About the option to disable recently online indicator

1

So the next/current versions feature a recently seen indicator, you might already have seen it:
Bildschirmfoto 2022-10-24 um 19.51.52

Some people want to be able to disable it because they realise that it can stress some users and encourage toxic behaviour (the latter point is more applicable to read receipts, tough).

on irc we discussed that we are open to disabling it, some wanted to disable the indicators too when disabling read-reciepts, to avoid adding a new setting which is according to one of our goals of having not too many settings in general.

Personally I think it’s different enough to be worth a dedicated option, possibly right under the option for the read receipts. There are times when I want the recently seen indicator, but not send out read receipts myself and vice-versa.

Also I think it makes sense to implement this as a core setting/config-option and not in the ui.

Update:
the “recently seen indicator” does not rely on some additional “presence data”, but just on the anyway available information. (last seen timestamp of contact <= 10min)

2

As soon as any read receipt is received, date and time are known when the other contact was “online” unless it was possible to null the timestamp of emails. Not sure if two separate switches - one for “last seen within ten minutes” and one for read receipts - can be introduced to switch on/off. Maybe it should be one single switch for both functions…

3

hiding it is about the receiving side (what’s displayed, you can’t hide that info anyway), read receipts on the other hand is a setting about sending information.
And as I said I might find the “recently seen” indicator annoying, but want to keep sending read receipts. I personally don’t think that those two functions are or should be the same thing.

4

@Simon Do I understand this right, you want to keep sending read receipts and reveal your “online presence”? Anyone can look them up in the INBOX/DeltaChat folder using a MUA…

5

If you want to hide your presence, you have to disable [sending] read receipts.

The setting to disable green dots is about hiding presence of others from you. It’s not about privacy, it is only needed to remove distraction.

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6

and don’t send messages nor interact with webxdc apps.

7

To be honest I rarely see green dots in the chatlist. Most cases when I see a green dot is when I open a member list in a large group.

Maybe this is not a problem in practice and the solution is to do nothing about it.

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8

I also think it is not worthy adding an option just to not to see the green dot, in any case it makes sense to disable with the read receipts, but in my case I don’t want to send read receipts but I do like to know when peers are seen recently, for example to check if bots are online