Continue where I stayed in the chat (remember scroll position)

[agutierrez]

Sometimes I am reviewing the conversations in some chats, and for some reason I must leave the chat, and I hope that when I return to the chat, I can continue reading where I stayed, but on the contrary, the chat automatically returns to the beginning, and I have to search manually where I stayed, wasting some time.
So:

I recommend keeping the chat reading status, unless you find new messages.

[WofWca]

Implementation-wise for Desktop I have 2 ideas:

• (probably not a good idea) Just don’t un-render the message lists of other chats, so that the browser is the one keeping the scroll position. Similar to how tabs work in browsers. This is probably gonna be problematic, e.g. we would have to make sure not to mark messages and not to scroll as read as they arrive to the non-current chat.
• When closing the chat, simply find the last message whose bottom corner (or top corner?) is visible. When you go back to the chat, jump to that message (unless we are explicitly provided another message to jump to, e.g. through notification click).

[r10s]

as always: what are other apps doing?

apart from that, at a first glance, i see a worsening for the majority of cases, where, if you leave a chat, you will want to forget about scrolling position, esp. if you open the chat hours or days later. esp. if additionally new messages arrive - where to scroll then?
sure, we have the scroll down button, and the logic can maybe be more smarter than “persist positions of all chats” but all in all that makes chat opening unpredictable. not to speak about larger complexity and maintaiinance costs.

also, when searching a along time for some message you want to remember the next days: sometimes you do not even know the chat, so that would not help at all also, there is multi-device.

so, all in all i am not sure if targeting this proposal would overall be a win, even if technically super-simple to do.

another approach, that works today, targets the case of “chat forgotten” and “multi device” as well - and that was not possible the time the proposal was filed (note, that this issue is quite old, lots of things has changed since then):

if it was really hard to din the the message or position: “Save” it to “Saved Messages” - that way you can easily go back to the exact position in the correct chat at any time with one tap

long tap or right click a message to save it

[r10s]

@r10s

as always: what are other apps doing?

answering myself: none of WhatsApp-iOS, WhatsApp-Web, Signal-iOS, Signal-Desktop, Telegram-iOS or Telegram-macOS persist the position for private chats. Telegram seem to do this for “Channels” esp. the latter is interesting as Telegram decided not to do that for private chats even though they have implemented the logic.
I did only a quick testing round, so it may be inaccurate, also not sure if some things were bugs in apps

[WofWca]

@r10s

what are other apps doing?

Remembers scroll position: Signal for Android, Telegram for Desktop and Android.
Does not remember scroll position: Signal for Desktop, WhatsApp.

Also see DC Desktop does not remember scroll position when switching between chats - #2 by r10s.

@r10s

if you open the chat hours or days later

We might want to “forget” the old scroll position after a while, but IDK if it would be better. Could be perceived as inconsistent maybe.

@r10s

if additionally new messages arrive - where to scroll then?

If you previously had the chat scrolled up, then scroll to the old position. Otherwise (if you had it scrolled to the bottom), then scroll to the first unread message (as we do now), which is also basically almost equivalent to restoring the old scroll position.
But we can look up how Telegram does this precisely.

@r10s

all in all that makes chat opening unpredictable

What’s unpredictable about this? You continue where you left off, that’s it. Like opening a book on a bookmark.

@r10s

also, when searching a along time for some message you want to remember the next days: sometimes you do not even know the chat, so that would not help at all also, there is multi-device.

Sorry, I didn’t get this.
Are you saying that in this case the purpose of the feature at hand is to “save a message” for later? I wouldn’t see it this way. It’s more about switching between chats rapidly.

@r10s

if it was really hard to din the the message or position: “Save” it to “Saved Messages” - that way you can easily go back to the exact position in the correct chat at any time with one tap

Sure this is a nice feature, but a distinct one. You wouldn’t want to “save message” every time you’re reading through one chat, and then have to switch to another to reply real quick.

[r10s]

so some say so and some say so

yeah, all in all, it probably makes sense to target other things with larger impact and clearer improvements first.

[9er]

@r10s

Telegram seem to do this for “Channels” esp. the latter is interesting as Telegram decided not to do that for private chats even though they have implemented the logic.

Sometimes there is a high-traffic group chat you want/need to follow, and after some offline time you can’t read all the new messages at once. Then it’s very convinient to start from last read position.

@r10s

“Save” it to “Saved Messages” - that way you can easily go back to the exact position in the correct chat at any time with one tap

Useful feature, which I discovered only now.
Once again, DC interface is misleading, for me at least. It believe it should be named ‘Bookmark post’ or just ‘Bookmark’, but not ‘Save’.

[bencan]

@WofWca

Sure this is a nice feature, but a distinct one. You wouldn’t want to “save message” every time you’re reading through one chat, and then have to switch to another to reply real quick.

I agree with this. In my view, saving/bookmarking a message for later is designed for a different use case to switching between chats and wanting to keep your position in the chats as you switch between them. The “Save message” feature can be used as a workaround for the second use case but it’s not ideal. It means that instead of switching between two chats, you would now need to switch between three chats with the “Saved Messages” chat acting as a go-between, which is an unintuitive workflow, requiring more time and concentration.

It also greatly increases the number of taps/clicks which you need to make to switch between the chats, and you end up with many messages cluttering your “Saved messages” chat which you probably didn’t want to save, unless you then take the time to remove them later.

I like the “Save message” feature, and it can be used as a workaround in this case, but I don’t see it as a replacement for remembering the last read position in the chats.

For what it’s worth, I would also find it very useful if chats remembered the last read position, but it’s fair that developers might want to prioritize other things first.

@9er

Once again, DC interface is misleading, for me at least. It believe it should be named ‘Bookmark post’ or just ‘Bookmark’, but not ‘Save’.

Well it acts as a bookmark and saves the message, so both terms are accurate. The saved message is kept even if the original is deleted. I guess “save and bookmark” would be more descriptive but maybe people find that too long. The icon implies bookmarking.