Element for Android doesn’t support searching in encrypted channels and I think you can’t use E2EE in the browser at all(?), plus basically every other client has even more drawbacks when it comes to E2EE.

My team recently tried RocketChat, but E2EE is obviously an afterthought for that project as it has even more limitations than non-Element Matrix clients (no searching, no pinning, no file upload, no edit, etc.). Plus Jitsi integration seems to be buggy right now (at least on my Windows installation).

What else is out there that’s not on my radar? Is Matrix with Element really the best option right now? Is there no project that puts E2EE above all else?

Edit: Should be self-hostable and (FL)OSS.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    I haven’t tried Element Web for quite some time, but I remember having some issues with E2EE rooms. Maybe this has been resolved by now or maybe it was just the search not working there as well as on Element for Android. I can’t really remember right now.

    I am aware of SchildiChat, but AFAIK it doesn’t provide search in E2EE encrypted rooms, just like Element (both on Android). On iOS they both support it (I think).

    Maybe I should check out Syphon then. How polished is the client otherwise? Can it compete with Element?

    Edit: Last Syphon release was October 3rd 2022 and the last commit six months ago: https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon/releases
    I’d say that project is unmaintained.

    • MentalEdge
      2·
      5 months ago

      Again, the web client, or any client, can’t have search or message history that works at 100% until it has downloaded your user history, decrypted, and indexed it.

      I’ve not had any issue sending and receiving encrypted messages in the web UI, nor accessing message history once I give it some time to catch up on decrypting it.

      Syphon is in alpha, and thereby extremely basic, last I checked.

      I think you’ll have to just try it and see what state it is in, my issues with it were UI related and subjective, but otherwise I recall it being fine.

      • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Again, the web client, or any client, can’t have search or message history that works at 100% until it has downloaded your user history, decrypted, and indexed it.

        Doesn’t change anything from the fact that the Android client simply doesn’t have implemented that feature.

        • MentalEdge
          1·
          5 months ago

          No, but I’m not really referring to that. I’m referring to the fact that unlike an installed application, the browser version can’t just cache a bunch of data, and have it reliably stick around for the next time you open the browser, nor even rely on the browser letting it download and handle as much data as it might need to to begin with.

          So it might end up working not as well, depending on browser and settings, even though it’s literally the exact same code as the desktop application.