Disabling historical rooms

[iambeingtracked]

Description:
I would like it to be possible to disable historical rooms in synapse. I just want to leave a room and forget about it, not leaving a trail of it in historical rooms.

[erikjohnston]

Doesn't seem unreasonable as a config option, but I don't think we'd implement it ourselves.

[richvdh]

I think this is a client-side feature, isn't it? It's the client choosing to present the list of historical rooms, not the server.

(Though #4720 is related)

[iambeingtracked]

Well, this can be removed on the client side, but I'm not entirely sure whether historical rooms are provided by the client or by the server

[richvdh]

I don't think Synapse provides a list of historical rooms. (It used to, but has not done so for a long time.)

[iambeingtracked]

So in which version was that removed from synapse?

[richvdh]

I couldn't say for certain, I'm afraid.

[iambeingtracked]

Hmm, can't find it https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/releases?q=historical&expanded=true

[anoadragon453]

Synapse does not notify the client that a room has been forgotten, no. It's up to the client to remove it from the room list. See Element Web's code here:

https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/blob/5fbeb20df864721e2acbb7bff56ff234abf9e3fb/src/components/structures/MatrixChat.tsx#L1178

This also means that if you have 2 Element Web clients, forgetting a room on one will not cause it to disappear from the other.

Additionally, it appears that historical rooms do not come down in an initial sync, so if you log out and log in again all historical rooms will be lost. This makes it difficult to forget them afterwards!

Actually, this last part is apparently Element Web's fault for not setting include_leave to true in the initial sync filter.

[iambeingtracked]

Okay, I think I should make an issue in https://github.com/vector-im/element-web. Closing the issue.