I use an iPhone and my fiancé uses Android. He is not very tech savvy. He does not like to text for privacy reasons. I was going to recommend we get Signal but see others in Lemmy talking about Matrix. Is that better? If so, what app is best that works on both our phones? Thanks Lemmy friends!
I use Matrix (Element client on iOS) with the extended family and it works well. Most of them are not tech-savvy. I self-host my own Matrix instance because I wanted to have control on where personal pictures were hosted.
And naturally, matrix is federated so you can join rooms of any other instance.
And if you don’t like the app you’re using, you can easily switch it without losing your data or making everyone else have to switch to the new app.
I’ve never bothered to try alternatives to Element. Are they worth trying ?
I would say they are absolutely worth trying. I’ve personally been alright with the look and feel of Element but there may be something in the other matrix apps that you enjoy more. FluffyChat is another popular one that I see mentioned a lot.
There is basically no issue with having multiple apps installed and signed in, the biggest hurdle is just signing into the app and then verifying it. Beyond that, it’s just customizing and feeling it out.
It’s actually better, rooms are decentralized. This means that even if the original server that made the room is offline or gone forever the room can continue. IIUC this is unlike Lemmy where if the instance that hosts a community goes offline that community is dead.
Some things like users are only federated, but hopefully that changes at some point.
It is worth noting that if your rooms are using e2e encryption than the photos should also be encrypted. So it shouldn’t be a major concern where the photos are hosted.
But it can still be nice to have full control over you chat.
The not so tech savvy family members have trouble with e2e though. They always have problems with device somehow not properly authorized, and some encrypted rooms accessible from the computer but not from the phone. I usually solve it for them regularly, but they still can’t do it by themselves. So I prefer to keep the rooms unencrypted (we are not sharing state secrets anyway), but self-hosted (I don’t want to give away family pictures to big tech companies).