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element-hq
element-web
TypeScript2017–2026
element-hq / element-web

element-web

A glossy Matrix collaboration client for the web.

68Distinct people
125Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
13.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A glossy Matrix collaboration client for the web.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:02:50 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year125 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-02-14 06:05:55 UTC to 2026-04-15 22:22:09 UTC.

01020302017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 28 mentions; 1 submissions, 27 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 30 mentions; 1 submissions, 29 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 19 mentions; 0 submissions, 19 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 2 submissions, 9 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 0 submissions, 8 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC28127
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC30129
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC19019
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1129
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC808
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Element Element (formerly known as Vector and Riot) is a Matrix web & desktop client built using the Matrix JS SDK. Supported Environments Element has several tiers of support for different environments: Supported Definition: Issues actively triaged, regressions block the release Last 2 major versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Edge on desktop OSes Last 2 versions of Safari Latest release of official Element Desktop app on desktop OSes Desktop OSes means macOS, Windows, and Linux versions for desktop devices that are actively supported by the OS vendor and receive security updates Best effort Definition: Issues accepted, regressions do not block the release The wider Element Products (including Element Call and the Enterprise Server Suite) do still not officially support these browsers. The element web project and its contributors should keep the client functioning and gracefully degrade where other sibling features (E.g. Element Call) may not function. Last major release of Firefox ESR and Chrome/Edge Extended Stable Community Supported Definition: Issues accepted, regressions do not block the release Community contributions are welcome to support these issues Mobile web for current stable version of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on Android, iOS, and iPadOS Not supported Definition: Issues only affecting unsupported environments are closed Everything else The period of support for these tiers should last until the releases specified above, plus 1 app release cycle(2 weeks). In the case of Firefox ESR this is extended further to allow it land in Debian Stable. For accessing Element on an Android or iOS device, we currently recommend the native apps element-x-android and element-x-ios. Getting Started The easiest way to test Element is to just use the hosted copy at https://app.element.io. The develop branch is continuously deployed to https://develop.element.io for those who like living dangerously. To host your own instance of Element see Installing Element Web. To install Element as a desktop application, see Running as a desktop app below. Monorepo This repository is a monorepo hosting Element Web and other related projects in various subdirectories. You can read more about the structure here. Element Web To learn more about Element Web click here Running as a Desktop app Element can also be run as a desktop app, wrapped in Electron. You can download a pre-built version from https://element.io/get-started or, if you prefer, build it yourself. To build it yourself, follow the instructions at https://github.com/element-hq/element-web/tree/develop/apps/desktop. Many thanks to @aviraldg for the initial work on the Electron integration. The configuration docs show how to override the desktop app's default settings if desired. Development Please read through the following: Developer guide Code style Contribution guide Translations To add a new translation, head to the translating doc. For a developer guide, see the translating dev doc. Triaging issues Issues are triaged by community members and the Web App Team, following the triage process. We use issue labels to sort all incoming issues. Copyright & License Copyright (c) 2014-2017 OpenMarket Ltd Copyright (c) 2017 Vector Creations Ltd Copyright (c) 2017-2025 New Vector Ltd This software is multi licensed by New Vector Ltd (Element). It can be used either: (1) for free under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version); OR (2) for free under the terms of the GNU General Public License (as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version); OR (3) under the terms of a paid-for Element Commercial License agreement between you and Element (the terms of which may vary depending on what you and Element have agreed to). Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the Licenses is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the Licenses for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the Licenses. Please contact licensing@element.io to purchase an Element commercial license for this software.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

9 sources
I've often gone out of my way to encourage people who want to message me to use hangouts in order to have a better chatting experience (versus SMS). And since I have Google Fi, the hangouts integration was perfect such that people who I couldn't convince to use hangouts would text me and I'd still have all the nice message synchronization features in the same app (which as far as I know nothing else offers - a web based client that's not dependent on the phone being available for receiving SMS). All that to say, I'll be sad to lose such nice integration with SMS. Although I can see Google still providing hangouts to Google Fi customers, I think it's probably time to jump ship at this point. Does anybody know if Matrix supports e2e encrypted chat yet? I don't really follow the project closely, but if this issue is up to date then it's not
Read the rest
quite there yet: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/6779. I realize that bug is for the web client, but I'd feel better anyway knowing one of the biggest clients is using the feature.
In Source: Google Hangouts for consumers will be shutting down sometime in 2020
I spent a fair bit of time trying out many of the different chat systems out there for our tech community. In particular I looking for solutions that could do a half decent job of combining synchronous as well as asynchronous communication. The main benefit of implementations that manage to pull this off is being able to handle real-time chat but also make it easier to catch up with the conversation history if you've been away from the conversation for a while. Other criteria I was looking for were sensible threading, mobile friendly, persistence of history and private channels. Integration with voice or video chat was a bonus. Amongst others I tried: Mattermost, Rocket.chat, IRC(Cloud), Gitter, Discord, Slack, MS Teams, Twist, Hangouts Chat. Two stood out, both open source (Spectrum wasn't when I started looking): Spectrum: https://spect
Read the rest
rum.chat/ Zulip: https://zulipchat.com/ These two along with Twist (proprietary) manage to deal with the threading and hybrid sync/async. Both the above also have exceptionally helpful people behind them. The other special mention goes to Matrix (https://matrix.org/) and Riot (https://riot.im/) as their persistence syncing and federation work is impressive. Their threading and hence async story isn't as well developed yet though (https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/2349).
In Spectrum is joining GitHub
I won't argue any of your UI opinions other than to say that riot - which is only one of the many possible clients [1] over the matrix protocol - is still in early days, and is getting better with each version. That being said, as far as having to remember everyone's matrix id, I'm sure users had similar complaints back when email addresses were still novel. I'm sure conceptual address books will be a thing in future matrix clients - both riot as well as others. Failing that, you can always submit a feature request! [2] [1] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/clients-matrix [2] https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web
In Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
The UI could definitely be improved, but the core team has recently hired a UI designer, so hopefully this will improve in the future. If you have any other feedback that you've heard from your trainings, I'm sure the core team would love to hear about it either in their issue tracker (e.g. github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues for Riot web), or in the Matrix rooms (#riot:matrix.org or #matrix:matrix.org).
In Ask HN: Why does P2P encrypted messaging still suck?

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