Wow this is exactly what matrix needs rn.
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
52 points (100.0% liked)
Selfhosted
56463 readers
982 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
-
No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Glad to hear it, if you have any suggestions please let me know.
How many good projects should I bookmark🙂. My booksmarks have become Chonk
This is very cool. Have you uncovered any hidden gems with it yet (eg genuinely active nice communities, etc). My brief experience with matrix left me feeling that either a) either all of the activity on matrix was for matrix-related things, or b) it was just impossible to actually find active communities.
Yea I have, and that's exactly why I created this. Finding them without this tool would have been really annoying. Here's a screenshot of the top 12h rooms:
Right now they are pretty diverse. The two most active I recommend starting off in if you're English speaking are #envs_lounge:matrix.org and #anime:matrix.org
This is the one I made https://matrix.to/#/#all-topics:matrix.org before I created the activity tracker and realized there were several others.
So there is nothing about like niche hobbies on there? Like gourmet mushroom cultivation, or brewing I take it?
There's nothing stopping you from creating a room for that and inviting people.
The biggest problem I've noticed is that the amount of "Members" is displayed in clients, but so many rooms have a lot of "Members" but no real activity. Which is what this tracker attempts to solve by looking at actual chat messages and timestamps.
I wander if matrix will jump in use as discord now needs age verification?
I think it will, another reason I built this, because new people coming to matrix will need a way to browse rooms more easily.
I've never explored the Matrix. Reddit use to be the only 'social media' type outlet that I frequented, and now Lemmy. Total Accounts: 2,222,678. That seems significant.
In hindsight the accounts counter was incorrect it was adding up all the accounts from every room without considering that many of the same accounts come from different rooms. I'll have to add a deeper tracker which I don't think is necessary to track individual accounts, outside of the scope of the activity tracker.
So, for the clueless (me), what is Matrix. I hear people talk about it. Is it a chat platform, forum platform like Lemmy, or other. Might as well ask the stupid questions.