Voice channel like in Discord

[Majaspic]

Hi

It would be nice if Riot integrate this feature. Voice call and video calls should be different than Skype, make it original :)

[lampholder]

Discord supports enabling voice in a channel/room, such that everybody within that room is automatically engaged in the voice chat (with push-to-talk/voice level threshold detection to stop it being a mess of background noise, and users can mute themselves/silence the voice chat).

This would be a neat feature to have, but it would need some thought as to how this could/should exist alongside the existing voice paradigms.

[Hakker]

voice channels would be greatly appreciated here as well. It's a great thing since people can simply pop in themselves and don't get called all the time.

[wolfsblu]

It seems as though this feature would turn Riot into the only serious self-hosted alternative to Discord.
I find the idea of having "voice rooms" in general much more appealing than the concept of conference calls - I can join a voice room whenever I want to and see who's available, whereas calls have to be scheduled somehow and may be quite intrusive to the unsuspecting receiver.

Looking at the Discord feedback tracker a self-hosted solution is one of the more often requested features. So it might be a decent way to attract more attention to Riot/Matrix.

[BloodyIron]

I too would like to see this feature added to riot.

[BloodyIron]

Any word on this? March 2017 was original post, now it's 2018 :S

[BloodyIron]

@helmi77 I'm very much interested in self-hosting for this function! (if that isn't apparent by now, heh).

[Half-Shot]

I'm actually wondering if a good way of fixing this is just having two distinct rooms, where one room might be "voice disabled" where users cannot start calls and another room which is a regular voice enabled room. This could all be done in state fairly easily.

As far as a voice channel goes, that's entirely a UI that discord uses to hide the behind the scenes stuff. All Riot would need to do to emulate that would be to replace the call button with a join button and remove the (frankly silly) dialing noises and music.

[t3chguy]

@Half-Shot music and dialling don't exist with jitsi anyway which will be replacing freeswitch which has the music anyway

[Half-Shot]

Yup. The only thing I've not yet clarified @t3chguy is whether the Jitsi stuff is all behind the scenes and Riot will build it's UI around it rather than being an ugly widget?

And I will miss the music :(

[ara4n]

the idea is to integrate jitsi transparently, just as freeswitch is today. the mobile platforms do this already. one slight issue is that jitsi is also not working perfectly, but we do also have a plan C (which some day we might make some progress with).

[BloodyIron]

So will we need too run our own jitsi servers for Riot to use? Or is it baked in there? I'm not sure.

[ara4n]

it will (eventually) support running both your own jitsi and using the matrix.org hosted one.

[Half-Shot]

Thanks for the clarifications @ara4n. This has gone off topic a bit and I think that answers everyone's questions.

[BloodyIron]

So where are we with this one?

[LickABrick]

This feature is probably the only thing holding me back from using it.

[BloodyIron]

I would use this at my events if this was put in, still really want this!

[ed5avage]

Would be really great to see this feature :)

[BloodyIron]

If there's some way we can have users auto join voice for certain channels (as a property of that channel), that would probably contribute to this functional need. Right now, the only way is "opt-in", which works for many cases, but not all.

[Majaspic]

Come on Matrix ! You're going to kill Discord with this feature

[Aishou]

I was recently searching for an open, secure and selfhosted alternative Chat/Social/Voice Platform so i found Riot.

Please implement this, it would be so awesome to have an good alternative to Discord.. precisely a secure alternative.

[dessalines]

Doesn't this already exist? Rooms already have voice / video calling.

[LickABrick]

@dessalines Currently it only has voice rooms in which a person needs to be added to a ongoing call. The feature requested here is to have something like Discord/TS3 where users will have voice enabled by default upon entering a channel (configurable)

[erieflin]

Also there is no way to see who/that there is currently people in a call. I personally only join calls when i see there are others in one so this is a big issue with riot for me at the moment.

[Extarys]

I discovered Matrix/Riot a couple of weeks ago and this feature would be a huge plus to convince people of using it and switch over.

[rikimasan]

With all the controversy going on with discord right now, I think doing this could really bring in a huge user base to the platform.

[ghost]

this has nothing to do with mumble /... ??

[pottah]

this has nothing to do with mumble /... ??

Maybe a Mumble integration? 👍 I really would like to see something like that^^

[francisrohner]

Someone fork it and do it hahahaha

[MurzNN]

Here https://blog.discord.com/how-discord-handles-two-and-half-million-concurrent-voice-users-using-webrtc-ce01c3187429 is good article with some description, how Discord implement voice channels using WebRTC, hope it may help with implementation in Riot.

[tensaimon]

Just a quick comment to say I too am very interested in this feature, I've been looking at discord for hosting a community (I teach at uni so I'd use it for my students) since people seem to love the functionality, but I'm put off by the security / privacy / business model (let me use for free but sell my data.etc.). issues....

[francisrohner]

If I figure out how to install matrix on a VPS I will try to help.
This stuff definitely seems complex though.
I'm excited by the root of riot-im having control of all your own data.

0_o

[patrolez]

Also this might help a little bit: https://github.com/Johni0702/mumble-web/tree/webrtc

This is a working HTML5 client for Mumble Open-Source server which hosts only Voice Channels with some minor support for texts - the repo contains a link in main README.md to a Demo.

I am wondering If these things could be mixed/glued somehow 🤔

[koalp]

I would like to see this functionnality, but not as an html widget. Rather as a fully integrated matrix feature, so that native clients can also make use of it.

I think that discord proved that voice channels are as important as text channels to have an efficient instant communication tool.

Mumble also provides an efficient voice transmission protocol ; maybe the voice part of it could be used to add voice transmission in the matrix protocol (not as a html widget) . It lacks encryption, though. (edit: see next comment)

[hramrach]

There is https://github.com/mumble-voip/libmumble for native applications.

And it is encrypted: https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Features#Encryption

[0hq]

Could you not hack together on a Synapse server a voice channel that was always active and thought it had a person in it constantly?

[ClusterConsultant]

This is of great interest to myself and my communities.

[fti7]

Native Mumble Integration would be very nice :-)
But this Issue here is p3.... so maybe in 10 Years :-(

[aWeinzierl]

Except someone has mercy and provides a PR 👀

[berserkwarwolf]

To everyone interested in this feature:

I just realized this issue / feature request is labeled as P3:
Priority Level 3, which is below 1 and 2.
And is the 4th most commented issue in the P3 label.

Which means, it will never be implemented.
LOL, FML. My dream of an open source Discord just shattered.

[t3chguy]

This is also an Open source project where anyone can contribute, where p3 doesn't hinder that at all.

[Per0x]

@berserkwarwolf One day they may realize the importance of this voice chat room feature. If the goal is to make the community grow, it should at least be p2 but in the meantime, let's not wonder why Matrix remains unpopular.
Today I don't see any advantage in using Matrix/element instead of Rocket.chat for example, and if this project just aims to be an umpteenth text chat project without standing out, it will be eaten up by the competitors that stand out. (which are not open source).
During the covid lockdown, it was really sad to see absolutely every school, middle school and high school use Discord and nothing else because there was no alternative...

[berserkwarwolf]

@Per0x indeed.

Riot / Vector / Element has gone through 3 rebrandings.

If they spent that time, money and effort on adding voice channels and a stupid-simple matrix server installer to enable easy self-hosting and LAN gatherings.

It would dominate the market in no time at all.

[turt2live]

I'm locking this for now - the thread seems to be deviating from discussing the feature to discussing priorities, which is not a productive way to keep an issue on the radar.

We're well aware of the ask here and would happily accept a contribution that adds it. We currently do not have bandwidth on the team to do it ourselves, and would like to fix other areas of the app so this kind of feature makes sense.

If you'd like to learn more about our prioritization, visit #element-web:matrix.org on Matrix.