I’m interested in collecting the things that block or slow down the adoption of delta chat.
What is the most annoying missing Feature to you?
What prevents people from using delta chat?
I’ll start with some things:
reliable iOS Push Notifications (the heartbeat server made things a bit better, but it’s still lacking and sometimes not working at all)
easier multidevice setup
Backup import/export is too hard for normal people (we have network backup transfer planed)
also we need to improve communication that we can avoid the “2 different keys situation - I cannot read your messages on one of my devices”-situation
Missing jump to message in desktop (search results and quotes)
PS: I want to focus on “DeltaChat as messenger” side of things here, “Deltachat as full Email-client” is another topic that has other needs like “I use multiple mail clients and want that deltachat works nicely with them - for example if I delete and message on IMAP I want to see it gone in DeltaChat as well” or “I need my gmail tags in DC”
At the moment, the two things I miss the most are multi-account notifications and synchronization of message reading between mobile and desktop clients.
What @darhma said.
Than: multi attachments, mark as read / uread chats, manage contacts (import, export, edit…), warn when you’re in BCC, set a subject easily.
But for my direct experience at least a pair of my contacts were blocked to adopt DC for the “log in to your server”. They don’t understand.
Being able to mark messages as unread which would then automatically be update on the other devices having the same account.
Being able to mark messages as read (see above).
Automatic expansion of typing field up to eg two-thirds of the available vertical height of the DC window on whatever device is being used. The current input field is much too small for anything but the shortest messages.
Continuous streaming of location.
Availability of native rpm for installation on CentOS/RHEL 7/8.
As I’ve said before, it’s important that Delta Chat respects other people and does not send inappropriate email to them (such as announcing a topic change with “changed the group name”).
I’ve put a lot of work and hassle into getting Delta Chat and my other MUA to both be able to make sense together, see each other’s emails etc. I use the “use Delta Chat for all emails” but usually start new threads with new people from my other MUA since it’s easier than to create a new group, add a new contact etc (for subject line purposes) in Delta Chat. All of that work&hassle is to be expected and fine (I mean, hopefully will get better in terms of features & UX over time) but not what I’m talking about. Instead, it’s respect for other people’s MUAs.
I want to be a good email citizen, have my own house in order. Not send product advertising signatures or spurious emails. To me, Delta Chat’s goal should be to be a really good email client with a messenger/chat UI. Features from Signal or Telegram that can’t be done politely over email shouldn’t be done.
The “invite to a video chat” email is fine, although, as with all of Delta Chat’s emails, it’s tricky for those of us who use multiple languages.
PS.
And then yeah, notifications on iOS. What’s a heartbeat server?
PPS.
Delta Chat when using the quote-reply option (which I rarely but sometimes use, as often just for threading purps as for the quote) puts the quoted text on top. Perfect when dealing with old schoolers, usenetters, and hackers, but sometimes incompatible with some automated customer support systems.
PPPS.
And as we talked about the other day on Fedi, if email could figure out forward secrecy that’d be a dream. I’m gonna use email & PGP either way, I can’t get the entire world on OMEMO. (I can barely get on OMEMO myself for lack of a friendly client.)
the heartbeat server sends a silent push notification to all registered devices (all 10 or 20min) in hope that iOS let’s deltachat check for new messages.
source code is here: GitHub - deltachat/notifiers: Notify devices
The thing is that iOS does not allow apps to run continuously in the background, so the heartbeat server is one of our attempts to work around that limitation.
Last time I tried it together with a friend, also using DC on Android, it did not seem to work. Not sure if we configured something wrong or not but we could not get locations updated on each other’s phones. I did post a message in this forum but never saw a reply. I am not able to test it again for quite some time.
Perhaps you can confirm that continuous streaming does work on Android? By the way, how often is the location updated and sent to the other person?
For me, the most important topic is the concept how delta chat should be used. The current concept is that there are “chats” and there are “emails”. The chats get moved to a different folder by delta chat (I know I can deactivate this feature). I think, this concept is not a good solution because:
For me there is no clear distinction between chats and e-mails
People, who installed delta chat from the app store, are confused if they should use it parallel to there old mail app or replace there mail app
Than people will use delta chat and other clients like K9 at the same time with the same email account. This will lead to problems like “why does K9 notify me about new emails when I get a chat message” or “why are some mails in Inbox and some mails in chat folder”.
Every feature, which is optimized for delta chat to delta chat communication, is critical as only very few people can benefit from it. Almost all communication will be between delta chat and common mail clients.
Delta chat benefits from the fact that everybody has an e-mail address. This advantage should not be given up by a concept where delta chat is optimized for delta chat to delta chat communication.
I try to use delta chat as a regular mail client and love it this way. I think it should also be promoted as a regular mail client.
From the most to the least annoying missing features:
Easy handling of multiple accounts.
The best would be one integrated chat view like in the Conversations app, but global notifications and a global indicator of the unread message count would already help a lot
Multiple attachments in one message.
Not only is it more tedious to send multiple photos one by one, I also feel bad that my non-Delta contacts get multiple e-mails
Adding text to voice messages like one can to other attachment.
This is useful e.g. to provide links relating to things mentioned in the audio. For non-Delta contacts, it can be annoying if they get one e-mail with the audio and another one with the related text
Changing the e-mail subject easily.
It can be confusing for non-Delta contacts to discuss different topics under the always same subject
Thank you for the helpful offer, I do appreciate that.
I know about Conversations
By friendly client, I meant a client that’d be part of another app I’m already using (like IRC/Bitlbee or Delta Chat). I don’t wanna be juggling four messaging apps.
I’ve found an OMEMO plugin for the XMPP library that simplebot uses so in the future, OMEMO via Delta Chat could become a reality for me. That’d be perfect. Already spending all day in Delta Chat as it is. Although I’m a li’l hung up on Python basics.
This is possible. Start a new group in Delta Chat with the new group name be the new subject but same members.
It’s time consuming, cumbersome, and can look ugly in Delta Chat with a bunch of extra threads. (OTOH I do have some threads I like to be able to post to from the iOS share sheet and this is the only way to do that.)
Normally, what I’ve started doing lately is to just send the first email in a thread from my other MUA (I have the same autocrypt key in there) and BCC myself so it shows up in Delta. Especially a good idea with new contacts.
I agree that Delta Chat could be made easier here.
Marking messages as unread.
Maybe. There are some possible counter arguments.
That Delta Chat doesn’t have a stark “read/unread” visual difference has advantages. It makes messages less something you have to “deal with” or “process”. Instead they just come in.
For those that do want an “inbox zero” style policy, there is the archive mode. Archive everything you’e dealt with and only leave what you still wanna deal with.
What I do instead is to copy stuff I wanna deal with later to Reminders. (Being able to send messages to the share sheet, or even to Reminders directly, would make that easier. As it is, I copy them then run a shortcut that sends clipboard text to reminders.) That way, the inbox isn’t a TODO list which makes it a chill place to hang out and learn new stuff. (OTOH I’m spoiled by my other MUA automatically indexing and sorting everything.)
Thanks, good to know. I agree that this feels strange, especially when you’re only writing with one person. I will edit my post to add the “make it easier” part.
Thanks, but that is quite far from the simpler process that I apply in several other chat apps – and I know I’m not the only one. I’m aware that there are many possible processes and Delta Chat can’t cater to all of them. I just felt it’d be reasonable to enable such a familiar pattern by implementing a basic feature of the underlying protocol that is also available in other chat apps.
Usually, I open a message and skim it to get a feeling for how urgent it is. If it doesn’t need an action right now, I mark it as unread and answer later. Especially with Delta Chat where people can write longer e-mails, it’s hard to ignore that “process later” aspect.
My inbox is still a chill place as I don’t keep many unread messages. But it does happen, even for chat-like messages, that I don’t reply on the spot. So it would be helpful to be able to mark those few messages as unread instead of having to archive everything else (i.e. the majority).
Another thing that I find rather inconvenient is the fact that in the desktop version (linux) the chats open at the end of the last message and not at the beginning of the first unread message.
I would like to have the notification symbol for a new message on my Android phone to vanish after I read the message e.g. in the desktop app or on my Android tablet.
I’m gonna use email & PGP either way, I can’t get the entire world on OMEMO. (I can barely get on OMEMO myself for lack of a friendly client.)