Element Messenger Reviews

As chat apps go, this one works pretty well, but it still has a few rough edges. Particularly, its handling of encryption keys is rough compared to other apps like Wire and Keybase—Every time a new device is added, everyone needs to go through and re-verify it, which is a hassle and a turn-off for getting my friends to use it. If you don’t re-verify, everyone in every chat you participate in will see a scary warning, and there’s no way to permanently dismiss it.

Been using Element since September so my friend and I could have separate rooms to discuss creative projects we work on together. We had been using a different system for years and wanted something similar to Discord, but Discord doesn’t allow for account switching so we went for this.

The encryption definitely works, and normally it’s easy to have multiple sessions on multiple devices and switch seamlessly. But lately (the last 2-3 weeks) the mobile app has given us a lot of trouble. It keeps randomly hiding the rooms that we’re not active in at that moment, and while I can just uninstall and reinstall ElementMessenger (and re-verify every time) to fix this, my friend attempted to do the same and now, all messages he sent beyond some point in January can’t be decrypted on his end. 😐

Really frustrated with this, as we put a lot of trust in Element and we use messages to keep track of decisions we make, since our creative works are purely for fun. As I write this, I’m redownloading ElementMessenger for what I think must be the fifth time this week. It’s a daily thing at this point.

Element, PLEASE fix your mobile app, it honestly worked quite well before the last month or so. Before then, I only had issues when my phone was insanely low on storage, and that was on me.

I love the concept and hope ElementMessenger grows, but it is not intuitive and makes it difficult for people to setup and use—both mobile & desktop.

Here are a few:

1. Favorites is unnecessary. You can add / see / modify them in Home.

2. People & Rooms can be lumped under a new category of ‘Discover’, ‘Search’, ‘Explore’, ‘Find’ or something along those lines. Rooms & Conversations subsections only need to be in Home.

3. Communities could be one of the best features in ElementMessenger, but it needs significant attention.

3a. The entirety of Communities area, incl existing subsections needs an ability to edit / add. You cannot modify a community’s name, img or anything. You can’t create rooms in the room subsection, etc. Major drawback.

3b. All of the current subtabs are unnecessary. Something like the following is preferred.

Communities
> CommunityC
> CommunityD
>> Rooms
>>> Room1
>>>> People
>>>> Images/Videos
>>>> Docs/Files
>>> Room2
>>> Room3
>> Messages (Private)
>> Directory (could be superfluous)

+ a function to cluster & arrange rooms

There are more, but I’ve typed up alot already. Hope to see some improvements. Cheers.

Some of the bigger issues, like cross device verification in chat rooms with many people have been simplified to be more similar to the workflow keybase had. It’s now much better, and I haven’t experienced any of the other problems some users complain about. I don’t really think the name change is significant. Right now ElementMessenger works really well for what it sets out to do, and is my choice for secure e2ee messaging.

My friends use this to chat and video call, and it has issues and bugs sure, but for video calls we have no other option that works as well overall for everyone. And of course, having private conversations safe from adtech is wonderful.

Recommended.

You know what’s really annoying and I can’t do anything about it but I should????
When rooms are empty and I can’t leave them!! They just appear in my messages or room log but I can’t get rid of them. It’s so absolutely unacceptable at this point. Months go by, update after update, but no one seems to be able to fix this issue. I have like 20 empty rooms that take up my screen that when I try to leave, they say the room doesn’t exist therefore I can’t leave them...........

Element is the best Matrix client I’ve used on iOS. However, this is not saying much. It is the only one I’ve seen which supports Matrix Spaces.

The interface is pretty terrible. I can’t see the date and time of any message in a room. It only shows the date. This is particularly frustrating when you choose to “jump to unread” in a room you haven’t visited in a while. Also, many features of desktop Element are just missing. For example, you can’t create a Matrix Space on the iOS app.

Also, my phone heats up dramatically when using Element. (Whereas Discord does not.). They are both electron-based, but why does Element work my phone so much harder?

Overall, it is a hot, clunky experience, but still the best client I’ve found so far on iOS.

I’ve been running my own Matrix homeserver for about a year now and migrated my extended family to Element for communications (text and voice). It works great for us and I appreciate being in control of all our data. Looking forward to supporting the Matrix ecosystem for years to come!

It’s a great app, but it would be nice if we could see when a person is active and how long it’s been from the last time they where on line. And it would be nice to see the message on the notifications. App keeps crashing and then I’m unable to re open it again. I have to delete ElementMessenger and after install again to open app again. And once I’m in there again I can’t read mg messages it says it’s encrypted .. please fix ASAP. Or I will have to find another texting app that doesn’t crash!

The vast majority of the bad reviews of ElementMessenger are people who don’t get how it works. Element is a client to your homeserver just like your email app is a client to your mail provider. Your quality of service, policies, etc are all dependent on what homeserver you choose (it’s also pretty easy to host your own)

The two tech savvy of our family, myself included, tried to give Element a test drive. So many circular errors in “verifying” each other, when when we sat right beside each other, could not ever get it going. No way this is going to work for the rest of our family and friends. Maybe we’ll try again in a couple years when they’ve worked out the UX issues.

Works fantastically but needs 1 bug fix. Jitsi video calls in a room call the phone and video and audio work fine. If you start a call from the iPhone to the people in the room - the room sees a notice about a call but no call comes in and no way to accept it in Chrome

I like some things but clearly there are many bugs. For example, I have been unable to successfully add my phone number for friends to find for months now. I add the number, receive the verification number, input it, and then have a spinning progress wheel that never goes away. I hope this gets fixed.

I hope you could update your app so that we can use for acknowledgement in a group so that we could easily see who were the ones received our message something like the poll vote of telegram app or something better

Hi, I love the flexibility of ElementMessenger . My only issue is there is no option to flip my camera to the back camera. Doesn’t seem to be available on the iPad either. Other than that, it’s great.

Could you improve the ‘jump to the first unread’ functionality in terms of performance when connecting to freenode? It really makes me confused if I hit the bottom from time to time.

ElementMessenger is full of glitches & problems. You have to constantly clear your cache in order for it to decrypt your messages. It is not user friendly & when you try to scroll up to catch up on the conversation, it jumps back & forth from top to bottom randomly while you try to dial in on messages in between. Much better options out there. Keep scrolling.

ElementMessenger is way too buggy to use. Between encryption breaking down, chats going missing, chats getting duplicated only to be back to normal when you restart ElementMessenger and many other bugs that cause me to need to reinstall and or log out and log back in I just can’t use it. Problem is, it is the “Flagship” client for Matrix and currently one of the only options that works right some of the time on iOS.

At one time ElementMessenger was reasonably functional, even though it had the predilection of crashing occasionally when I was trying to open a conversation or a room. Now ElementMessenger won’t even load and is stuck in a perpetual startup. I even ended my session with ElementMessenger and it did nothing. Going to uninstall and reinstall - and if that doesn’t work, going to have to only use desktop or online then.

I am already struggling with ElementMessenger … It has slow load times, I deleted ElementMessenger and re-download it and now it keep on saying I got the wrong password… I typed in the right password and it still won’t let me in. I restarted my password he second time and it still doesn’t work. In order to talk to tech-support. You have to chat with them on Element… Which I cannot do because I cannot login.

Tried it out. Great at first. Crystal clear calls, then suddenly no call option. Now only video calls. Video meeting calls. Are they still private and part of my chat room? No idea. Not clear within ElementMessenger . Now video calls starting when i dont click on “call” (not that any of them ever worked after the first call) just ringing forever and being frustrated for well over an hour. Feels super sketchy to be honest. I wont be returning.

needs a lot of work. Can’t convince my friends to join because making accounts doesn’t work, searching for friends doesn’t work, and can’t even upload most photos

TLDR avoid and stick with closed source
They may spy on you but at least it works

Half of these low ratings are people who have no idea what they are doing. I have had no issues with this aside from fixing the learning curve.

Love it! Great app and when you add in open source and matrix - it becomes something you can trust for the whole family.

it is really great app with great potentials, the only thing is the auto scroll doesn't seem to work when a new message come or being typed by me!
I couldn't find any setting about that...

Thanks for all your hard work Riot team! Excited for the Librem5 release so I can start using you there!! 👏

It’s an ok app but please update so I can copy and paste a gif from the photos or another app directly into my message. I can only upload a gif if it’s saved in my photos, not if it’s in another app like giphy or GIFwrapped

Tried to sign up, but an email confirmation never arrives. So you can’t even create an account to use this platform. Private? Yes. So private, not even users can access it. So there may be a couple of bugs to work out before you try this platform.

Like it but it crashes endlessly after last update......

can’t use encrypted chats because encryption seems to make my phone overheat and shut down.

for unencrypted chat, i love it. works fast, and notifications are easier on my battery than some apps.

I still can't open ElementMessenger at all after updating to the latest version on iOS 8.4 rip

Useless bot, seemingly thousand options but to find a user by user name and have a simply one to one chat is impossible ... waste of my time