One thing I heard from some of my friends as a reason why they don't like using Matrix (via Element clients) was inability to use "stickers" like one can on WhatsApp, iMessage and other messaging apps. Apparently, this was important enough for them to lose interest in the platform over it.
I guess the bar is pretty high for consumer messengers these days?
Not the primary use case for stickers, but what do you do when you're talking with someone for whom you're not literate in their language? Or someone who is not literate in any language?
Stickers provide utility beyond beyond a fun way to communicate. Stickers, emoji reactions, voice notes, etc. are things we tend to see denigrated here, but are also non-optional features for a messaging app in the year 2016.
These days messaging apps have been translation features. Another thing that matrix/element is missing sadly.
I remember reading a feature request and it was put off on the reasoning of "server-based breaks our encryption and client-based doesn't work well enough". Makes sense but I don't think the latter point is still true, and Matrix is too focused on encryption IMO. In large open rooms there's no point to it because anyyone who wants to can join anyway.
I don't know whether or not it is our instance at $dayjob that has a wonky setup, or if it is the elements client, or what (probably the client, as the problems all but disappear in the webb-ui version), but oh how many synchronization issues we are facing. threaded conversations not showing up, or randomly disappearing, clients getting stuck in message fetching loops, not actually fetching anything, notifications of new messages either not appearing, or not disappearing upon reading them, and ON TOP OF THAT no custom stickers/emojis/gifs...
but those synchronization issues... if I want to be sure something reaches the rest of the team in a timely manner, I have reverted back to email
Matrix should categorically not have any sync issues; this is not normal. Something bad must be happening on the server; what server are you using and how are you running it?
Lol, messages showing up randomly days later is par for the course for our tiny group chat, most of whom are on matrix.org. Sometimes element won't download messages for some rooms (or even all rooms) for days/hours. Matrix has gotten far less reliable over the years (and I used to run a few homeservers).
I was like "oh common, that can't be a real comment, it's obvious to everyone how unstable this still is", then I saw that the comment was from Arathorn.
You know, for half of the time you spend commenting over here to save face (or something), you could work with your users and see their firsthand experience for yourself.
Yeah having a messaging app I enjoy using is important. Good UI and fun features make something worth using, it's why telegram is still my most used messenger.
Telegram is great indeed. I'm happily paying for premium for two reasons: first it's not expensive at all (2€ per month) and secondly it offers so many fun and useful features. I often buy it for friends too as a gift. They really have a good thing going.
On most other platforms it's usually more the stick than the carrot (pay up or we bombard you with ads) and it's tons more expensive, eg Instagram alone costs 3x as much.
Differently designed apps for social and professional life is a good idea! A streamlined app focused only on essential functionality is the best way to ensure meaningful coordination.
It is mentally taxing when critical work updates are buried under reactions, glitter, and casual banter. Moving memes and family updates to a dedicated 'leisure' app allows for a high-signal environment.
Something that gets things done, but also something where quick reactions are painful to do would be perfect.
In a an work/purposeful communication it's a great feature not to have fun features.
People how love messaging are the bane of professional communication. You need to tell them to shout up, and tone down, but you want to do it politely. Just one person in a group that sends haha and gif to response to every message in a group is painful to deal with.
Every other major client (FluffyChat, Cinny, Nehko, prolly others I’m not aware of) has sticker support, and the ones I mentioned work together seamlessly. Element is cripplingly slow and has an entire drama with a decade-long issue where they continually refuse working commits because they didn’t come from in-house.
This was definitely a little frustrating. Matrix protocol does have stickers technically, I've been following that PR since its inception. But when I last used it in practice, admittedly a few years ago, the UX was lacking. Adding and posting stickers was _not_ straightforward, in fact adding new stickers was restricted somehow. Not sure how it works now, and maybe that's just inevitable with a decentralized protocol.
It’s not inevitable – the sticker packs (as currently implemented) live on your homeserver. So in a sense, it is decentralized already, and it’s only a matter of designing and building an interface to manage those packs (and hopefully making stickers link back to the packs, for better discoverability).
For now, you can override which server to use for the stickers. There’s an implementation that downloads Telegram sticker packs (but you have to specify which packs you want before deploying it).
Productivity software and offerings in general should probably “come late to the party” and offer the most polished version of what everyone else is doing.
Yeah, but the originals they're copying from are also working hard to polish their own products, and they have more experience with user feedback regarding those features.
For example: What if matrix could be used like email! now that would make it stand out won't it? i.e.: DANmode@danssite.net , you could post your matrix address like that, and matrix clients could resolve it using SRV records for matrix, and querying the correct homeserver designated on danssite.net. It could be marketed as an email replacement. You could ask sites to support it for registrations instead of email.
Or.. what if it supported custom gif reactions, record yourself doing something, save it as a custom emoji, and you can use it in any chat.
That's what I mean, lots of good ideas to pull from that makes it so that "use matrix because <it can do this better>" , instead of because it's more private or secure, or whatever.
> What if matrix could be used like email! now that would make it stand out won't it? i.e.: DANmode@danssite.net , you could post your matrix address like that, and matrix clients could resolve it using SRV records for matrix, and querying the correct homeserver designated on danssite.net.
I am running a Galene instance via the YunoHost self-hosting package on a small dedicated server (2 cores, 4gb of RAM).
So far it’s much better than I expected, both in terms of latency and the overall video/audio quality. Feels better than Jitsi and even a FaceTime / WhatsApp call.
> So far [Galene is] much better than I expected, both in terms of latency and the overall video/audio quality
Latency is better, since Galene uses an unordered buffer instead of a jitter buffer. Lipsynch should also be slightly better, as Galene carefully computes audio/video offsets and forwards the result to the receiver so it can compensate.
Audio and video quality, on the other hand, should be roughly the same, unless Jitsi is doing something wrong.
Was just looking for a more general extension like this, thanks!
Just a small nitpick / feature request:
I try not to install extensions that require "Read and change all your data on all websites" permission, so may I ask you to change it to something less general, such as requiring access to specific websites once the corresponding new URL is added to a white list?
I saw some Chrome extensions doing this as of late.
A few interesting quotes about (unaudited) financials:
> According to previously unreported half-year disclosures, Telegram had $910mn in cash and cash equivalents at June 30, up from $142mn a year prior.
> Telegram’s revenues in the first half of 2025 jumped more than 65 per cent to $870mn, compared with $525mn in the same period the previous year.
> Nearly a third of Telegram’s revenue — or $300mn — came from so-called exclusivity agreements (probably related to the toncoin cryptocurrency)
> Advertising revenue was up 5 per cent to $125mn in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, premium subscriptions jumped 88 per cent to $223mn, compared with $119mn in the same period in 2024 as the number of paying users rose.
Is it me or the remaining 25% of the revenue sources (222mn of 910mn) are not detailed at all?
Would love to give Firefox a chance but one thing that stops me (apart from occasional website loading bugs) is inability to install PWAs. Not sure why it’s not implemented like it has been for a long time in Chrome and all its forks.
I have found a 3rd party extension that claims to facilitate this (0) but still feel uncomfortable to use this for privacy reasons.
If you really care, it's ok to just Firefox for the majority of your web browsing activities but use Chrome or a fork for PWA.
Although using Firefox increasingly means a worse experience, including:
* infinite loop of Cloudflare verification
* inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling)
* subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling)
* WebUSB support
I have personally run into all of them. Some are under Firefox's control but others are not. I do still use Firefox for most websites unless it's technically not possible, but unfortunately the exception is happening more and more.
I don't run into CAPTCHA loops with Firefox. Have you tried changing your user agent to pretend to be Firefox on Windows or Mac? I've heard Linux users are more likely to be interpreted as bots.
The machine is on a corporate network, that's the issue. I don't have issues when
1) using Chrome/Edge on that same machine on corporate network 2) using Firefox on Linux on corporate network 3) using Firefox on Windows on my own machine at home
> * infinite loop of Cloudflare verification * inferior performance compared to Chrome (page loading, large page scrolling) * subtle bugs (e.g. audio handling)
The first two are likely due to extensions rather than the core Firefox. I find at least as many cases where it’s faster, and it usually uses less memory. The third one has high variability - I’ve reported enough bugs against all of the major browsers not to trust any of them but these days there are a lot of web developers who only test on Chrome and half of the time I find what appears to be a bug in Safari or Firefox it’s really an unnecessary reliance on something Chrome specific.
Probably wants to share state though (cookie jar, history, password manager, etc)
The bottom line is that Google invests more in Chrome than Mozilla can afford to invest in Ff, so the latter will likely never catch up in features or performance.
"IMPORTANT: These binaries are provided by anyone who are willing to build and submit them, they are NOT official. Because these binaries generally not reproducible, authenticity cannot be guaranteed. For your consideration, each download page lists the GitHub user that submitted those binaries."
Given one does not compile their own version, wouldn't this make the privacy trade-off vis-à-vis generic Chromium unacceptable?
GitHub now offers "artifact attestation"[1], which would be ideal for this use case. It records what build process binaries originated from, so they can still be published elsewhere while remaining verifiable.
This is common. Sometimes a security policy works (e.g. a password length requirement may cause people to come up with stronger password) and sometimes people consider it excessive and prefer to work around it (e.g. a password length requirement may cause people to write the password down on a sticky note and attach it to the computer screen).
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