[HN Gopher] New element Web and desktop design
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New element Web and desktop design
Author : maelito
Score : 67 points
Date : 2025-09-23 15:44 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (element.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (element.io)
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| The only design issues I ever had with Matrix was the protocol
| design. This is lipstick on a pig.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| From the post:
|
| > ...lays the groundwork for a more resilient technical
| foundation
|
| Let's hope the protocol improves
| ezst wrote:
| Yeah, no. I lost hope that they have any idea of what they
| are doing, or any willingness to improve and drop out of the
| sunk cost fallacy that paralyses them. Every two years or so
| they break protocol and implementations with big promises
| that "this time the charm, finally", and it's essentially the
| same slow mess with some new bugs.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| I have no hope for matrix.
|
| Good summary of what's wrong: https://xn--
| gckvb8fzb.com/giving-up-on-element-and-matrixorg...
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Poor performance, UX, and reliability issues. WELP, seems
| like XMPP is much simpler to use.
|
| For anyone who doesn't know the difference between XMPP and
| Matrix (like me): https://claude.ai/share/a2624334-d21e-455
| a-a1b3-9025c69a921a
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| What do you recommend as a better (secure/private)
| alternative?
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| I haven't come around to actually look for an alternative
| but XMPP will the first I'll try.
| 7bit wrote:
| Whats Bad with the protocol design?
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| https://xn--gckvb8fzb.com/giving-up-on-element-and-
| matrixorg...
|
| For example.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| This is interesting timing because I self-host a Matrix server
| (Conduit) for some friends and we were lamenting the dearth of
| good apps. I'm currently using Cinny as a Safari app on desktop
| and PWA on my phone, and Element.
|
| The new Element design is nice.
| noident wrote:
| Does this depend on sliding sync and their standalone authz
| server like Element X does?
|
| I'd love to use Element X, but Element abandoned the form of SSO
| my community depends on, and I don't really have an appetite to
| spend 12 hours of my free time standing up sliding sync, a
| separate auth server, migrating my users to the separate auth
| server, spending hours explaining to everyone that their
| credentials live in some other place now, and then migrating my
| custom server admin software to use OpenID connect. Oh well.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I don't really have an appetite to spend 12 hours of my free
| time standing up sliding sync
|
| This has been built into synapse now for months, maybe a year.
| Does not require a second sliding-sync component anymore.
| noident wrote:
| That's great!
|
| What about Matrix Authentication Service? That's still a
| separate piece of software that requires PostgreSQL (as
| opposed to SQLite like my Synapse instance uses) and has no
| clear migration path for those of us using our own SSO
| solution (SAML, CAS, maybe your own OIDC provider like
| Keycloak...), right?
|
| I don't want to run Dex and complicate the stack further,
| either.
|
| I think 12 hours to migrate is probably optimistic even with
| built-in sliding sync, actually...
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > What about Matrix Authentication Service?
|
| Still its own thing which I have not deployed on my
| homeserver.
|
| > as opposed to the SQLite like my Synapse instance uses
|
| I've done this for testing but they really don't recommend
| it for production. It's had a history of being broken:
| https://github.com/element-hq/synapse/issues/18325
| noident wrote:
| I've lucked out and haven't had any issues like that on
| my tiny home server.
|
| I wish it were easier to be a Synapse admin! It seems
| like all server updates are focused on scaling matrix.org
| and the little guys that provide network diversity are
| not really being considered a priority.
| Arathorn wrote:
| We're actively trying to fix that - we're _finally_
| launching an official Web admin interface as FOSS (AGPL)
| for Synapse in the next day or two (it was meant to ship
| today in fact, but got blocked on a debate on how to
| distribute the containers).
|
| Meanwhile you can see me trying to improve diskspace for
| Synapse by ~100x
| here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5zAgVYBuGk&t=1851s
| - admittedly motivated by matrix.org, but it would
| improve disk storage immeasurably for everyone.
|
| Then, https://element.io/server-suite/community is built
| to be a really simple FOSS distro (albeit for k8s) which
| provides Matrix Auth Service, Synapse, Element Web,
| Element Call and (in a few days) Element Admin all in one
| package for self-hosters.
|
| And if you hate k8s, then there's always the trivial
| docker-compose thing I did for the same stack at
| https://github.com/element-hq/element-docker-demo.
|
| We have very much not forgotten the self-hosters - not
| least because Element tries to make money by selling the
| enterprise distro for enterprisey self-hosters at
| https://element.io/server-suite/pro. The rule of thumb is
| that stuff which privileges the end-user goes FOSS, and
| the stuff which privileges the enterprise over the end-
| user goes Pro{prietary,fessional}.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| A little bit of slack here, a little bit of teams there and a
| smidge of discord. Really not sure about it.
| ezst wrote:
| Seems heavily inspired by MSTeams
| yeasku wrote:
| The back button does not work on my phone, android.
| binaryturtle wrote:
| I noticed it yesterday and I have to say I hate it. The "Peoples"
| section seems to be entirely gone (it's now intermingled with
| rooms in the "Home" section). You no longer can see favorite/
| normal/ low priority DMs or rooms in proper order at once. E.g.
| in Spaces I had my one or two favourite rooms at the top in a
| separate section; now it's somewhere messed up in the middle with
| the normal priority stuff. You constantly have to fiddle with the
| space-wasting bubble buttons to find stuff.
|
| No idea how that is supposed to improve things really. Why is it
| always necessary to break user's muscle memory with this types if
| extreme "improvements"?
|
| I'm still trying to find out where to manage my Sessions in the
| newer Element versions (I have to keep a very old one around to
| do that).
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I'll just go and say I hate the design changes in desktop, it's
| more cluttered without good reason. Feels like they made the
| text bolder and added a bunch of borders or increased them
| where they weren't before. You can't collapse the names down as
| far as you could in the past to save space so when this app
| runs tiled it's stuck with like a third less functional space
| than it used to have.
|
| I'm probably going to switch back to using nheko which also has
| the benefit of being much lighter on resources. Nheko I can
| collapse the name list right down to icons if I want.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Honestly, this was the reaction I expected to have when I first
| started using the new roomlist (which was built by the Element
| design/product/eng teams, rather than the old one, which was
| originally written by me).
|
| However, in practice, I've rapidly found that I genuinely don't
| mind the new layout, and actually prefer it. (And I tend to be
| have a bad attitude to change in general). The reasons are:
|
| * It's way faster to switch rooms
|
| * You can filter on People by hitting the People filter button
| rather than having a dedicated section.
|
| * I spent my life scrolling around the previous sections, or
| manually resizing them, etc, whereas the simplicity actually
| feels a bit refreshing and lighter weight.
|
| That said, this is an initial release of the new room list, and
| there's a bunch of work to be done still:
|
| * Need to support collapsing the LeftPanel like we used to be
| able to.
|
| * There's a plan to re-introduce Sections again (so you can see
| your favourites etc separately to the main contents if you want
| - and reclaim muscle memory)
|
| In terms of where to manage Sessions in Element Web/Desktop -
| it should always be the 'Sessions' tab in Settings? If your
| server is using native OIDC (i.e. matrix-authentication-
| service) then some of the management gets delegated to MAS and
| links through to account.matrix.org (or wherever your MAS
| lives). But if you can't see any way to manage Sessions, then
| it's likely a misconfiguration or a bug; please let us know the
| details.
| detaro wrote:
| You'd think Element would have enough "we'll fix it in the
| future, we promise" problems that you _didn 't_ intentionally
| cause...
| detaro wrote:
| Yes, it's pretty terrible. Especially since the filters reset
| every time you switch spaces, so you need to set them again
| constantly. And filters only is just worse than dedicated
| sections where you can actually see multiple at a glance in
| smaller spaces.
|
| This might be the point where I give up on Element (or Matrix
| entirely), I was willing to excuse some of the jank in exchange
| for it having all the features in a somewhat reasonable UI, but
| if they break that what's the point. Messing with it while
| Element X is still incomplete feels like a very weird choice.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Should add a link to the main site from the blog on the mobile
| layout
| codedokode wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the company appears to have begun quietly phasing
| out the classic Element app in favor of Element X, even though it
| still misses crucial features like threads and spaces, besides
| the less important things like widgets, grouping by priority, and
| live location sharing.
|
| I didn't even know such "important" features exist, and never
| needed them.
|
| > Whenever you log on from a new device, you have to cross-verify
| the device using either a secret key or, more comfortably,
| another device that has already been verified.
|
| If you have a laptop and a smartphone, you need to verify the
| device once, doesn't look complicated. And most smartphones are
| probably backdoored anyway so you should not be using matrix
| there.
|
| > Matrix was never good.
|
| Web version of Element allows sending messages, files and calls,
| and they actually work. That's already better than many open-
| source projects including Jabber.
|
| Although I must I admit, I see a warning that I need to "verify
| this session" in a web client, but no meaningful way to do it.
| Also web client annoys and distracts me by messages like "Chats
| have a new look". What's the point of showing this popup? If they
| have a new look, everyone will notice without any popups. Stop
| copying worst features of commercial software.
| Arathorn wrote:
| > Meanwhile, the company appears to have begun quietly phasing
| out the classic Element app
|
| I'm not sure we've been quiet about it - c.f.
| https://element.io/blog/element-x-ignition/ :P
|
| > it still misses crucial features like threads and spaces
|
| fwiw, threads & spaces are in beta right now on Element X iOS
| and Android, aiming to launch in the coming weeks. If you are
| unafraid of bugs, and bearing in mind that it's very still WIP
| and none of the perf work has happened yet, you can enable dev
| mode by 7-tapping the version number in settings and enabling
| them on.
|
| > Matrix was never good.
|
| I'd be first to admit that Matrix clients like Element have had
| their usability challenges over the years. However, we have
| spent the last 2-3 years doing nothing but trying to fix this,
| and we believe the Element X generation finally punches its
| weight against the proprietary/centralised alts.
|
| Live location share is next on the list after Thread/Spaces;
| "Low priority" is already an option in dev settings, and then
| Widgets are pretty much the last thing left.
|
| You can see a full parity comparison between Element Classic &
| Element X at
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17_j_HAPZEopqDAbKKsaw...
| fwiw - which hopefully puts the "EX is missing crucial
| features" complaint more in context.
| baobun wrote:
| The real crucial missing piece in Element X compared to
| Element is key/device/session/verification management and
| insights. Fully self-managing a user account or chat sessions
| currently can not be done in EX. Verification ceremony
| becomes meaningless without the degree of control and detail
| which is available in Element but not Element X.
|
| In the spreadsheet you linked I see "manually import/export
| E2EE keys" as missing in EX but there is way more (and IMO
| more significant) gaps in security-related UI than that. I
| believe this class of missing functionality may be a major
| blind spot on the EX roadmap.
|
| "The authenticity of this message can't be guaranteed on this
| device"... OK, now what? In Element it's usually at least
| possible to understand the cause of and do something about
| those situations. In Element X, that notice is all you get.
|
| Because of this it still feels like a toy beta since you
| basically need a second not-Element-X client running as a
| backup for when issues occur or you otherwise want that
| control or insight into your own account, sessions, and
| chats.
|
| Oh, and I guess not everyone is content with Apple/Google
| duopoly while EX is exclusive to iOS/Android.
| Arathorn wrote:
| > The real crucial missing piece in Element X compared to
| Element is key/device/session/verification management and
| insights.
|
| Hmmmmmmm. Are you running EX against an older homeserver
| which doesn't have matrix-authentication-service and native
| OIDC? On my EX on matrix.org, I have "Manage account" and
| "manage devices" options in Settings which takes me through
| to manage the current devices and sessions.
|
| In terms of managing verification and cross-signing, the
| reason there's no longer explicit controls for verifying
| your sessions is that the model going forwards is that
| users _must_ verify all their devices: in future any
| devices not verified by the user will be excluded from
| conversations. EX does this by forcing you to verify when
| you login (and Element Classic also does this).
|
| In other words, the missing functionality you're talking
| about is deliberately removed because it was never a good
| idea in the first place - it was a backwards-compatibility
| side-effect of the way that encryption and cross-signing
| incrementally landed in the first place. Now, we're moving
| towards a model like Signal or iMessage or any other E2EE
| messenger where all your devices should be verified and
| cross-signed and trusted automatically, and so the UX
| reflects that.
|
| Obviously if you have other Matrix clients or bots flying
| around which don't verify by default, this then becomes
| tricky, but it's very unclear that the right solution is to
| bog EX's UI down with the fragility and complexity of the
| old apps. If you're a poweruser who needs to juggle
| dangerous Matrix arcana like unverified devices, then the
| right solution probably _is_ to use a poweruser app to do
| so. Meanwhile, we want EX 's UI to be simple and just work
| out of the box, rather than getting tangled up with these
| complexities.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I don't really get why they're spending their time on this kind
| of window dressing.
| dybber wrote:
| I think it would be nice to get even more people using
| something like Element rather than a Meta-owned app, Microsoft
| Teams, etc.
|
| For that to have a chance they need user-interfaces that are
| just as easy to use, and almost feature parity with what chat
| program people currently are used to.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I'd agree with that, but based on this post I don't see that
| this is a huge step forward. From my perspective the big UI
| issues are not with this kind of stuff. Some of the bigger
| problems are intertwined with the server and protocol.
|
| Search, for instance, is a major weak spot; it sometimes gets
| its index messed up and resetting it a bunch of times still
| doesn't work. Even when it does work, it fails to find what
| I'm looking for. This is partly because because the protocol
| doesn't actually define any particular search behavior, so
| there's no way to even know what the search is doing (i.e.,
| whether it's searching for literal text, some kind of "smart"
| search, or what).
|
| Another obvious UI gap is moderation tools, which are
| woefully inadequate to actually handle the kind of spam that
| sometimes floods in. Some of this also has to do with things
| that probably should be fixed on the protocol or server level
| (e.g., some kind of flood detection).
|
| For people looking to Element as a Discord replacement, what
| would help are changes that make things work more like
| Discord in various ways (e.g., joining a space auto-joins you
| to various rooms), but again these require protocol-level
| support.
|
| Overall I'm actually pretty satisfied with the Element
| desktop UI, and the main issues I've had with it (apart from
| the above) are in the onboarding/verification stuff, which is
| an area where things have noticeably improved over the past
| year or two. I wouldn't say that the Element desktop UI is a
| major weak point for Matrix. There are much bigger problems
| that need to be tackled, and my prediction is that as long as
| they remain untackled, small-scale UI changes like the ones
| mentioned in the post aren't going to move the needle.
| detaro wrote:
| This doesn't make anything easier to use. On top of it being
| large-ish changes in the "old" client, when the new one
| that's supposed to replace it and be so much better still
| doesn't do everything (and they've already pissed of a good
| chunk of users by hyping that before it was ready, so they
| stuck with the old client for now waiting, just for that to
| get messed up too)
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > We're dialling down the drama (yes, that red !) and turning up
| readability
|
| Kind of sad that this is touted as a 'feature' in 2025.
| dcre wrote:
| "We've also removed the duplicative meta-spaces (People,
| Favourites). Filters are the new foundation -- more flexible,
| more future-proof, and built for growth."
|
| As a heavy Element user for work, I have long hated this in
| Element X iOS and now I have the pleasure of hating it in Element
| web. Everyone at my job is mad about the remove of these
| "duplicative" metaspaces. Here's a GitHub issue about it:
| https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/issues/30849
|
| I am a UI dev and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt,
| but after using Element for nearly 5 years, it really does feel
| like the user experience only gets worse over time. It is really
| sort of amazing.
| Arathorn wrote:
| As I mentioned here
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45377920), sections may
| well return - they just didn't make the first cut. Meta-spaces
| _ARE_ duplicative though, if you already have filter buttons
| which do precisely the same thing - and these are the filter
| buttons which have been added.
| nixosbestos wrote:
| Still rooting for y'all but did you do any user testing of
| this? It constantly _collapses the filters_ meaning it 's
| absolutely more thought and clicks every time than just
| having the favorite button. It would be so, so easy to just
| not collapse those filters. Or, potentially consider that
| "duplicative" is not a reason for an unpopular UX change.
| Arathorn wrote:
| It's possible that I'm totally missing what everyone's
| talking about. The design team did do a tonne of user
| testing on this, and this is the result.
|
| What do you mean by 'constantly collapses the filters'? I'm
| clicking the filters right now and they stick? And don't
| collapse? Or are you saying that they apply to a single
| list rather than multiple sections?
| jchw wrote:
| I'm nervous. They stopped working on the Dendrite home server,
| which does not support sliding sync. They stopped working on the
| sliding sync proxy, which uses an old version of sliding sync
| that is no longer supported by Element X. Element X requires
| sliding sync. There is no way to migrate data from Dendrite to
| Synapse or Conduit, either. It kinda seems like they're creating
| a situation where we inevitably have to lose a bunch of data. I
| get that Dendrite was never stable, but the documentation made it
| seem like 1. It was the future, 2. It was lighter weight than
| Synapse, 3. It would work just fine for small home servers.
|
| I don't really think Element or Matrix gives a damn, either.
| Well, I get that there's no money to extract from the community,
| or at least not much, but still, all of this leaves a bad taste
| in my mouth, and makes me think that we all should've probably
| just stuck with XMPP. But then again, I never self-hosted XMPP,
| so maybe it is just as dreadful.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Well, I give a damn, and i'm responsible for both Matrix &
| Element :)
|
| I agree that it sucks that Element doesn't have the $ to
| support work on both Dendrite and Synapse/Synapse Pro, and
| unfortunately there's not been enough community momentum on
| Dendrite to add features like sliding sync.
|
| It's not a matter of "there's no money to extract from
| community users" - instead it's simply "until we get to
| breakeven, we can't afford to work on Dendrite".
|
| While I can't promise that Element will ever return to working
| on Dendrite once we /do/ get to breakeven (maintaining two
| codebases of the same product is just self-destructive,
| especially now other 3rd party servers exist) - at the least we
| can provide migration tools. It's worth noting that right now
| you can't even migrate between domains from synapse to synapse
| though, let alone dendrite to synapse.
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