DeltaChat Desktop: Make the UI responsive

Feature Proposal
1

It would be nice, If I could use DeltaChat Desktop on my Linux Smartphone similar to how this is possible with Telegram Desktop. In my case, I use PostmarketOS with Phosh on a OnePlus 6T.

Expected behavior

DeltaChat Desktop fit the screen on mobile devices, scales on HiDPI Displays (mobile devices usually always have a higher pixel density) and is responsive. So if I reduce the width of the window, the contact list moves into a sidebar (As an example, of course can be solved differently). When I increase the window width, the contact list should always be visible on the left of the chat (as is already the case).

Actual behavior

DeltaChat is pixelated, the chat does not fit on the screen on mobile devices and looks creepy.

Operating System

PostmarketOS v22.12

Desktop Environment

Phosh 0.24.0

Device

OnePlus 6T

Example Images

This is how DeltaChat Desktop looks on my device:

DeltaChat Desktop
DeltaChat Desktop360×780 136 KB

This is how Telegram Desktop looks on the same device:

Telegram Desktop
Telegram Desktop360×780 212 KB

Note

I have installed Telegram Desktop from FlatHub.

4 Likes
2

I agree that it would be nice to have a responsive desktop client, for now maybe you could try kdeltachat (~link2xt/kdeltachat - DeltaChat client built with Kirigami - sourcehut git) which is a client developed by @link2xt using kde/plasma’s kirigami framework and should be responsive even if I don’t know how ready it is for daily use

3

@darhma Thank you, I will try it out. I am also willing to create a pull request for it, if there is a chance that it will be accepted

4

kdeltachat is not really actively maintained at the moment, though.
Feel free to open prs on the desktop repo, if they are good I’ll be happy to merge them. I would also like to add resposiveness to the desktop client, but I won’t find time for that anytime soon.

4 Likes
5

meanwhile, Delta Chat Desktop shows and hides the chatlist similar to telegram on resizing, the bubbles adapt to the available width, and so on

6

There is also now Deltatouch, which uses the same core and is fully intercompatible but has a slightly different-looking UI.

There is also a TUI version that runs on Linux mobiles:

1 Like
7

Oh wait, of course PostmarketOS is based on Alpine Linux. I don’t think any of the current Chatmail clients run on Alpine yet: list of mobile-Linux Chatmail clients. There are Flatpaks, Nix, etc..

You can also export your e-mail addy, key and password, and use any mailclient with IMAP and Autocrypt support; if it has a threaded view the usability should be decent. But Linux mailclients are still mostly either mobile-unfriendly or have no encryption.