Currently the flow to request keys to unencrypt old messages on a new device is extremely confusing for a lot of users. We don't provide enough data to the users that they will be able to unecrypt only messages from cross-verified sessions, and not from all the verified sessions.
There's also the case where users click "request keys" link under a message, but that doesn't do anything because this session is not cross-verified with a session that has those keys.
The general idea about this issue is to:
Improve copy for those actions to properly notify user that they may not be able to unencrypt messages if they aren't cross-verified with proper session
Add some big, error modal window that your sessions are not properly verified, as of above, and that the keys request has failed
Probably adding a way to see which sessions are cross-verified in the sessions list would be quite useful too, but if I remember correctly we don't exactly have a way of knowing this?
Hello! This seems related to Issue #9544, in which case perhaps that will fix things. If not, then we can pick this back up whenever it makes sense. Either way I'm happy to support on this issue.
Currently the flow to request keys to unencrypt old messages on a new device is extremely confusing for a lot of users. We don't provide enough data to the users that they will be able to unecrypt only messages from cross-verified sessions, and not from all the verified sessions.
There's also the case where users click "request keys" link under a message, but that doesn't do anything because this session is not cross-verified with a session that has those keys.
The general idea about this issue is to:
Probably adding a way to see which sessions are cross-verified in the sessions list would be quite useful too, but if I remember correctly we don't exactly have a way of knowing this?
Related: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/18652