Element Will Soon Make Verifying Your Devices Mandatory

The Matrix-based messenger Element announced their plans to make verifying your devices mandatory before they are able to send or receive end-to-end encrypted messages, so you can be sure the person you’re messaging is really them. This change is scheduled to roll out to Element app users in April 2026.

Currently, when you sign in to your Matrix homeserver account in Element, your messages will appear with a red warning shield indicating an unverified device. This feature exists to protect against someone getting into your account and messaging as you. You can verify your new device from one of your pre-existing devices easily to prevent this warning.

The issue is that it’s quite easy to ignore the red warning and continue messaging, which can leave your contacts vulnerable to messaging with an attacker instead of you. From my own personal experience, it can also just cause confusion.

This update will fix this issue. The new UI simply won’t allow unverified devices to message your contacts.

This marks a big improvement to security in Element and Matrix as a whole.