Recommended Clients

Matrix is a protocol, not an app — you pick a client, the way email lets you pick a mail app. That freedom is great and also a trap: there are dozens of clients, and honestly, most are abandoned, half-finished, or missing encryption features you need. We recommend three. All of them are free and open source, and you can switch (or run several at once) whenever — your account doesn’t care.

Status notes below are current as of July 2026.

Commet — our pick

Commet is what we recommend first and what the setup guide uses. It’s a young, fast-moving client with a clean Discord-like feel that fits how Nether actually uses Matrix: spaces, threads, and encryption all work, group calls work (Jitsi today; native Matrix calling is in development), and multiple accounts can be signed in at once.

• Runs on: Windows, Linux, Android, and the browser (app.commet.chat). macOS/iOS planned, not out.
• Rough edges, honestly: it’s pre-1.0. Android installs are a direct APK (no Play Store/F-Droid yet), push notifications on Android are currently unreliable, and the recovery-key/verification screens are the clunkiest part of the app — which is exactly why the setup guide makes you do that step immediately. Development is active; these are the kinds of bugs getting fixed release to release.
• Pick it if: you’re on Windows/Linux/Android and want the client the rest of Nether is using.

Element X — the safe default

Element is the flagship Matrix client, made by the company behind much of Matrix itself. It comes in two generations right now: Element X (Android/iOS) is the modern, fast mobile app and the one to install on a phone; Element (desktop and web) is the mature classic app, being modernized piece by piece. The old “Element Classic” mobile app is in maintenance mode — don’t start there.

• Runs on: everything. iPhone and Mac users: this is your client until Commet gets there.
• Strengths: the most polished encryption and verification flows of any client, real app-store installs, dependable push notifications, mature voice/video. When another client misbehaves, Element is the reference you check against.
• Rough edges: Element X is still reaching feature parity with classic Element (widgets are missing, some spaces management is limited). The desktop app is heavier than Cinny.
• Pick it if: you’re on iOS/macOS, you want the most-trodden path, or you want a reliable second client alongside Commet — which we genuinely recommend for phone notifications right now.

Cinny — the lightweight one

Cinny is a slick, minimal client focused on doing the basics beautifully. Use it at app.cinny.in with zero installation, or as a light desktop app for Windows/macOS/Linux.

• Strengths: clean Discord-ish interface, snappy, small; encryption, device verification, spaces, and threads are all solid, and it has calls these days too. Actively maintained with a steady release cadence.
• Rough edges: no native mobile app — on a phone it’s a browser PWA, which works poorly on iOS in particular (notifications, storage). Treat it as a desktop/web client.
• Pick it if: you live in a browser tab, you want the lightest decent desktop client, or Commet feels heavy on your machine.

What about the others?

Asked and answered, so you don’t have to repeat our research:

• FluffyChat — friendly, genuinely fine, actively maintained; we just don’t need a fourth recommendation, and the three above cover its niches.
• SchildiChat — a respectable Element fork with a more traditional-IM feel; if you want that, you may as well run Element and stay closer to upstream.
• Nheko — nice lightweight native desktop client, but still officially beta and desktop-only.
• Cinny forks (Extera et al.) — the notable ones are dead. Use upstream Cinny.

If some new client catches your eye, the two questions that matter: does it do end-to-end encryption and cross-signed device verification properly, and has it had a release in the last few months? A client that fails either will eventually strand you staring at “unable to decrypt” — see encryption for why.