Management

Room Creation

You can create new rooms and spaces using the :create command. By default, the room is private and unencrypted, but you can use the following flags to configure how it is initially created:

++space to make it a space
++public to make the room publicly joinable
++enc/++encrypted to make it an encrypted room
++alias=__localpart__ to set a canonical alias

For example, you could use the following to create a new public space #community:example.com:

:create ++space ++alias=community ++public

Room Invitations

Private Matrix rooms require someone to be let in by a current member with a high enough power level. You can invite someone to join a room through the :invite send command:

:invite send @user:example.com

The user will receive an invitation that they can then choose to accept or reject. If you’ve received an invitation to a room, space, or direct message, you can open it up, focus the window and run:

:invite accept to accept the invitation and join the room
:invite reject to reject the invitation

You can see a list of rooms you have been invited to using :invites.

Room Knocking

Room knocking is the reverse of room invitations: a user who is not yet a member of a room but wants to join it can send a room knock to let someone inside the room choose whether to invite them in.

You can send a knock through the :knock send command:

:knock send #room:example.com

If you are inside a room and someone has sent a knock request, you can choose how to handle it:

:knock accept @user:example.com to invite the knocking user to join the room.
:knock reject @user:example.com to reject the room knock from a user.
:knock ban @user:example.com to reject the room knock from a user and prevent them from knocking again.

Knocks will appear in the room’s timeline, but you can also look at the :members window for the room to see who has sent a knock.

Matrix keeps a list of direct message rooms in account data on the server. If you have a room that you want to appear under :dms and it’s not currently there, you can add the currently focused room to your account’s list of direct messages with:

:room dm set

Similarly, if you don’t want it to be a DM:

:room dm unset

Setting Room Tags

Matrix rooms can be tagged to help with sorting them. Several special tags that Matrix defines are:

m.favourite for favorite rooms that you look at often
m.lowpriority for rooms that you don’t look at often
m.server_notice for rooms where homeserver announcements are made

In iamb, you can modify the tags of an open room using:

:room tag set m.favourite

You can use :room tag set fav as a shorthand for m.favourite, and :room tag set low as a shorthand for m.lowpriority.

If you want to unset a tag, you can do:

:room tag unset fav

Matrix also allows users to apply their own tags that start with u.. For example, if you wanted to mark rooms that are bridged to an IRC channel, you could do:

:room tag set u.irc

Note that user tags are not shown by all clients, so while they will appear in iamb, you won’t necessarily see them elsewhere.

Configuring Room Notifications

If you’ve enabled notifications, you may want to reconfigure some rooms to not notify you as much. The different notification levels are:

mute, which disables notifications for this room.
keywords/mentions, which only shows notifications for mentions of the user and configured keywords.
all, which shows notifications for every message to this room.

You can update a room with:

:room notify set [mute|keywords|mentions|all]

You can remove the per-room override with:

:room notify unset

And see the currently configured value for the room with:

:room notify show

Upgraded Rooms

When a Matrix room is created, it declared which room version it is using from the Matrix protocol, which determines the set of features usable within the room by clients. (See [Feature Matrix], for example.) In order to leverage newer features, room administrators will “upgrade” the room by creating a successor room that uses a newer room version, and updating the old room’s state to point at the new room.

When this happens, iamb will show you a message and let you know that you can join the new room by running:

:follow next

Alternatively, if you are in the upgraded version of a room and want to go to the older one to read through older discussions, you can do:

:follow prev

To see what version a room is using, you can run:

:room version show

If you are a room administrator and you want to make a new room, then you can run:

:room version upgrade [VERSION]

Starting with room version 12, Matrix supports declaring additional room members who should also be considered creators of the room, which effectively grants them an infinite power level. You can specify this when upgrading with:

:room version upgrade 12 ++creator=@user:example.com

iamb documentation