A glossy Matrix collaboration client for the web.
Element (formerly known as Vector and Riot) is a Matrix web client built using the Matrix React SDK.
Element has several tiers of support for different environments:
For accessing Element on an Android or iOS device, we currently recommend the native apps element-android and element-ios.
The easiest way to test Element is to just use the hosted copy at https://app.element.io. The
developbranch is continuously deployed to https://develop.element.io for those who like living dangerously.
To host your own copy of Element, the quickest bet is to use a pre-built released version of Element:
element-x.x.xdirectory to an appropriate name
config.sample.jsonto
config.jsonand edit it as desired. See the configuration docs for details.
Releases are signed using gpg and the OpenPGP standard, and can be checked against the public key located at https://packages.riot.im/element-release-key.asc.
Note that for the security of your chats will need to serve Element over HTTPS. Major browsers also do not allow you to use VoIP/video chats over HTTP, as WebRTC is only usable over HTTPS. There are some exceptions like when using localhost, which is considered a secure context and thus allowed.
To install Element as a desktop application, see Running as a desktop app below.
We do not recommend running Element from the same domain name as your Matrix homeserver. The reason is the risk of XSS (cross-site-scripting) vulnerabilities that could occur if someone caused Element to load and render malicious user generated content from a Matrix API which then had trusted access to Element (or other apps) due to sharing the same domain.
We have put some coarse mitigations into place to try to protect against this situation, but it's still not good practice to do it in the first place. See https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/1977 for more details.
Unless you have special requirements, you will want to add the following to your web server configuration when hosting Element Web:
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGINheader, to prevent Element Web from being framed and protect from clickjacking.
frame-ancestors 'none'directive to your
Content-Security-Policyheader, as the modern replacement for
X-Frame-Options(though both should be included since not all browsers support it yet, see this).
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniffheader, to disable MIME sniffing.
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block;header, for basic XSS protection in legacy browsers.
If you are using nginx, this would look something like the following:
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"; add_header Content-Security-Policy "frame-ancestors 'none'";
Note: In case you are already setting a
Content-Security-Policyheader elsewhere, you should modify it to include the
frame-ancestorsdirective instead of adding that last line.
Element is a modular webapp built with modern ES6 and uses a Node.js build system. Ensure you have the latest LTS version of Node.js installed.
Using
yarninstead of
npmis recommended. Please see the Yarn install guide if you do not have it already.
node.jsso that your
nodeis at least v10.x.
yarnif not present already.
git clone https://github.com/vector-im/element-web.git.
cd element-web.
yarn install.
developbranch, then it is recommended to set up a proper development environment (see Setting up a dev environment below). Alternatively, you can use https://develop.element.io - the continuous integration release of the develop branch.
config.sample.jsonto
config.jsonand modifying it. See the configuration docs for details.
yarn distto build a tarball to deploy. Untaring this file will give a version-specific directory containing all the files that need to go on your web server.
Note that
yarn distis not supported on Windows, so Windows users can run
yarn build, which will build all the necessary files into the
webappdirectory. The version of Element will not appear in Settings without using the dist script. You can then mount the
webappdirectory on your web server to actually serve up the app, which is entirely static content.
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/vector-im/element-desktop.
Many thanks to @aviraldg for the initial work on the Electron integration.
Other options for running as a desktop app: * @asdf:matrix.org points out that you can use nativefier and it just works(tm)
yarn global add nativefier nativefier https://app.element.io/
The configuration docs show how to override the desktop app's default settings if desired.
The Docker image can be used to serve element-web as a web server. The easiest way to use it is to use the prebuilt image:
bash docker run -p 80:80 vectorim/element-web
To supply your own custom
config.json, map a volume to
/app/config.json. For example, if your custom config was located at
/etc/element-web/config.jsonthen your Docker command would be:
bash docker run -p 80:80 -v /etc/element-web/config.json:/app/config.json vectorim/element-web
To build the image yourself:
bash git clone https://github.com/vector-im/element-web.git element-web cd element-web git checkout master docker build .
If you're building a custom branch, or want to use the develop branch, check out the appropriate element-web branch and then run:
bash docker build -t \ --build-arg USE_CUSTOM_SDKS=true \ --build-arg REACT_SDK_REPO="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk.git" \ --build-arg REACT_SDK_BRANCH="develop" \ --build-arg JS_SDK_REPO="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk.git" \ --build-arg JS_SDK_BRANCH="develop" \ .
Element supports a variety of settings to configure default servers, behaviour, themes, etc. See the configuration docs for more details.
Some features of Element may be enabled by flags in the
Labssection of the settings. Some of these features are described in labs.md.
Element requires the following URLs not to be cached, when/if you are serving Element from your own webserver:
/config.*.json /i18n /home /sites /index.html
Before attempting to develop on Element you must read the developer guide for
matrix-react-sdk, which also defines the design, architecture and style for Element too.
Before starting work on a feature, it's best to ensure your plan aligns well with our vision for Element. Please chat with the team in #element-dev:matrix.org before you start so we can ensure it's something we'd be willing to merge.
You should also familiarise yourself with the "Here be Dragons" guide to the tame & not-so-tame dragons (gotchas) which exist in the codebase.
The idea of Element is to be a relatively lightweight "skin" of customisations on top of the underlying
matrix-react-sdk.
matrix-react-sdkprovides both the higher and lower level React components useful for building Matrix communication apps using React.
After creating a new component you must run
yarn reskindexto regenerate the
component-index.jsfor the app (used in future for skinning).
Please note that Element is intended to run correctly without access to the public internet. So please don't depend on resources (JS libs, CSS, images, fonts) hosted by external CDNs or servers but instead please package all dependencies into Element itself.
Much of the functionality in Element is actually in the
matrix-react-sdkand
matrix-js-sdkmodules. It is possible to set these up in a way that makes it easy to track the
developbranches in git and to make local changes without having to manually rebuild each time.
First clone and build
matrix-js-sdk:
git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-js-sdk.git pushd matrix-js-sdk yarn link yarn install popd
Then similarly with
matrix-react-sdk:
git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk.git pushd matrix-react-sdk yarn link yarn link matrix-js-sdk yarn install popd
Finally, build and start Element itself:
git clone https://github.com/vector-im/element-web.git cd element-web yarn link matrix-js-sdk yarn link matrix-react-sdk yarn install yarn start
Wait a few seconds for the initial build to finish; you should see something like:
Hash: b0af76309dd56d7275c8 Version: webpack 1.12.14 Time: 14533ms Asset Size Chunks Chunk Names bundle.js 4.2 MB 0 [emitted] main bundle.css 91.5 kB 0 [emitted] main bundle.js.map 5.29 MB 0 [emitted] main bundle.css.map 116 kB 0 [emitted] main + 1013 hidden modulesRemember, the command will not terminate since it runs the web server and rebuilds source files when they change. This development server also disables caching, so do NOT use it in production.
Configure the app by copying
config.sample.jsonto
config.jsonand modifying it. See the configuration docs for details.
Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/ in your browser to see your newly built Element.
Note: The build script uses inotify by default on Linux to monitor directories for changes. If the inotify limits are too low your build will fail silently or with
Error: EMFILE: too many open files. To avoid these issues, we recommend a watch limit of at least
128Mand instance limit around
512.
You may be interested in issues #15750 and #15774 for further details.
To set a new inotify watch and instance limit, execute:
sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=131072 sudo sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_instances=512 sudo sysctl -p
If you wish, you can make the new limits permanent, by executing:
echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=131072 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf echo fs.inotify.max_user_instances=512 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf sudo sysctl -p
When you make changes to
matrix-react-sdkor
matrix-js-sdkthey should be automatically picked up by webpack and built.
If you add or remove any components from the Element skin, you will need to rebuild the skin's index by running,
yarn reskindex.
If any of these steps error with,
file table overflow, you are probably on a mac which has a very low limit on max open files. Run
ulimit -Sn 1024and try again. You'll need to do this in each new terminal you open before building Element.
There are a number of application-level tests in the
testsdirectory; these are designed to run in a browser instance under the control of karma. To run them:
matrix-js-sdkand
matrix-react-sdkinstalled and built, as above
yarn test
The above will run the tests under Chrome in a
headlessmode.
You can also tell karma to run the tests in a loop (every time the source changes), in an instance of Chrome on your desktop, with
yarn test-multi. This also gives you the option of running the tests in 'debug' mode, which is useful for stepping through the tests in the developer tools.
See matrix-react-sdk how to run the end-to-end tests.
To add a new translation, head to the translating doc.
For a developer guide, see the translating dev doc.
Issues will be triaged by the core team using the below set of tags.
Tags are meant to be used in combination - e.g.: * P1 critical bug == really urgent stuff that should be next in the bugfixing todo list * "release blocker" == stuff which is blocking us from cutting the next release. * P1 feature type:voip == what VoIP features should we be working on next?
priority: compulsory
bug or feature: compulsory
bug severity: compulsory, if bug
types * type:* - refers to a particular part of the app; used to filter bugs on a given topic - e.g. VOIP, signup, timeline, etc.
additional categories (self-explanatory):
community engagement * easy * hacktoberfest * bounty? - proposal to be included in a bounty programme * bounty - included in Status Open Bounty