This Week in Matrix 2024-10-04

Matrix Live

Dept of Spec 📜

The weekly spec update

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:

• MSC4210: Remove legacy mentions
• MSC4209: Updating endpoints in-place
• MSC4208: Adding User-Defined Custom Fields to User Global Profiles
• MSC4207: Media identifier moderation policy
• MSC4206: Moderation policy auditing and context
• MSC4205: Hashed moderation policy entities
• MSC4204: m.takedown moderation policy recommendation
• MSC4203: Sending to-device events to appservices
• MSC4202: Reporting User Profiles
• MSC4201: Profiles as Rooms v2
• MSC4198: Usage of OIDC login_hint
• MSC4197: Copy Paste Hints

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• MSC4170: 403 error responses for profile APIs (merge)

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC4189: Allowing guests to access uploaded media

Closed MSCs:

• No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

Spec Update

Lots of interesting MSCs came in this week! Note that last week’s are also listed as the spec update was skipped.

A swath are looking to improve moderation in Matrix, while others aiming to improve the story around notifications and end-to-end encrypted bridges. There’s also been lots of discussion on the hot MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value pairs, which can be built upon with spec’d profile fields such as m.timezone (MSC4175).

MSC4208 is the result of splitting out the custom fields portion of that MSC, as it was determined that that portion of MSC4133 needed further discussion before merging.

Finally, MSC4189: Allowing guests to access uploaded media being merged closes one of the final gaps with the authenticated media epic.

Dept of Servers 🏢

Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element

Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} says

This week we released v1.116.0. The highlights haven’t changed since our announcement of v1.116.0rc2 last week. See the changelog for the full details.

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 on our issue tracker.

Dept of Clients 📱

Element-Web

tulir announces

My PR for rendering media captions was just merged into element web :3 https://github.com/element-hq/matrix-react-sdk/pull/43

This allows for a caption to be shown next to the media filename by adding support for the changes from MSC2530

Extera Material Design

OfficialDakari says

Last 5 days I was working on Material UI redesign as usual. Here is what changed:

• Speed dial button
• Profile edit window
• Room and space settings
• floating buttons in room timeline

Also I’ve brought back sound effects and Project Sekai related auth background. They are now stored locally (P.S.: Hardcoding Matrix Media URLs was the worst idea)

Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element-iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 16+.

Doug announces

This week have have been working on “Identity Pinning Violation Notifications” (TOFU via the Rust SDK), the ability to hide images in the timeline for Trust & Safety purposes and we’ve started exploring what Knocking could look like in the app.

Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

Rory&::MatrixUtils - General utility suite for Matrix

Emma [it/its] reports

Tiny updates this week :)

A short list of major changes:

• You can now add sessions with an access token, this opens up usage of RMU to users of homeservers without password login. No more messing with localstorage!
• Fixed a bug with the policy list editor, that caused state keys to be double URL-encoded. You can now successfully edit and remove policies again!

The “first party” instance is available at https://mru.rory.gay, and is a clientside-only web app! If RMU has provided value in your daily routines or as a one time thing, please do consider donating over at Liberapay!

And, as with all of the other projects:

• The code is available at cgit.rory.gay!
  • All contributions are more than welcome, be it documentation, code, layout/UI/UX improvements, anything!
• Discussion, suggestions and ideas are welcome in #mru:rory.gay

Rory&::LibMatrix (website)

.NET 8 matrix bot/client library/SDK

Emma [it/its] says

A few bugfixes and bodges left and right :)

Changes

• Bots can now load their access tokens from a file! You’re welcome, systemd users! 🔒
• Fixed and improved interoperation with tools like Draupnir. (Breaking: don’t URL encode your state keys anymore!)
• Minor work towards packaging & potentially publishing to NuGet! Maybe LibMatrix in your local package repo soon? 🦊 👉👈
• Breaking: Room predecessor support has been removed. Thanks, #foundation-office:matrix.org!
• Rooms where a name had been set before but subsequently removed, should now correctly pick an alternative name to display. No more ”< small void where text is supposed to be >”.
• Made it easier to use custom types when reading events.
• You can finally add mentions and newlines to messages.

If you want to help out on these topics, please feel free to reach out at #libmatrix:rory.gay! (N.B. Sorry, matrix.org users, the room is currently inaccessible. We hope to have this resolved soon!)

And, as always:

• The code is available at cgit.rory.gay!
  • All contributions are more than welcome, be it documentation, code, anything! Perhaps, example usecases, bots, …?
• Discussion, suggestions and ideas are welcome in #libmatrix:rory.gay (Space: #mru-space:rory.gay)
• Got a cool project that you’re working on and want to share, using LibMatrix? Be sure to let us know, we’d love to hear all about it!

Dept of Services 🚀

etke.cc (website)

Your matrix server on your conditions

Synapse-Admin Updates

Aine [don’t DM] reports

A while back, we at etke.cc announced our Synapse-Admin fork, and this week we’re excited to share two major updates (yep, again):

• Authenticated Media support
• Options to remove media and redact events on user removal

The former one brings Matrix 1.11 Authenticated Media support to Synapse-Admin

The latter one adds 2 toggles to the user erasure confirmation dialog:

• Remove media uploaded by the user
• Redact all user’s messages

Apart from major changes, a bunch of small changes were made as well:

• Unify media icons in the sidebar and on user’s view page
• Add proper previews for uploaded images and a download button for non-image uploads
• Do not block rooms from joining on delete by default (to avoid accidental blocks)

Source code

Dept of Bots 🤖

Draupnir (website)

Gnuxie 💜🐝 reports

Draupnir v2.0.0-beta.7 has been released. Ever been told to open /devtools to fix your bot’s corrupted or invalid account data? In this release, we are gathering feedback for a new feature called “Safe Mode”. If Draupnir fails to start from a recoverable error, Draupnir will start with limited capabilities and prompt you to select a recovery option. You can then use a command to restart the bot.

We’ll be iterating “Safe Mode” over the next two weeks and focussing on assisting system admins with diagnosing setup issues. So don’t forget to join us in our support room #draupnir:matrix.org and tell us what you think.

baibot (website)

Slavi reports

Since the official announcement of baibot, we’ve had a few releases (see the changelog) that bring important improvements like:

• being able to involve the bot on-demand in arbitrary conversation threads and reply chains

• support for OpenAI’s o1 models and prompt caching

• support for prompt variables to make models more aware of their context

Rory&::MatrixContentFilter - An extensible, proactive moderation bot

Emma [it/its] announces

Here’s a new project we’ve been working on for a bit now :)

Primary features:

• Granular access controls
  • Per room configuration
  • Bot-wide or per-room user ignore lists, including per filter configuration
• Ability to interface with the bot externally (assuming you have an access token for the bot user) - Configuration is hot-reloadable over account data
• Planned filters:
  • Disallow uploading images (mostly implemented, missing configuration handling)
  • Disallow uploading videos (missing)
  • Disallow posting links (missing)
  • Limit user mentions (missing)
  • Limit message rate (missing)
  • Anything else you may be able to think of! (missing)

As always, to ensure we can keep developing and maintaining these tools, consider donating over at Liberapay!

And, as with all of the other projects:

• The code is available at cgit.rory.gay!
  • All contributions are more than welcome, be it documentation, code, UX improvements, anything!
• Discussion, suggestions and ideas are welcome in #mcf:rory.gay (Space: #mcf-space:rory.gay)

Dept of Non Chat Clients 🎛️

Matrix Rooms Search News (website)

Aine [don’t DM] reports

It’s been a while since we posted MRS updates, so let’s start with…

What is MRS?

Matrix Rooms Search (MRS) is a standalone search engine and Matrix Directory server that indexes Matrix servers with enabled federation and published room directory (over federation), after that you can search rooms across whole Matrix Federation either directly from your matrix client app (details), or by using simple REST API of the MRS itself.

What’s new?

Authenticated Media is here - now when you browse MRS using REST API (e.g. by using the demo server on matrixrooms.info), room avatars will be fetched by the new Matrix v1.11 Authenticated Media endpoints (old unauthenticated media endpoint is still used as well, so there is a fallback).

And another update - MRS now by default uses both exact match and fuzzy queries, so that should help will searching!

Source code, MatrixRooms.info, and don’t forget to say hi in #mrs:etke.cc

Matrix Federation Stats

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

Aine [don’t DM] announces

As of today, 10116 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3104 (30.7%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 21185 rooms.

Stats timeline is available on MatrixRooms.info/stats

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.

#ping:maunium.net

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	conduwu.it	222.5
2	itzzen.net	241
3	tomfos.tr	246
4	ipv6.girlcock.systems	270
5	awawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawawaw.gay	277.5
6	bark.arf.wf	282
7	saneke.eu	295
8	maunium.net	296
9	puppygock.gay	305
10	transgender.ing	307

#ping-no-synapse

tulir reports

The no-synapse ping room which only allowed echo bots on non-synapse servers has been shut down. It often confused people because pings were still allowed from synapses, only the pongs were non-synapse. The general #ping:maunium.net room remains active.

That’s all I know

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!