Most common problems (client side)

On this page we explain how to solve some of the most common problems you may encounter on popular clients.

The button to invite users to some private groups no longer appears

It may happen that the button to invite users no longer appears in some private groups. To fix this you have two options: open the private group (MUC) from another Client, or disconnect and reconnect your user, now the button to invite people should reappear. This problem is currently being experienced with the Cheogram client and we are not aware if this error occurs with other Clients as well.

Can't send encrypted messages in a private group due to OMEMO fingerprint popups

When sending encrypted messages in a private, non-anonymous group, you may be redirected to a window saying that key reception is disabled for certain users (see this image of Conversations client). Usually, this means that the other users are not online to perform OMEMO key exchanges, which is necessary for encryption.

Until the users become online, what you can do is to write temporarily unencrypted messages (by disabling OMEMO). For example, on Conversations just click on the padlock in the upper right corner and select “unencrypted”.

To better facilitate key exchanges, it is advisable that participants are contacts saved in the mutual address book and subscribe to each other's presence. To do this last thing, go to a contact's details and toggle on both “Send Presence Updates,” “Receive Presence Updates” (this applies to Conversations and its forks). These “presence” options also contain OMEMO keys. This would help improve the situation, especially if some participant has multiple clients and some of them only rarely online.

MUC nickname inconsistencies

When changing a nickname in a semi-anonymous MUC, some weird things may happen:

• The nickname change doesn't take effect unless retried for a second or third time
• The nickname change isn't synced to other currently online clients. This results in a room having multiple occupants with different names.

As Multi-session nicks are not specified in XEP-0045, different clients would inconsistently handle these changes. If your desired behavior is to have nicknames fully synced to all clients, it is recommended to:

• Check the chat log events (e.g. the informational "A is now known as B" text on Gajim) to confirm a nick change has been recognized.
• Disconnect and re-connect other clients to force a nick update on their side
• Avoid changing nicknames often