What is Matrix?

"Matrix" is a chat system and a communication protocol.

Matrix is specifically a protocol for encrypted messaging

Matrix involves servers and clients. Clients are apps on devices like your phone, laptop, or desktop PC; servers are the computers you put in data centers and in the corner of my living room.
In Matrix, servers act as the home for your account, messages, and group chats. Your account resides on a single server, and that server is known as your homeserver However, Matrix is federated, meaning that regardless of which homeserver your account is on, you can chat with people on any homeserver, and participate in any group chats you have access to.

A Matrix homeserver has been setup for organizing AACK activities, called "aack.food", and this is guide for how to use it.

Matrix is intended to be an open protocol, meaning that you can use any client app that speaks the Matrix language. Here is a list of clients:

• Element, the original client, for Android, iOS, web, and desktop.
• FluffyChat, a lightweight and simpler client, for Android and iOS.
• SchildiChat, a derivative of Element with some changes

You can pick any chat app you like, if you can figure it out. Contained here (so far!) are guides for Element (Android, iOS, and PC/Web).

In order to do anything with Matrix, you first need an account.

You can make an account on any homeserver that will have you. There is a general-purpose, open server at matrix.org that you can sign-up with if you so choose. But one of the benefits of Matrix is that it is decentralised, in that there is not one "owner" of the whole system; so it's nice to have an account on a local community server.

aack.food is not fully open for registration, so in order to make an account you need an registration token. If you were linked to this guide you should have also been provided with an registration token already; if not, ask in the AACK signal chat and someone should be able to help.

An registration token is just a weird set of random characters, like:

As mentioned previously, you can get to the web Element interface via element.aack.food. I recommend using Element Web on a PC, so a laptop or desktop computer; If you don't have easy access to one, you can do so with a mobile browser, it'll just be slightly weird. When you first open the page, it will look like this:

Click "Create Account". It will automatically choose to create an account on aack.food. Pick a user name, and then a password, which you need to enter twice to confirm. It should look something like this:

You cannot change your username later without creating a new account; but don't worry, you can change your display name, which is almost as good. Don't put your civilian/government name as your user name!

When you're ready, click Register. Now you will be presented with a screen like this:

This is where you put your registration token. Copy and paste it into the text box, and click Continue You'll be presented with a welcome screen and a choice about who you're planning to chat to. Just hit "Skip" here.

The webpage will at some point request permission to save things to your device's storage; say yes to this, it's how it'll save your messages.
And that's it! You should be dropped in to the main screen. The first thing you'll want to do is message the admin user account to confirm that you're in, and they'll add you to the necessary groups. Go here for that guide.

This part of the guide assumes that you have already created an account. If not, go to Creating an Account
When you open Element Mobile, you will be presented with this page:

Select "Sign In".
You will then find yourself at the login page where you can put in your credentials, which looks like this:

Take note of the address under "Where your conversations live" near the top. It will, by default, be set to "matrix.org". If you're reading this guide, this will likely not be correct, so click "Edit". It will take you to a screen where you can input the "Server URL". Enter in aack.food so that it looks like this:

Then click "Next". It'll take you back to the login page, now with the correct server address. Enter in the username you've recently made, and the password you chose, and click "Next". Assuming the login worked, you should see a page like this:

Note in this screenshot the message in the green section up the top. This part is important.
If you created your account on a PC (via Element Web) then you'll see this message. If you had your account created for you by an admin, you might not.
Element uses "encryption", this means that your messages to each other are scrambled in such a way that only the intended persons can read it. In order keep this encryption secure, whenever you sign-in to a new device you will need to verify that new device. If you don't, you won't be able to read your old messages, and you might not be able to see new messages people send you.

The process is short and simple, and just needs two devices, the one you just signed in on, and the one you created your account on (so, sit with your phone in front of your computer). Feel free to try it yourself, but a guide can be useful, which you can find here.

After you've done that, go here where you will find guides for basic functionality like messaging people. Try to follow that through until you've messaged "admin" (the admin user for aack.food) so that you can be added to the right groups. Ask for help if you get stuck!