This Week in Matrix 2025-03-07

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matthew says

The Matrix.org Foundation is now registered with Benevity in order to receive corporate donations as part of Corporate Social Responsibility programmes. If your employer supports donations via Benevity please encourage them to route some of their donations to supporting Matrix!

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗Extera

OfficialDakari says

There weren't any updates for a long time, but today Extera is in TWIM, because I've got enough (3) changes to describe!

1. There always was memory leak which caused Extera to use 100% CPU. It was fixed in latest commit, and it was there whole time! Now you won't be billed 1000$/mo for electricity if you use Extera.
2. Now settings category list and settings list don't scroll like one window. Minor change tho.
3. And, because of libolm deprecation (which happened a long time ago), Extera finally manages to start using Rust crypto.
4. Fixed ghost mode bug: Now, marking as read while you use ghost mode will use private read receipts.

🔗gomuks

tulir announces

gomuks web now supports widgets, including Element Call

For context on what gomuks web is, see https://github.com/tulir/gomuks/issues/476

🔗Moment

Maze reports

Today marks release 0.7.6 of the Moment client! We're on a great pace - it's technically less than a year since last release 😉

We're just doing our best to keep this alive and not break in the changing landscape of Python libraries and new/experimental Matrix features

🔗Element X iOS (website)

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

Mauro Romito reports

• A new release candidate has been made
• This RC will also have enabled by default the event cache, to make the app even faster
• We also added pills rendering to the composer, and is now possible to mention a room by using the "#" character, it will work just as EW, where you can filter based on the follow up text, and select the room you want to mention (which creates a permalink to it) by tapping on it
• We added a badge in the composer for unencrypted rooms
• We updated and improved our UI tests and our CI systems

🔗Dept of Widgets 🧩

🔗NeoBoard (website)

Private and secure whiteboard for everyone

Milton Moura (n.io) announces

NeoBoard Widget v2.1.0

The NeoBoard Widget just keeps chugging along with awesomeness! We just released v2.1.0 this week, which adds some new features and several improvements!

🔗More fonts available for text shapes

Previously, we only supported text shapes with the Inter font. You now have a selection of 6 additional fonts that you can use to express yourself with: Abel, Actor, Adamina, Chewy, Gwendolyn and Pirata One. Mix style with creativity and make your boards truly stand out! 🎨✨

🔗Connecting shapes with lines and arrows

We’ve taken our arrow and line tools to the next level! Before, you couldn’t attach them to shapes, but now, lines and arrows seamlessly connect shapes—and stay connected even as you move them around.

This update is a game-changer, especially for creating diagrams and visually mapping out information flows with ease and precision. 🚀

🔗Pasting images from the clipboard and new hotkey

Pasting images from the clipboard is now possible! No more downloading and uploading, just copy pasting! Also, use CTRL+D / CMD+D to duplicate a shape or selection of shapes for faster content creation!

...And a lot more!

Check out the changelog for a full list of other improvements and bug fixes.

If you have any questions or feedback, please reach out to us using our public room #nordeck:nordeck.io.

🔗Dept of Bots 🤖

🔗Draupnir (website)

A moderation bot for open Matrix communities

Gnuxie 💜🐝 reports

This week we released Draupnir v2.2.0 which includes a rework of the unban command. The unban command now shows a preview of all the policies that will be removed in order to unban a user, and any rooms that they will be unbanned from. The preview prompt can be skipped by using the --no-confirm option. Please note that the unban command no longer accepts an argument for a policy list.

We've also made some progress in this release towards simulated protection capabilities which will allow us to include previews in more commands in the next releases (both watch and ban).

These improvements were added alongside a few other fixes in the follow up from the release of Draupnir 2.0. So checkout the release notes for the full picture. As always, we'll see you in #draupnir:matrix.org

🔗Dept of Interesting Projects 🛰️

networkException says

A while ago I wrote a little tool using the matrix-rust-sdk to manually download and decrypt media: https://git.nwex.de/networkException/matrix-media-event-decrypt

It supports a few options that can be helpful when debugging (like fetching from a different server) as well as the ability to download and decrypt all media from a JSON room export created by Element Web

https://asciinema.org/a/673199.svg

🔗Matrix in the News 📰

John reports

Jon Stewart talking about "the Matrix Protocol"? Yes, it's true, deep into his "Weekly Show" podcast this week, Maria Ressa brings up Matrix as the cornerstone of a tech stack for independent journalists and democracy advocates.

The discussion on Matrix starts at 49:34 or so into the podcast, but the entire episode is important listening. https://youtu.be/jsHoX9ZpA_M?si=uYHyoImNxd05QebL&t=2973

🔗Matrix Federation Stats

Aine [don't DM] reports

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

As of today, 10798 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3202 (29.7%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 20434 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	bi-vibes.com	248.5
2	maunium.net	427
3	kif.rocks	481
4	saneke.eu	556.5
5	matrix.ja91.uk	564
6	halogen.place	879
7	herkinf.de	925
8	melthecat.dev	1040
9	craftingcomrades.net	1449
10	shork.ch	1524

🔗That's all I know

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

To learn more about how to prepare an entry for TWIM check out the TWIM guide.