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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat the same for me, though I'm in a bit later stage than you are. I moved my family to Signal as well, but we all got a bit frustrated with the lack of features. No (good) Chromebook support, no message editing, the HARD requirement on owning a phone (which locked out my kids), no message history or even a way to backup messages, etc.

A few weeks ago I spun up a tiny EC2 instance, threw a matrix server on it, and moved us all over to that. It's been wonderful. All the features we want, plus I own the whole thing and therefor can do administrator things like reset passwords.

In a year or two will I regret being forced to admin a remote server that I've since forgotten everything about? History says yes, but who knows. It's been a joy so far.

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How does the Matrix experience compare to Signal, feature-wise? I ran into similar frustrations with Signal's lack of polish in certain areas when trying to move family over.

There's something to be said for why WhatsApp is so popular, it feels like the most full-featured and polished communications app.

Every issue I had with Signal, and listed here, is solved.

One issue I have with the Element iOS client is that it doesn't respect system font sizing. So, for older relatives, that app can't be used. I put my mom on something called "Fluffy Chat" though, which does respect font sizes. If Element fixes that, I'll move her back again. It's kinda nice having multiple clients to choose from, though Element is by far the most polished.

https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios/issues/3245

It's barely tolerable for power users, unacceptable for casual users. In particular, calling doesn't work reliably on Android, no search in encrypted rooms, ...

Signal, on the other hand, is basically a drop-in replacement for WhatsApp. Extremely similar UX, basically the same concepts, phone numbers as identifiers allow you to keep your social network if other contacts migrate.

Calling works fine for me. And you can't search any E2E encrypted rooms on any platform. But at least Matrix can store history, that you can then search on your client. Or if you really want search, you can just not encrypt your room, which isn't an option at all with Signal.

But I do agree that Signal is easier, a better WhatsApp replacement for most people, and a wonderful service in general. The more people use it, the better.

I can search my E2E encrypted rooms on Signal (Android) just fine.

Yes, but only the messages on your device. Once you run out of room on your phone, switch to another phone, use your laptop, etc, all that history is gone forever, and obviously not searchable.

Element actually does encrypted search a bit better than Signal. Signal stores every message it receives, in its entirety, forever (unless you tell it not to, or course, but then you can't search). That makes search dead simple, but it also fills up my phone with hundreds of megs a month. Element stores messages on the server, so old ones don't need to stay on your phone (only your keys). But you can still search the entire history because the client indexes every message that comes in and stores that index forever, which is much smaller than a bunch of media files, and even the plain text.

These at great points about Signal I hadn't considered. Maybe I'll run a matrix server too. How does the experience compare to e.g. whatsapp?

I haven't used WhatsApp much, I've just co-opted this whole thing to move people off SMS. But, comparing Element now to WhatsApp when I used it years ago, Element is more polished with more features.

It's dead easy to download the app and sign up on Matrix.org though, just to test it all out before you go through the trouble of setting up your own homeserver.

i love this idea! i think i'll do that as well just to test it out.

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