First steps - How to start

Step 1: Registration

1. Navigate to https://element.frei.chat or select another client from the list.
2. Click on "Create Account" and chose a username, password and enter a valid mail address. A the moment a telephone number is not required and will lead to an error message.
   After filling all of the fields continue with a click on "Register".
   

   

   
   
3. You will receive an email in which you have to click on the link to validate your registration.
   
4. Next you should see the welcome page of Element where you can choose your next steps. This information is not required to provide. You can skip that step.
   

   

5. Now your account has been created and you free to use all the feature of frei.chat. To make sure your chat messages stay safe you should coninue with Step 2.
   

   

Step 2: Secure your chat rooms

It is mendatory to create an encryption key. This key is used to encrypt your private chats and keep anything secure. There are chats which may be unencrypted but those are mostly public rooms. Some rooms on frei.chat have to be unencrypted, for example bridge management rooms. This is due to the bot's inability to encrypt chats.

1. Click on the profile icon in the upper left corner and select "All settings".
   

   

   
   
2. Go to "Security & Privacy" and click on "Set up".
   

   

3. You can now chose between "Generate a Security Key" or "Enter a Security Phrase".
   

   

4. You will be shown a passphrase which you need to safely secure and never show to anyone. Everyone with that key will be able to decrypt your personal chats and sent files.
   

   

5. Download or copy the Security Key and click "Continue".
6. Now all of you encrypted rooms will be secure.
7. Open the "Security & Privacy" again and backup your room keys. These key are necessary to restore chats if you've lost your Security Key. Click on "Export E2E room keys" and securly store the downloaded file.
   

   

Step 3: Begin to chat

You can start chatting by clicking on "Start new chat" with a friend or create a new encrypted or unencrypted, private or public room.

Rooms

"Join public room" will show you a list of rooms you can join to chat with other people.

In the top right of the dialog you will find a preselection of servers.

• The first entry will always be frei.chat own public rooms you can join.
• The third default entry is a list of public rooms of servers participating in the global index maintained by matrixrooms.info.
  

Spaces

Spaces are ment to provide a special place for a group of rooms. People often create these spaces for a specific topic where users can meet and talk with the same interest.

To join a space on frei.chat open the dialog "Join public room" and remove the filter "Public rooms" in the "Search" text box. 
At the bottom of that dialog you have three choices:

Select "Public spaces" where you can join public spaces of the selected server.
For example "RSS" is a public frei.chat space where you can find rooms present you well-known RSS feeds like the Heise News. And of course you are welcome to post your favorite RSS feed so we can create a room to view for everyone on the server.

Your own space

You can create your own spaces for your very own usage. For example when you connect your personal Telegram account you will find all the chats in the common space of your account. If you have many, many contact this can become messy very quickly. You could create your personal Telegram space and add all of your contacts to it. Unfortunately not every Bridge offers an automatic Space like the Whatsapp bridge bot. Maybe in the future they will implement it, who knows!

1. In the main screen of Element click on that plus symbol on the very left sidebar.
2. Now decide if you want to create a private or public space
   

    

   
3. Chose a name for the space and upload a picture (optional).

Step 4: Inviting Matrix users

It is as easy to invite other Matrix accounts as creating new rooms.

1. In an existing room you can invite as many people as you want.
2. On the top right click on the i-Icon, select "People" and click on "Invite to this room".
   

   

3. In the next dialog you can search for other accounts. The pattern for account names is @USERNAME:domain.tld.

   

4. Now click on the account in the list below and confirm with "Invite".

Additional services

Bridges

Bridges are used to connect your Matrix account with other social networks like Whatsapp, Telegram, Skype, etc.

Bots

Bots are special accounts you can invite to enjoy special functions like RSS feeds, Github and Gitlab connectivity and many more.

NTFY

Stay away from Google Services and use the in-house notification service NTFY.