seriously, if you’re looking for a proper FOSS discord replacement i cannot stress enough how good the new Sable 2.x releases are.
to name a few things that make this really fucking cool, it has:
- an actually working mobile client available in the play store and soon the iOS app store (if it isn’t already)
- voice/video channels, forum channels, etc.
- spaces set up as a feature-complete replacement for discord guilds with roles, categorization, permission syncing, etc.
- detailed discord-like profiles with status (including per-space/channel personas)
- cool features you would have expected to see in a golden age IM like custom fonts, colors, rich text editing, etc.
- decentralization with federation via the matrix protocol
- end-to-end encryption available for both DMs and guild channels (unlike a certain slop discord clone that’s been making the rounds lately)
- awesome maintainers who actually listen to the users and aren’t chuds
- a policy against vibecoded PRs
- a cute animal mascot (including a trans flag variant)
if you’re new to matrix, try this. if you’re already using matrix, try this because it’s better than the other clients (especially element)
sable has a very focused goal of being a drop-in replacement for discord, which no other client attempts to do. many of the features i listed above in my post simply aren’t present in other clients, and if they are they’re implemented in a way that doesn’t behave as one would intuitively expect them to.
Does Sable support multiple accounts simultaneously online? Every time I go looking for a feature-complete Matrix client, all the ones I’ve tried only support one account at a time.
sable lets you switch between accounts in a menu pretty much exactly the way discord does, but if you need them running simultaneously i don’t think it currently provides that.
depending on what you have multiple accounts for, personas could be a good alternative here. otherwise perhaps commet.chat would be a good option for you. it has a lot in common with sable feature-wise so it plays nice with users of that, and it supports simultaneous logged in accounts. last i used it there were annoyances though, like not being able to reposition spaces on the sidebar.
If you run sable in the browser, you can just use Firefox’s containee tabs to run multiple instances of it
I just tested this and it is worth mentioning, this works smoothly. On some other clients (like Fractal), this apparently pulls your whole session from the home server and can take an entire minute to complete. Of course, Element doesn’t even provide this at all. Still. It has been twelve fucking years.
I assume the only downside is you might not get push notifications for the inactive account.
Update: I get notifications from the background account (on Android, at least). It’s perfect.
i started using element back when it was still called riot so i know the feeling. it’s completely directionless and every actually-good feature proposal would just get debated to death so nothing ever got done.
sable for the first time has made matrix actually enjoyable to use for me instead of just being something i tolerate for the sake security and freedom
I can see the manual switching being useful or a discord replacement on desktop, but I’ve been looking more for an instant messaging replacement for mobile. I want to keep accounts separate for different social groups but also be able to get timely notifications for all accounts.