Fractal

Fractal is a Matrix messaging app for GNOME written in Rust. Its interface is optimized for collaboration in large groups, such as free software projects.

• Come to talk to us on Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#fractal:gnome.org
• Main repository: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/fractal/

Fractal-next initiative

We are working on rewriting Fractal from scratch using GTK4 and the matrix-rust-sdk. This effort is called fractal-next.

We already talked several times in the past about rewriting the application, but for different reasons we didn't do it. Now that the matrix-rust-sdk exists, which does a lot of the heavy lifting for us, we have a good starting point to build Fractal without the need to implement every single feature from the Matrix API. Finally with the release of GTK4 we would need to rework most of Fractal's code anyways. Therefore, it just makes sense to start over and build Fractal with all features (e.g end-to-end encryption) we have in mind.

The main development branch is fractal-next. Issues that target fractal-next should be labeled accordingly as "fractal-next".

Milestones

The main milestone we try to achieve is to support all features the current Fractal has so that we can switch from Fractal to Fractal-next as the main codebase. In more details we need to implement the following features:

• Base functionality: Fractal-next allows an user to login into there account and view rooms and the room history.
• Room details: The user can view and change room settings (room visibility, roles and permissions, etc.) and view room members.
• Room management: The user can create, join and leave rooms.
• Room categories: The user can group rooms into different categories.
• Room history search: Allow users to search the room history.
• Notification settings: The user can set global notification preferences and per-room notification preferences.
• Account settings: The user can view and change it's own profile and manage logged-in devices.
• Support different message types: The room history shows different message types e.g. emotes, stickers, images, videos.
• End-to-end encryption: Fractal-next can manage encryption keys and read/write encrypted messages.
• Room discovery: The user can search for public rooms and join them.
• Notification Viewer: Fractal-next has a viewer for all important notifications collected in one area.
• Multi-account support: Support multiple Matrix accounts.
• Third-party identifiers: The user can login via e-mail address or phone-number.

Installation instructions

Flatpak is the recommended installation method. You can get the official Fractal Flatpak on Flathub.

Build Instructions

Flatpak

Flatpak is the recommended way of building and installing Fractal.

First you need to make sure you have the GNOME SDK and Rust toolchain installed.

# Add Flathub and the gnome-nightly repo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo

# Install the gnome-nightly Sdk and Platform runtime
flatpak install --user gnome-nightly org.gnome.Sdk org.gnome.Platform

# Install the required rust-stable extension from Flathub
flatpak install --user flathub org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable//20.08

Then you go ahead and build Fractal.

flatpak-builder --user --install fractal flatpak/org.gnome.Fractal.json

GNU/Linux

If you decide to ignore our recommendation and build on your host system, outside of Flatpak, you will need Meson and Ninja (as well as Rust and Cargo).

meson . _build --prefix=/usr/local
ninja -C _build
sudo ninja -C _build install

macOS

brew install gtk+3 dbus bash adwaita-icon-theme libhandy gtksourceview4 \
    gspell gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-editing-services
# empirically needs 3.22.19 or later of gtk3+
# ...and run configure as:
/usr/local/bin/bash -c "meson . _build --prefix=/usr/local"
ninja -C _build
sudo ninja -C _build install

Translations

Fractal is translated by the GNOME translation team on Damned lies.

If you want to add a new language you should update the file fractal-gtk/po/LINGUAS and add the code for that language to the list.

Get the pot file from the Fractal module page on Damned lies.

Password Storage

Fractal uses Secret Service to store the password so you should have something providing that service on your system. If you're using GNOME or KDE this should work for you out of the box with gnome-keyring or ksecretservice.

Supported m.room.message (msgtypes)

msgtypes	Recv	Send
m.text	Done	Done
m.emote	Done	Done
m.notice
m.image	Done	Done
m.file	Done	Done
m.location
m.video	Done	Done
m.audio	Done	Done

Full reference in: https://matrix.org/docs/spec/client_server/r0.2.0.html#m-room-message-msgtypes

Frequently Asked Questions

• Does Fractal have encryption support? Will it ever?

Fractal does not currently have encryption support, but there is an initiative for it.

We are heading towards using matrix-rust-sdk rather than our own implementation. (See https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/fractal/-/issues/636)

Code and further information for this module can be found at matrix/matrix-rust-sdk.

• Can I run Fractal with the window closed?

Currently Fractal does not support this. Fractal is a GNOME application, and accordingly adheres GNOME guidelines and paradigms. This will be revisited if or when GNOME gets a "Do Not Disturb" feature.

The origin of Fractal

This project is based on Fest https://github.com/fest-im/fest, formerly called ruma-gtk.

Instead of using RUMA Client, Fractal calls directly to the matrix.org REST API.

The first version of this project was called guillotine, based on French revolution, in relation with the Riot client name, but it's a negative name so we decide to change for a math one.

The name Fractal was proposed by Regina Bíró.

Code of Conduct

Fractal follows the official GNOME Foundation code of conduct. You can read it here.