

It’s a piece of cake for end users. It makes me really jealous lol. Just keep in mind that I’m making that claim based on using the ansible playbook that deploys synapse + element call and an element web UI. Some of our users like to use some combination of a web, desktop and mobile app. So having that come setup after deploying the playbook was really nice. The hard part for end users (for us at least since we’re running a private, defederated server) is pointing the client to the right URL. I made a PDF with a bunch of step by step instructions for how people can login with all of the apps.
That ansible playbook did make deployment much easier, but it’s still a ton of reading because of what a complex stack of tech is actually required to run a matrix chat server. I had originally tried doing it with a bigass docker compose file, and manually configuring all the reverse proxies. After two days of failing to get that working, I went with the playbook. It’s much easier than doing it completely DIY.
The only real difficulty I foresee with users down the line is what happens when people lose their recovery keys. Obviously there’s ways to log back in, but people probably won’t appreciate losing access to chat history. We’ll see how it goes, but generally the onboarding process is really easy. And it can be made easier by the fact that admins can just create users, so the whole registration process is optional.









It works with any subsonic compatible app. I use symfonium on android. Its a paid app, but worth the price in my opinion.
Also pro tip if you use symfonium for caching stuff offline. Setup a smart playlist with rules for what you want to save offline (played in the last 30 days or something like that). Then toggle caching on that playlist. That basically gives you a smart, configurable offline cache.
Symfonium supposedly supports audiobookshelf, but I haven’t been able to get it to work. I just use the audiobookshelf app.
Oh yeah, and navidrome can be setup to scrobble to lastfm or listenbrainz if you use that. Convinient so you dont have to worry about scrobbling from your device.
Been using self hosted navidrome + symfonium for a few months now and love it.