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Chat

LosOS Chat.

LosOS Chat is a messenger on the box for everyone with a LosOS Login account. People write to each other in direct messages and in rooms, share pictures and files, reply in threads and react to messages. Direct messages and new rooms are end-to-end encrypted, so the box stores only what it cannot read.

Chat uses Matrix, an open standard for messaging, and runs on the box itself. Nothing goes to an outside service.

When chat is there​

Chat belongs to the part of the box you share with the mesh, and it keeps everything in that part's storage. It runs only while the box shares its storage and has joined a mesh. Then Chat appears in the sidebar of the admin pages.

When you stop sharing, chat stops with it. The sidebar entry goes, and the chat address leads back to the admin pages. The messages stay in the shared storage and come back when you share again.

Signing in​

Open Chat in the sidebar, or go to https://<name>.local/chat/. Chat is one of the admin pages, with the same top bar and sidebar, the conversations on the left and the open one beside them. It uses your LosOS Login sign-in. There is no separate chat password.

When you sign out of LosOS Login, chat signs out too. When an administrator removes someone in Settings > Users, that person's chat devices are signed out at once.

Everyone's chat address is @<sign-in name>:<name>.local, for example @eva:mattbox.local.

Secure messages​

The first time you open chat, it asks you to set up secure messages. Click Set up secure messages, then Make my recovery key. Chat shows a recovery key of twelve groups of letters and numbers. Copy it or download it, keep it somewhere safe apart from this computer, and click I saved it. Chat does not show the key again.

The key lets your other devices read your encrypted messages. When you open chat in another browser or on another computer, it shows Unlock this device to read encrypted messages. Click it and type the recovery key, or confirm the new device from one you already use by comparing the emoji both show.

Without the key or another device, a new device cannot read messages sent before it signed in. Nobody can recover them for you, and that includes the box's administrator.

The lock button in the bar at the top opens Secure messages at any time. It lists your devices, and you can verify or sign out each one.

Writing to people​

  • A direct message: click Message someone and pick a person. Everyone with a LosOS Login account on the box is in the list, and so is everyone in your contacts with a chat address. A contact's Chat button opens the same conversation.
  • A room: click New room, give it a name, and choose whether it is public on the box or by invitation only. Invite people from the room's header.
  • Spaces group rooms. They are the row of buttons above the conversations, beside the search; make one with New space and add rooms to it in each room's settings.
  • Find rooms to join lists the public rooms on the box.

In a conversation​

Hover over a message to reply, reply in a thread, edit or delete it. The quick reactions show in a pill under it: press one to add it, and press it again to take it back. Right-click a message for the same and to copy its text (the right-click menu). The thread button in the room's header lists the room's threads.

Attach pictures, videos and files with the paper clip, by pasting or by dragging them in. In an encrypted room they are encrypted before they leave your browser. The microphone records a voice message.

With LosOS Cloud on the box, the cloud button next to the paper clip sends files straight from your Cloud. A file someone sends you has a cloud button on its card, and Save to LosOS Cloud in its right-click menu: it is saved, decrypted, in the Chat folder of your Cloud, and the button then opens it there. From LosOS Cloud, sending a file in chat asks which conversation it goes to.

A small row of faces under a message shows who has read up to there.

Other Matrix apps​

Other Matrix apps, such as Element, cannot sign in to the box's chat, because chat has no passwords and signs in only through LosOS Login. Use the chat page in a browser on any device on the box's network.

Other LosOS boxes​

Chat reaches the LosOS boxes on your network. Write to @eva:kitchenbox.local from mattbox.local and the message goes from one box to the other, without leaving the network. A box named .local answers other chat servers only from the network it is on.

To talk to Matrix servers on the internet as well, the box needs a domain of your own that they can reach. losos.chat.federation.enable in Settings

Advanced turns talking to other servers off altogether.

A repository in LosOS Git can have a room here, where LosOS Git posts what happens in it. People of other boxes also sign in to LosOS Git with their chat address.