Fractal stands out as one of the premier Matrix clients for decentralized messaging, particularly designed for the GNOME desktop environment. Its versatility and user-friendly features allow it to seamlessly operate across most popular Linux distributions. Notably, this client is built on Rust, a language known for its performance and safety. Recently, the developers have rolled out a significant update that enhances the user experience with several quality-of-life improvements.
Fractal 8: What’s New?
The latest version introduces a noteworthy upgrade to the drafts feature. Unsent messages are now stored separately for each chat room, ensuring that they remain intact even after the application is restarted. This enhancement is made possible through refinements in the database code.
In addition to this, Fractal 8 brings support for authenticated media, which adds an extra layer of security and privacy. The mention behavior has been improved to enhance user experience, and there are fixes for the history media viewers. Users will also notice a new banner that appears when synchronization with a homeserver encounters issues, along with a more streamlined process for verification and account recovery.
Another significant improvement is the persistence of collapsed categories in the sidebar across application and system restarts, with the “Historical” category set to be collapsed by default. The update also includes more robust HTML rendering capabilities, and code blocks now feature syntax highlighting, making it easier for developers to share code snippets. Furthermore, lists have received some practical enhancements, allowing for nested lists and the ability to start numbered lists from any chosen number.
Download Fractal 8
The simplest way to access this latest release of Fractal is through the Flathub store. For those interested in exploring the source code, it is available on its GitLab repository.
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