matrix-spec-proposals/content/client-server-api/modules/typing_notifications.md

---
type: module
---

### Typing Notifications

Users may wish to be informed when another user is typing in a room.
This can be achieved using typing notifications. These are ephemeral
events scoped to a `room_id`. This means they do not form part of the
[Event Graph](index.html#event-graphs) but still have a `room_id` key.

#### Events

{{% event event="m.typing" %}}

#### Client behaviour

When a client receives an `m.typing` event, it MUST use the user ID list
to **REPLACE** its knowledge of every user who is currently typing. The
reason for this is that the server *does not remember* users who are not
currently typing as that list gets big quickly. The client should mark
as not typing any user ID who is not in that list.

It is recommended that clients store a `boolean` indicating whether the
user is typing or not. Whilst this value is `true` a timer should fire
periodically every N seconds to send a typing HTTP request. The value of
N is recommended to be no more than 20-30 seconds. This request should
be re-sent by the client to continue informing the server the user is
still typing. As subsequent requests will replace older requests, a
safety margin of 5 seconds before the expected timeout runs out is
recommended. When the user stops typing, the state change of the
`boolean` to `false` should trigger another HTTP request to inform the
server that the user has stopped typing.

{{% http-api spec="client-server" api="typing" %}}

#### Security considerations

Clients may not wish to inform everyone in a room that they are typing
and instead only specific users in the room.