrix Conference.
• Media uploads no longer leave behind orphaned files on disk when they exceed the media_upload_limits (#20006).
• A couple more Synapse Rustification updates including laying the foundation for a Rust-backed database pool (#19996) and a clock source on the Rust side (#20294).

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.

🔗Dept of Bridges 🌉

🔗Bolt / Lightning

jersey reports

After about two weeks of work or so, Bolt and Lightning v0.9.7 are out!

I've almost entirely rewritten Matrix support from scratch without relying on an external library, and it now properly handles sending/receiving custom stickers and emoji, lets you use just per-message-profiles to bridge if you've previously used an appservice, should work a lot better on non-Synapse homeservers, and also features a lot of fixes for other platforms too.

Lightning is an open-source bridge bot and bot framework I've been working on for about four years which supports Discord, Spacebar, Harmony, Fluxer, Stoat, Telegram, Matrix, IRC (including IRCv3 magic), Osmium, Matterbridge's API, and its own REST API, in addition to Matrix. Bolt is the free hosted version I offer that supports the platforms above, with Libera.chat and OFTC being the two currently supported IRC networks.

You can find more in the changelog, lightning website, bolt website, codeberg repo, or in https://matrix.to/#/#bolt:ineedmore.money and https://matrix.to/#/#lightning:ineedmore.money

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗iamb (website)

A terminal-based Matrix client that uses Vim keybindings.

ulyssa announces

iamb v0.0.13 was released earlier this week! :tada:

This release includes:

• Support for rendering polls, listing pinned events, and a :message command to view extra message details.
• Improvements to the room lists to show unread counters, section headers for grouping rooms together, and support for customizing which labels are shown next to rooms
• Support for viewing unjoined rooms in spaces and viewing room previews before joining.
• Support for custom theming, ~60 themes that have been ported from Vim, and options for expanding the username color palette.
• Support for OAuth login
• New :ignore and :self invites set block commands for dealing with spam and abuse.

See the v0.0.13 releases page for downloads and the full changelog, and the website or manual pages for updated docs and theme details.

🔗tacit (website)

Dominik [m] reports

Back in April I introduced Tacit here, my desktop-first Matrix client and fork of Tammy. Since then it has grown from "works on my machine" into something you can actually download: the first releases are out 🎉 The current one is 26.9.2-tacit.7.

You can grab builds for macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows and Linux, and the web version is available as a Docker image (ghcr.io/dfuchss/tacit). If you just want to try it without installing anything, there is a public web instance at https://tacit.fuchss.org. The version number tells you which Tammy release it is based on, so Tacit keeps following upstream and picks up new Tammy and trixnity-messenger features over time.

🔗What's new since the first announcement

• Guilds got categories: spaces are still shown as guilds, but you can now group rooms into categories (subspaces), browse them and invite people to a whole guild or category
• A calmer timeline: messages from the same sender are grouped, mentions get a soft highlight, and failed messages can be retried right where they are. New in 26.9.2-tacit.4: runs of room events (joins, invites, room settings, …) collapse into a single row like "6 room events by Alice and Bob" that expands on click, so a fresh chat no longer starts with a wall of notices
• Nicer replies: quotes are now a card in the quoted person's colour with their avatar and name, clicking one jumps to the original message and briefly highlights it, and the composer shows who you are replying to
• Small things I use every day: room filters, mark as read/unread, first slash commands (e.g. /spoiler), reactions that show who reacted, a system font option, and a native unread badge in the macOS Dock (whose icon now finally has the same size as its neighbours)
• Updates itself: the desktop app checks for new releases about once a day, verifies the download and installs it when you click Restart to update. You can turn this off under Settings › About the app. Starting with 26.9.2-tacit.3, you only have to install Tacit by hand once

Tacit is still alpha and still a weekend project for friends and me, so expect rough edges. The builds are not signed yet; the README explains how to start them anyway.

• Download & source: https://gitlab.com/dfuchss/tacit
• Project page: https://fuchss.org/projects/tacit/
• Feedback and issues are welcome on GitLab

🔗Extera (website)

rustyraven[extera] announces

Hi federation! We've made several changes to Extera since our latest TWIM post.

🔗Improved call UX

We've added call controls above the navigation bar, so you can quickly mute/unmute the microphone, go back to the call page and hang up. On the call page, you can now pin the participant view and choose which screen share to watch.

🔗Media galleries

Experimental support for MSC4274 media galleries! Rendering is always enabled, but sending them requires Settings → Chat → Use experimental galleries.

🔗Improved message forwarding

MSC4553 is now supported, with plaintext and HTML fallback.

🔗Location warning

Tapping "Send location" in a large (≥50 members) or public room now shows a warning first. We've actually seen people send their location to public rooms.

🔗Improved update checker

It now uses Extera's Forgejo instance and shows the changelog directly in the update notification.

🔗Custom chat tags

Assign custom tags to chats ー they will show up at the top of the chat list, like chat folders in Telegram.

🔗Extera on the web

Try it out: https://app.extera.xyz/

---

Website ・ Try Extera ・ Releases ・ Source code ・ Matrix space

🔗theGrid (website)

Victor Tran announces

It's been a while, but I've released v0.2 of theGrid this week. This release of theGrid introduces the following changes:

• You are now required to verify your session to use theGrid.
• Multi-SFU support is now available for calls
• Per-user volume controls are now available in a call
• You can now change your profile picture in your Account Settings

You can grab it from the website: https://thegrid.vicr123.com/ Or join the space to chat: #theGrid:bnbdiscord.net

n.b. theGrid v0.2.1 was released shortly after, containing a security update that disables some known bad TLS certificates. If you are using theGrid, it is recommended to update to theGrid v0.2.1 as soon as possible.

🔗Mactrix (website)

Viktor Strate announces

The latest release of Mactrix (a native macOS Matrix client) contains a lot of new features that I have been working on over the last month's time. Here are the highlights:

• Rewrite entire timeline in AppKit The timeline view has been rewritten purely in AppKit without any SwiftUI components. This simplifies things compared to the previous hybrid implementation that required a lot of fragile bridging code. This means that the new timeline is more capable, way faster, and more stable. For instance, the timeline now groups consecutive messages from the same sender and collapses consecutive status updates.
• Attachment uploading Attachments can now be added to messages by dragging or pasting files or media to the message composer. You can add several attachments to the same message. The attachments are sent together with the message text.
• Sidebar space grouping Rooms and sub-spaces are now grouped into your top level spaces.
• Mentions User mentions in messages now show as a visual colored pill with their avatar image next to it. You can now also mention users by writing an @ symbol to open an autocomplete popup with all users in the room.
• Message editing Messages can now be edited directly in the the timeline, by pressing the new pencil icon from the action bar when hovering over the message.
• Better link handling in messages When clicking https://matrix.to links, the app will now load the link directly inside the app instead of opening the web browser. Usernames in status messages can now also be clicked to open details about their profile.
• User drag and drop The initial work for supporting general drag and drop has been implemented for users. You can now drag users from the timeline or the inspector. Currently, you can only drop them into the message composer to mention them, but in the future this could be extended to invite users to rooms or change their permissions.

If the project sounds interesting, come say hi in our room #mactrix:qpqp.dk

🔗Nexus (website)

Matrix client made with Flutter and a Gomuks backend.

QuadRadical announces

🔗What's new?

Hello TWIM! Big news this week: Nexus v1.0.0 is out! 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉 (and 1.0.1, oops :p)

The first stable release of Nexus, v1.0.0, just released! Unfortunately, it had a bug where power level settings would send invalid power level events, so I fixed this and released v1.0.1. You can grab it from the release page. If you use the Flatpak repo, the nightly builds, or the NixOS module, you're already set up, just update.

Since alpha1 last week, we released four more alphas before this stable. Thanks to everyone who tested them and reported bugs! Here's everything that changed along the way:

• Room settings: You can now change a room's name, topic and other general settings, choose who can join (including knocking), and manage power levels, all from inside Nexus.
• A profile editor, so you can change your own display name and avatar.
• Typing indicators and read receipts.
• Event search, to find messages in a room.
• Knocking support, so you can ask to join rooms that use it.
• Mutual rooms are now shown in user popovers.
• Encryption setup: If your account doesn't have encryption set up yet, Nexus now walks you through it, instead of asking for a recovery key you don't have. If you've lost your recovery key, you can also reset your identity.
• Downloading media: Save images, videos, audio, files and avatars to your device.
• Swipe to reply on mobile (off by default, turn it on in settings!), and swipe in from the right to open the member list.
• AVIF image support, including animated AVIFs.
• Better notifications: On Android, messages from the same chat now stack into one conversation notification, with each sender's name and avatar. Group notifications on all platforms show who sent each message.
• Nexus now uses your system's emoji, instead of bundling its own.
• A new setting to hide membership events, thanks to @seres for contributing this!
• A much smaller Android APK due to fixing a bug that caused multiple architectures of libmpv to get bundled, instead of just the relevant one.
• And, as always, a whole lot of bug fixes 🙂

🔗What's next?

With 1.0.0 out, I'll keep fixing bugs as you find them, and start on the features that didn't make it into 1.0.0, in preparation for v1.1.0, see the milestone for that here. If you run into anything, please let me know in https://matrix.to/#/#nexus:federated.nexus.

🔗Get involved!

If you want to help with development, report bugs, ask questions, or simply keep up with new features, join our Matrix room at https://matrix.to/#/#nexus:federated.nexus, or check out the Git repo at https://nexus.federated.nexus.

🔗Fractal (website)

Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust.

Kévin Commaille announces

Several upstream dependencies released security fixes so we bundled them into Fractal 14.2 and a few days later Fractal 14.3 to make sure that everything runs smoothly until the next release!

This version is available right now on Flathub.

As usual, you can also help make sure the next major version is solid by using Fractal Nightly. Help on fixing our remaining bugs is of course always appreciated!

🔗FluffyChat (website)

The cutest instant messenger in the [matrix].

Krille - Christian K. announces

FluffyChat 2.11 is out (with two hotfix releases right after it). This release brings a lot of bugfixes and stability improvements under the hood and finally support for Windows and macOS.

🔗Try out our new desktop deployments

FluffyChat is now available as a beta on Windows and macOS. You can install the Windows version by downloading the installer from the GitHub release page:

https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/releases

For macOS you can join the open testflight group. Be aware that this is limited to 100 testers for now:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/Py6wnFGF

Feel free to report platform related bugs to GitHub.

🔗Call improvements

Calls now also have audio on iOS, which was broken because of a bug in the audio session. LiveKit SFUs are also now discovered by the /rtc/transports endpoint from MSC4143.

🔗Fixes

A severe problem where the android app crashes regularly after closed with the back button has been fixed.

Read the full changelog here:

https://github.com/krille-chan/fluffychat/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#v2110

🔗Element X iOS (website)

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

Mauro says

Hi everyone! Here's what the Element X iOS team has been up to this week:

🔗✨ New and improved

• Forward several messages at once: the multi-message forwarding we mentioned last time is done and now on for everyone. Pick a few messages and send them on together.
• Missed calls while busy: if a call comes in while another one is ringing or already going, it now shows as a missed call instead of interrupting you.
• See your recovery key as you type: the recovery key field now has a show/hide button.

🔗🚧 In progress

• Multi-account support: each account now shares its live location separately, and we're doing the same for calls, so each call uses the account it was meant for.
• Removing a device: you'll soon be able to check or set up your recovery key right from that screen.

🔗🐛 Fixes

• "Create account" now opens the sign-up page, not the sign-in page.
• Verifying a session from iOS with an Android device no longer leaves both devices waiting.
• Live location shares now stop on time, even when the phone isn't moving.
• Spatial photos sent in original quality now stay spatial.
• Better accessibility: VoiceOver can find the settings button again, and the scroll buttons no longer get huge at larger text sizes.

🔗💜 Community

• Thanks to rene-schakmann, who kept HDR photos in HDR when location data is removed, and stopped code from being hyphenated when it wraps in the timeline.

🔗Matrix Federation Stats 📊

Aine [etke.cc] says

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

As of today, 20477 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 4077 (19.9%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 20314 rooms.

The most popular server software among the online servers is:

• synapse: 15682 (76.6%)
• continuwuity: 1956 (9.6%)
• conduit: 520 (2.5%)
• dendrite: 271 (1.3%)

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	169
2	melthecat.dev	174
3	codestorm.net	197
4	sspaeth.de	206
5	kanp.ai	214
6	nerdhouse.io	220
7	doesnmlab.xyz	314.5
8	koshchki123.com	452
9	jvyden.xyz	469
10	frai.se	718

🔗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.