IMHO it's still the best option that isn't confusing to use for average normal people.

@bazinga said:

after all lots of people seem to think Signal is a privacy focused chat app.

Damn, I might be one of those...what's the issue with it?

You don't have to do the same, better yet make it better like Signal did.

@bazinga said:

Whatspp, Telegram, Element.

I use the web WhatsApp and Element. I used to have the Telegram desktop app, but I stopped using Telegram because of the ads (and because it's just another proprietary for private profit app that doesn't even have E2EE on by default).

Understand your position regarding the audience and functionality. Makes sense, I guess. Will this be only chat or video calls as well?

As for the desktop app. Well, if you can consider cross DE app - it'd be a much better time investment (in my mind, obviously) as you wouldn't need to re-write for other platforms.

For the clients, we just started with the systems we use internally, which is Android and me specifically gnome. This is a pure pragmatic decision so we can start using it asap to find and fix issues early.

Without mobile apps this solution will be way more niche. Desktop apps (maybe via Electron) are very useful too. Why the choice of Gnome only with gnome specific libraries? I run KDE, so that app won't be great for me. Why not Qt or other variants?

@nebulon said:

which is an android

I can help test the app if you're willing to share the APK.

@nebulon said:

Media handling will come, so far those are just files in a folder, so one can purge on timestamp if that is wanted. But I guess we will provide some better controls over time.

To share some issues I ran into in Matrix. Last time I tried deleting media to save on space, it corrupted the rooms and I had to wipe the entire app. Luckily, I had exported the rooms via HTML/JSON beforehand. I used the Matrix admin tool btw. I didn't manually delete things. But, manual deletion of a room's media folder (assuming each room has its own folder) would be ideal. For instance, for DM rooms between users, we share a lot of media between each other but it serves its purpose once seen. Yet, that accounted for a huge percentage of the app's media storage.

@nebulon said:

Those make a lot of sense when you don't trust your coordinating server of course

This will limit the app location to on-premise servers, really. I wouldn't trust a VPS provider with my chats.

Security wise, like all our apps, we operate in an environment where the Cloudron server is trusted. So all connections are encrypted (all is just https) but the storage on the server is not encrypted on top. And since we put the trust in the server, there are no plans for e2ee at all as a concious decision. Those make a lot of sense when you don't trust your coordinating server of course (like the typical signal or regular saas and such)

Media handling will come, so far those are just files in a folder, so one can purge on timestamp if that is wanted. But I guess we will provide some better controls over time.

For import, we have a matrix import script, which we also needed, but that will need some polishing and documentation, which will come.

For export, sure we can easily add json/html export but also the whole app has a rest api, so this can even be just put at an AI agent to do these days