I was using NeoChat for a while, but IIRC it doesn't support encrypted historical messages, so you'd have to get it set up and keep element around for searching history...
NeoChat has the benefit of supporting OIDC which my server uses exclusively, otherwise I would have given Fractal a look as well.
I have some crazy theories about "why" this is happening, I'm not an expert though.
Maybe I sound crazy. At any rate, I'm really glad for places like Lemmy (and operating systems like Linux) existing, because I don't trust any for-profit tech company not to ban Firefox/Linux users/Ad block/video streaming/etc.