Usability is good in my opinion. They’ve spent a lot of time on the UI over the past couple years. The mobile Element X apps are excellent now IMO.
But the two things that prevent matrix/Element from being a good discord replacement are:
No Mumble-like voice chat. They have Zoom-like conference calling now, but no voice channels.
Search is either non-existent (mobile clients) or is awful. It’s somehow worse than Discord’s search! I know it’s because the search needs to work on-device because of E2EE, but unfortunately it’s still a minus point vs Discord.
Seconding this, just use mumble. It’s self-hosted free and open source software, easy on resources, provides very low latency, and it’s very stable and reliable.
The client might look a little dated but I still love it. I don’t care for stupid electron apps, which every modern application seems to be.
Matrix isn’t that good from an usability standpoint as it looks a lot like IRC
LOL! That’s so true! Even I have trouble navigating.
Usability is good in my opinion. They’ve spent a lot of time on the UI over the past couple years. The mobile Element X apps are excellent now IMO. But the two things that prevent matrix/Element from being a good discord replacement are:
Honestly, the best solution to 1 may be to simply deploy mumble in addition to matrix (or other chat apps).
Seconding this, just use mumble. It’s self-hosted free and open source software, easy on resources, provides very low latency, and it’s very stable and reliable.
The client might look a little dated but I still love it. I don’t care for stupid electron apps, which every modern application seems to be.