EDIT: I got the file I needed by now, via the web app.
The following rant is an exercise to the reader.

I can no longer save files in Element Desktop since the last upgrade due to smth smth Flatpak / desktop portal / ... cannot access anything policy bla. I get the idea that access to everything is bad, bad access to nothing is useless.
Anyway, so I gave the web version a try...
and it is unable to decrypt many messages, takes forever to load. I've been looking at this skeleton app for minutes.

... "Unable to decrypt message" ...

To anyone who ever wants to get in touch with me, please do so without encryption. Thanks.

To those with a security background:
I, too, have a security background.
My main security goal is usually *availability* besides integrity. Confidentiality is definitely not my goal for chit chat.

If people want that, contact me via Signal. Except not on desktop because the app doesn't yet offer a secure key storage backend that is practically usable for me.

Aaaah...

@CyReVolt you should be able to change the permission with flat seal, kde plasma system settings or cli.

But sadly the performance of element is very bad, if you are using the web. Sometimes ctrl+f5 helps, sometimes it works in a private browser window, without any extensions.

@thomasmarangoni Another 10 minutes later, I could finally see the message I needed and save the damn file I needed (a boot log). Awkward. :D

I have no KDE Plasma and never heard of flat seal, will check it out, thank you.

CLI args mean I would need to rewrite the whatever .desktop file to launch the app or something. Hard for many users.
And tbh I don't get why the default permissions render a core feature of the app unsusable.
Something is clearly missing here to at least prompt the user.

@thomasmarangoni @CyReVolt while it's great that the option exists, manually fixing these permission issues is a usability nightmare. We need an abstraction layer where apps can request certain kind of access and the user can then interactively grant or reject.

@dngrs @CyReVolt This already exists and is called portals, but isn't integrated in every distro/desktop environment yet.

@thomasmarangoni I am using a portal and it doesn't let me save the file where I can access it again. It shows me a blank view of my home directory.

After saving the file here, I do not see it in my home directory. No idea where it ends up. I searched /tmp, /run ... so I resorted to trying the web app. 🙃

@CyReVolt I've found the issue, were it have been reported. Just for reference: https://github.com/flathub/im.riot.Riot/issues/492#issuecomment-2503508579

@CyReVolt Matrix clients usually default to encryption on and make it impossible to turn off after starting a chat :/

@sajattack Which is good for confidentiality, yea, and it is the overall experience that defeats availability.
Anyone perceiving an app as "not working" would eventually bounce. I personally agree with the Signal mentality that federated systems are less than ideal for messengers. YMMV, of course.