Crosspost: https://feddit.de/post/8502102

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.

  • ono@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    Correcting some misconceptions…

    Element for Android doesn’t support searching in encrypted channels

    That’s true of regular Element for Android, but it’s being replaced with Element X (which is built with Rust). I would expect search to be added there if it isn’t already.

    and I think you can’t use E2EE in the browser at all(?)

    I have done it in Firefox, so that’s false. Perhaps you had trouble with a specific browser?

    plus basically every other client has even more drawbacks when it comes to E2EE.

    Nheko handles E2EE just fine, so that would seem to be false as well.

    Since you’re looking for recommendations, it would help if you said which clients you tried and what problems you had with them.

    In case you haven’t seen it, you can set a Features: E2EE filter on this list:
    https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
      1·
      11 months ago

      Thanks for the great explanation. You said it a lot better than I could.

      Imo, matrix is worth using if the bugs dont make it impossible (which they dont for me).

      For peeps that absolutely need the perfect finish (which sounds like mixed priorities but maybe its just me) one could use signal.

      Peeps who need polished stuff and great privacy should probably pay for it.

    • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      I would expect search to be added

      That’s what I expected fo regular Element for Android as well, but it never came into existence.

      Element X

      I fail to find a feature comparison between the two. Does it have feature parity with Element yet? If not, what’s missing?

      Firefox

      Firefox is my main browser and has been for the last 15 years or so. It definitely was Firefox, but maybe I’m confusing it with a different issue. There definitely was some feature in Element Web that didn’t work and told me to use Desktop instead, unless I’m imagining things now.

      Nheko

      Interesting, I’ll take a look.
      EDIT: Nheko is NOT a mobile client. I’ve misinterpreted your statement.

      https://matrix.org/ecosystem/clients/

      That unfortunately doesn’t specify the extend of the E2EE support (like search), but I appreciate your effort.

      • ono@lemmy.caEnglish
        01·
        11 months ago

        Does it have feature parity with Element yet?

        Not yet. It’s in beta.

        https://element.io/labs/element-x

        EDIT: Nheko is NOT a mobile client.

        If you specifically meant mobile, you could have said so. Your statement was, “every other client has even more drawbacks when it comes to E2EE.” Nheko disproves that statement. It also suggests that some alternative mobile clients might handle E2EE at least as well as it does. You might want to try them.

        By the way, text search with end-to-end encryption happens to be tricky to implement, and Matrix projects aren’t funded by corporations with deep pockets. Tempering your expectations regarding development speed is probably worthwhile here.

  • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    Things I will take a look at:

    Things I will not take a look at:

    Feel free to add more suggestions.

    • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      First of all Jitsi isn’t part of the rocketchat-server package, so you need to set it up yourself or use a hoster, which both require separate accounts from the RocketChat ones.

      The specific issue I had on Windows was that RocketChat wasn’t registered to handle jitsi-meet:// links, it would just open a blank “open with” Windows dialog everytime. In general the “integration” seems lacking, the whole UX is really bad compared to Matrix/Element where voice calls just work.

      • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
        0·
        11 months ago

        But where did those `` jitsi-meet://` links come from?

        The calls generated inside rocket.chat are supposed to be handled by the rocket.chat app, everything else it doesn’t get involved with.

        (I wrote this integration so I’m legitimately interested in how it could be better)

        • Lemmchen@feddit.deOPEnglish
          0·
          11 months ago

          I’ve made some screenshots instead of a video. I hope you still get what the issue is.

          At the end there is no usuable call from the RocketChat client. But I can copy the meet.jit.si URL and open it in a browser.

          Originally I had an error message telling me that Windows doesn’t know what to do with jitsi-meet:// links, but that doesn’t show up anymore for some reason. Maybe because of me messing with the registry to solve the issue, but I’ve actually removed the registry key I had created before.

          • Phen@lemmy.eco.br
            2·
            11 months ago

            Ah I had that popup confused with one of our own; Now that I checked the text on google translate I figured out what’s happening.

            The meet.jit.si domain is a public jitsi instance that is kept by jitsi themselves. They recently implemented this login requirement on that domain (one user in every meeting must authenticate); They probably assumed that those meetings would always be in a browser and our desktop app is not handling that authentication flow properly. I’ll register a task for someone from our app’s team to take a look.

            If you host your own jitsi instance, this login requirement won’t be there and you won’t have this specific issue (though I assume you probably won’t stay with Rocket.Chat anyway due to the E2EE requirement).

  • uzi@lemmy.ca
    01·
    11 months ago

    Does XMPP with OMEMO give you what you are looking for, or am I misunderstanding?