If your All Chats list has grown to the point where finding anything feels like work, you're not alone. A long, flat list of rooms and DMs doesn't scale — the important conversations get buried, the noise is always visible, and keeping on top of it all requires more effort than it should. Introducing sections!
What's new
Sections lets you create named groups for your rooms to organise them however makes sense for you. You might have a section for a specific project, a team, a client, or just a catch-all for low-traffic chats you want out of the way. The structure is yours to define.
Your existing Favourites, Low Priority, and Chats categories are not going anywhere: they’re now default sections. These replace the old filter buttons — rather than toggling between views, your rooms are grouped in one consistent place.
Sections only appear when they contain rooms in the space you’re browsing, so your list stays clean. You can still find them and add rooms to them via the room context menu.
How it works
To create a section, open the room list menu (+) and select "New section". Give it a name, and it appears in your All Chats list ready to populate.
Adding a room into a section is as simple as dragging a room and dropping it into a section. If the section doesn’t appear, you can right-click any room and select "Move to Section" — from there you can assign it to any of your sections, default or custom.
Sections can be collapsed to hide their contents, which is particularly useful for keeping low-priority groups out of view without losing them entirely. When a section contains unread messages, it tells you.
Sections are available now in Element. We'd love to hear how the feature fits into your workflow — and what you'd like to see improved or extended as we continue to develop it.
We don't just ship features and move on. If Sections don’t work for you, help us refine them. Raise a ticket or use the in-app feedback form. To disable it entirely use develop.element.io or Element Nightly, heading to Settings > Preferences and “Disable Sections”.
