this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
1252 points (99.4% liked)
Technology
80978 readers
4686 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It’s terrible. They’ve had years and years to get their shit together and they still can’t. It’s just horrendously bad.
I use it all the time. There are many mature clients, and matrix is a protocol, so I don’t know what you mean. Since the sliding sync implementations, I have found it really nice to use.
Don’t know what to tell you. I’m literally unable to read messages sent to me, they all show up as “unable to decrypt”. If I can’t even use the damn protocol then how many clients it has doesn’t matter.
And I have tried different clients.
And as far as I’ve read, this “unable to decrypt” affects a lot of users.
What server are you using and with which client most recently? It sounds like your device is unverified so untrusted or the key isn’t present.
To expand, “unable to decrypt” would affect a lot of users. That’s a good thing and exactly what you want it to do when not correctly trusted.
I'm using the default matrix server and I've tried with Element and FluffyChat. I've never used a different device to access Matrix. It has always been Firefox through Element, and then when that stopped working I switched to try to use FluffyChat which also did not work.
No, you do not want this affecting every user who has done nothing to change their environment. The device is still trusted, else I wouldn't be able to sign in and get new messages at all. Here's a massive list detailing many of the ways this can happen and note that this goes back to 2022. So for 4 years now they've had numerous issues with thousands of users being able to decrypt messages sent on the only device they've ever used and it still isn't fixed.
Maybe I came off as dismissive or just stupid, but I really did mean to be helpful. Of course you don’t want users experience bad interactions. I meant if those interactions were for an actual intended reason. So yeah, never mind.
Bummer you’ve had a hard time. I think they and the free software community are trying to put together a good solution.
Sorry, clearly I responded too harshly. Honestly I'm just tired of the suggestions to use Matrix, when myself (and several other people I know personally) have constant issues with it. I've tried to use Matrix for over 3 years now and I am required to use it sometimes, but every time I'm incredibly frustrated.
I agree, and I do think we need that, but sometimes the focus should be on usability before security. I know how much that sucks, but if you look at Lemmy you see the same thing. The focus was on usability first. Security came later, because (honestly) security is kinda pointless when every user can set up their own instance and intercept any posts they want. We'll get there eventually with security, but if people aren't using your platform then security is pointless.
That error happened to me too, and I created a new account, and saved the recovery key to a password manager.
Matrix frequently asks for the recovery key (too often, if you ask me, but it's for 'security' I guess). But since I have it saved in the password manager, I never have the unable to decrypt problem any more.
I've now had at least two matrix accounts for about a year, which haven't had that problem.
I'm not sure if this will solve the issues you're having, but I thought it might be helpful to somebody to post this anecdote. If you were having trouble with matrix in the past, it might be time to try again.
Your server, not mine, homie. Shop around for a better admin who actually knows how to install the thing.
So the Matrix developers/creators don’t know how to actually install the thing then? lol not a good response homie.
The overloaded, overbloated main instance?
No, they don't. It either shouldn't exist or should be broken up.
So the devs who created it can’t run an instance and it doesn’t scale properly. Yeah, I’m just gonna go out on a real short limb here and say that maybe the problem isn’t the instance.
Matrix is terrible any way you slice it.
Agreed, Matrix works fine as a toy, but it breaks down after a year or two with even a moderate amount of chat.
For me it broke down the second I started using it. I literally am unable to see chats on the only device I’ve ever used to access matrix, they’re all “can’t be decrypted”.