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FAQ

Can I run my own instance?

Yes! We host a public canonical version of the Matrix Viewer at (incoming) that everyone can use but feel free to also run your own instance (setup instructions in the readme).

How is this different from the matrix-static project?

Matrix Static already existed before the Matrix Viewer but there was some desire to make something with more Element-feeling polish and loading faster (avoid the slow 502's errors that are frequent on view.matrix.org).

And with the introduction of the jump to date API via MSC3030, we could show messages from any given date and day-by-day navigation.

The Matrix Viewer project has since replaced the matrix-static project on view.matrix.org.

Why did the bot join my room?

Only Matrix rooms with world_readable history visibility are accessible in the Matrix Viewer and indexed by search engines.

But the bot (@view:matrix.org) will join any public room because it doesn't know the history visibility without first joining. Any room that doesn't have world_readable history visibility will lead a 403 Forbidden.

The Matrix Viewer hold onto any data (it's stateless) and requests the messages from the homeserver every time. The view.matrix.org instance has some caching in place, 5 minutes for the current day, and 2 days for past content.

See the opt out section below for more details.

How do I opt out and keep my room from being indexed by search engines?

Only Matrix rooms with world_readable history visibility are accessible in the Matrix Viewer and indexed by search engines. One easy way to opt-out is to change your rooms history visibility to something else if you don't intend for your room be world readable.

Dedicated opt-out controls are being tracked in #47.

As a workaround for view.matrix.org, you can ban the @view:matrix.org user if you don't want your room content to be shown at all.

Why does the bot user join rooms instead peeking in the room or using guests?

Since Matrix Viewer only displays rooms with world_readable history visibility, we could peek into the rooms without joining. This is being explored in #272. But peeking doesn't work when the server doesn't know about the room already (this is commonly referred to as federated peeking) which is why we have to fallback to joining the room in any case. We could solve the federated peeking problem and avoid the join with MSC3266 room summaries to check whether the room is world_readable even over federation.

Guests are completely separate concept and controlled by the m.room.guest_access state event in the room. Guest access is also a much different ask than read-only access since guests can also send messages in the room which isn't always desirable. The bot is read-only and does not send messages.

Technical details

The main readme has a technical overview of the project. Here are a few more details.

How do I figure out what version of the Matrix Viewer is running?

Just visit the /health-check endpoint which will return information like the following:

{
  "ok": true,
  "commit": "954b22995a44bf11bfcd5850b62e206e46ee2db9",
  "version": "main",
  "versionDate": "2023-04-05T09:26:12.524Z",
  "packageVersion": "0.0.0"
}

How does the room URL relate to what is displayed on the page?

We start the end of the date/time specified in the URL looking backward up to the limit.

Why does the time selector only appear for some pages?

The time selector only appears for pages that have a lot of messages on a given day/hour/minute/second (more than the configured messageLimit).