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Comment by andrewaylett | Hacker News Reader

I've had Element X installed for a while -- couldn't use it for a while after EMS shut down their small instances and I started self-hosting, but it works with my self-hosted Synapse now.

The only problem is that it's got too many paper cuts. I can live without Spaces, even though I use them on Desktop. But notification channels are a harder sell, and missing avatars on notifications is just annoying. Neither are exactly core features, but notifications are the most common way I interact with Element on mobile and for me, the improvements (and there are many) aren't worth the downsides.

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> But notification channels are a harder sell, and missing avatars on notifications is just annoying.

huh. on Element X iOS, the notif support is genuinely great - you get avatars and groupings and reliable notifs on e2ee msgs. the only thing is missing is quick-reply (which has been blocked behind full multi-process support in matrix-rust-sdk, hopefully coming soon).

I'd assumed that Element X Android would be the same; if not, it's an omission and will get fixed.

> I'd assumed that Element X Android would be the same; if not, it's an omission and will get fixed.

Aren't you Element's CTO? I feel like you shouldn't need to make assumptions into how the app works, you should just know (even if you're not personally daily driving it). If not you, is anyone in charge of ensuring that the project's vision and goals are met?

yup, i'm the CTO, and I don't have notifs enabled on Android and so hadn't checked - I daily-drive iOS. The folks "in charge of ensuring the project's vision and goals are met" are the ones running the Element X team - sorry that I haven't memorised the full feature parity matrix :) Sounds like https://github.com/element-hq/element-x-android/issues/1547 is the bug for you to upvote & subscribe to.

I’m in south east Asia and I have a lot of friends using matrix but the whole is unbearably slow to me. Most of the time it takes more than 10 seconds to sync and messages don’t go through. I’d be happy to look at the infra to see what’s happening though. It’s also what breaks my notifications on iOS.

Are you using matrix.org? Maybe you could try a server closer to you?

I had that problem a couple versions ago.. turns out one table in the postgres DB, I think 'devices..' something got be like 50 GB and I could never get it widdled down even with manual vacuums and such,

I think the newer version of matrix handles cleaning that table better, but I'd need to login a check, it's been a while.

Given that the DB gets so big I had to bit the bullet and move from spinning HDs to SSDs on my latest install. Make a big difference at the beginning of course, the DB had not ballooned yet.

Element X has a few notification issues on Android (I use it daily): you don't get quick reply (which can be fixed by adding conversation shortcuts in Android), and you get a notification for every single message. Element X doesn't stack up the notifications, so if someone floods you 20 lines of text in less than 10 seconds, your phone will vibrate 20 times in under 10 seconds. It's quite annoying.

I treat Element X as an alpha client. Half the features I use aren't implemented and I get signed out every few weeks. The parts that do work, work very well, but the parts that don't are

After the last update, I can't seem to log in anymore, which is a first. Fluffychat is my go-to on mobile these days. It supports Material You, which I like, and does things like notification channels well. It still has the occasional bug and I get the feeling it's consuming more power, but it's the best Android client I know of in terms of features versus stability.

From what I've read, most of the Element X work seems to have been put into iOS, because Android has had a few app rewrites over the years already but the iOS version was still based on some very old code base.

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