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What Matrix/Discord/Teams alternatives are there that FULLY support E2EE across Desktop and Mobile? (feddit.de)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Why wouldn't E2EE work in the browser versions of the clients? You just log in, verify from a logged in client, and then everything works. Decryption of message history can take a while, but it gets there eventually, and sending and receiving new messages should work with encryption, right away.

Search is tricky because the client essentially has to download, decrypt, then index, your entire user history. The server can't do the search for you, because it never sees your messages in cleartext.

Syphon does actually do this on mobile, but it's in alpha, and while it can do E2EE you have to export your keys from another client, then import them, to get it working. No easy emoji verification.

You might look at schildi, which is a fork of element with implementations for a a bunch of extra stuff. You'll have to get past the app icon, tho.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 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.