Give other matrix clients a try: FluffyChat has separators for DMs, Groups, and Spaces.
Cinny has a Discord look. Mainly a desktop application so it doesn’t have an app, but works fairly well as a PWA.
If you’re on Android, Schildi Chat Next also has a lot of UI/UX tweaks that people enjoy.
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:
They are, but the plugins need to be updated for 10.11. It's suggested to remove all plugins before upgrading and to use the unstable repo while testing. https://repo.jellyfin.org/files/plugin-unstable/manifest.json
lemm.ee refuge here, thank you for all your work in supporting the influx of new users!
Sorry, I didn’t realize some Lemmy clients don’t show cross-post descriptions. I’ll copy paste it below:
We are pleased to announce the first release candidate preview release of Jellyfin 10.11.0!
This is a preview release, intended for those interested in testing 10.11.0 before it's final public release. We welcome testers to help find as many bugs as we can before the final release.
As always, please ensure you stop your Jellyfin server and take a full backup before upgrading!
WIP release notes: https://notes.jellyfin.org/v10.11.0_features
This is the first release that uses the new EF Core database mapper. If you'd like to help test this release, please remember to remove all plugins to make debugging logs as easy as possible.
Using Stoat's main server raises a privacy concern because it’s UK-based and AFAIK lacks E2EE—UK authorities could seize server data without our knowledge. That effectively means private use requires self-hosting.
Issue with self-hosting Stoat is, it's currently more complicated than Matrix. This user created a detailed GitHub guide that documents their research and pitfalls for getting Stoat working with voice/video: https://github.com/javif89/stoat-selfhost
The official self-hosted guide (https://github.com/stoatchat/self-hosted) looks simple at first, but if you look at the compose file, it requires FOURTEEN containers to run and doesn’t yet include voice/video support which will increase complexity.
By contrast, TeamSpeak’s self-hosting appeal is its simplicity: only two services (or one with SQLite) and it works out of the box today.
But I agree — moving from one closed-source silo to another isn’t ideal. I just wish Stoat were easier to run behind the scenes.
For me, a combination of matrix for text chat and mumble for voice is the simplest and most privacy respecting way to self-host a discord alternative.