Introduction
Nheko is a desktop Matrix client which is meant to be modern and be styled more like modern messaging apps like Element, Telegram or Signal and less like the IRC clients of old. I have been using it for a while so I am going to discuss the good things about it and some glitches I have experienced.
What is Nheko?
Nheko is an open source app that allows you to chat using the open source matrix protocol. This means you can chat using this app on pretty much any of your matrix instances you may use. Another note is it is built using Qt so yeah.
Features
Nheko has many features which are outlined on the project's GitHub and also on their own GitLab instance. Some of these features are read receipts, which are pretty helpful and make the experience feel more like popular messengers like Telegram, end to end encryption support, which is good if you care about privacy, voice and video calls, which can be very useful when you want to express yourself with more than text. Nheko also has a dark mode so your eyes don't feel bad when you look at the app. You can also see typing notifications which are useful when you are battling in a rage fuelled debate about whether ramen noodles are healthy or not. Another feature supported is being able to mention people so you can ping people to death telling them how healthy ramen noodles are. Nheko also supports communities so yeah I wonder when they are going to integrate Matrix spaces (that would be cool). With Nheko you can also get push notifications for when people mention or message you which is helpful when you always want to know what is going on while you are doing other stuff on your computer. Nheko also allows you to use markdown so you can easily write stuff with titles and more. You can also have multiple profiles using the command line but I am still confused by how to do that. Nheko also has a touchscreen mode and a privacy screen for perhaps if you don't want random onlookers seeing you debate about how healthy ramen noodles are and you can change how long it takes for the privacy screen to kick in. Nheko also has many features you would expect from a modern messenger like being able to manage what rooms you are in and create rooms, user registration, redacting messages, being able to send files and emojis and more.
Bugs
Nheko has some bugs that can be pretty annoying including some UI glitches where it scrolls back up the page when you wanted to go down sometimes this happens all the time in the settings page. Another glitch that sometimes happens is you sometimes might be scrolled half way up the page of messages when you check a different conversation or room so you have to scroll all the way down and small UI glitches like that which may make your experience that bit less enjoyable. However I have not noticed anything major which could make Nheko unusable.
Conclusion
Overall, I think Nheko is a cool privacy focused matrix client which is better than Element. It has been great using it and hopefully it can add more great features in the future. Thanks for reading this post make sure to follow me if you enjoyed this post. I will be making more posts on LBRY in the future and I will also be making a video about Nheko but until the next one stay safe!